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.
Robinson Crusoe (r) is hiding from the sun (日) in an enclosure (囗) full of flutes (一) in the space station’s bathroom (Ø4).
Whenever a Pinyin initial is sufficient to represent the entire Pinyin syllable, we use the space station as the background scenery. As a reminder, here's the key how the tone maps to certain areas of a location:
Here's the key how to remember the tone of the Pinyin final:
1 -> in front
2 -> in the kitchen
3 -> in the living room
4 -> in the bathroom
5 -> on the roof
In this case, this is what the space station's bathroom actually more or less looks like. I downloaded a CAD drawing of the ISS from NASA, found the bathroom, rendered it in Blender (open source 3D software), and used the render as a basis for the final touches from Stable Diffusion (AI image generation software). Neat, huh?
Matthias, almost 3 years ago (edited almost 3 years 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.
2 translations
The sun is a anthropomorphic sun character with a perfectly spherical, bright yellow body. Its limbs are short and extending from the sides and bottom of the sphere.
We use cookies to ensure the basic functionality of the website (essential cookies) and to analyze traffic as well as to provide personalized ads (non-essential cookies from Google Analytics and Google AdSense). Please choose whether you want to consent to all cookies or only essential cookies. For more information, please see our Privacy Policy .