Mnemonic comic for

Translation

bái = b + ai2: white / snowy / pure / bright / empty / blank / plain / clear / to make clear / in vain / gratuitous / free of charge / reactionary / anti-communist / funeral / to stare coldly / to write wrong character / to state / to explain / vernacular / spoken lines in opera

Mnemonic

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: a white flag. The sun (日) is waving with a white (白) flag (白) in the airplane’s kitchen (ai2) while Beelzebub (b) is beating them with a big petal leaf (丶).

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Comments

Now that we learned both 勺 and 白, we're ready to learn the most common Chinese character of all, 的, as the next character.

Matthias, almost 3 years ago

How to pronounce 白

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.

= b initial

B is for Beelzebub.

By Matthias • updated 3 months ago
+ ai2 final

In the airplane’s kitchen.

By Matthias • updated 5 months ago

白 character breakdown

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.

Component Translations
zhǔ = zhu + Ø3
"dot" radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 3) / see also 點|点[dian3]
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= r + Ø4
abbr. for 日本[Ri4 ben3], Japan
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= r + Ø4
sun / day / date, day of the month
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Characters with 白 as component

= di + Ø1
see 的士[di1 shi4]
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= di + Ø2
really and truly
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de = d + e5
of; ~'s (possessive particle) / (used after an attribute) / (used to form a nominal expression) / (used at the end of a declarative sentence for emphasis) / also pr. [di4] or [di5] in poetry and songs
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Words with 白

show 1014 more
clear / obvious / unequivocal / to understand / to realize
idiocy / idiot
white man or woman / Caucasian
Sentences with 白

Want to remember 白 for good?

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.

bái

white / snowy / pure / bright / empty / blank / plain / clear / to make clear / in vain / gratuitous / free of charge / reactionary / anti-communist / funeral / to stare coldly / to write wrong character / to state / to explain / vernacular / spoken lines in opera

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