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: To me the character (交) looks like a face: a beret (亠) on the top, a pair of old tired eyes (八), and (乂) could be the nose and mouth. For this person, an old guy with a beret, I choose Linus Pauling, a famous scientist with a beret.
Father Time (父) commands Linus Pauling (交) to hand over (交) his beret (亠) to him in front of the aorta (ao1), but Joan of Arc (ji) comes to his rescue.
Did she steal Father Time's halo???
Matthias, 8 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.
to hand over / to deliver / to pay (money) / to turn over / to make friends / to intersect (lines) / variant of 跤[jiao1]
Linus is an elderly Caucasian scientist with a receding hairline and wispy white hair, wearing his signature black beret and a tweed suit jacket. He usually has a lively, enthusiastic expression and is holding a large, colorful ball-and-stick molecular model. Age: 60s-70s, signature Item: black beret, props: ball-and-stick molecular models (specifically alpha-helix structures), vibe: enthusiastic, intellectual, warm.
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