A mnemonic is a short, deliberately ridiculous scene, built to be hard to forget. Who appears in it and where it takes place are how the pronunciation is stored; the objects in it stand for the parts the character is written with. That is the Marilyn Method, and the comic below is the same scene, drawn.
Mnemonic symbol: popcorn.
Gitta Giraffe (gu) conducts an experiment in the space station’s living room (Ø3). She shows Neanderthal Man (人) three things: a mandarin (口), popcorn (谷), and an eight-ball (八), and records how much he likes to eat each of these. Neanderthal Man thinks that the eight-ball is a little crunchy.
Hahaha I absolutely love that look on her face!
PS: also, from now on I'm probably always going to include aliens chilling in the background of the space station's living room.
Matthias, 12 months ago (edited 12 months ago)
MandarinBanana teaches pronunciation with the Marilyn Method: every Pinyin syllable is one initial plus one final, the initial becomes a person, an animal or a deity, and the final becomes a place in your memory palace — with the tone deciding which part of that place the scene happens in. Remember the little story below for each half and the whole syllable comes back with them.
Chinese characters are built out of smaller characters. Each component carries a mnemonic symbol - one concrete object that stands in for it - and a mnemonic story hands those objects to the person and the place that stand for the pronunciation. Learn a component once and every character that reuses it gets easier.
Make it your learning target and MandarinBanana works out the shortest route to it: the two sounds its syllable is built from, then the components of the character itself, one short step at a time. No account needed to start.
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