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: bourbon, 波旁 (bo1 pang2).
The beast (六) is nominated for a challenge by Pinocchio (p) in the anglepod’s kitchen (ang2). Pinocchio asks the beast to fit a saucepan lid (冖) into a square (方). If he succeeds, he’ll get a bottle of bourbon (旁) that Pinocchio keeps at his side (旁), so the beast is jumping on the saucepan lid madly trying to push it through the square.
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.
one side / other / different / lateral component of a Chinese character (such as 刂[dao1], 亻[ren2] etc)
The bourbon is a heavy-based rectangular glass bottle with rounded shoulders and a short, tapered neck. The bottle is filled with a deep amber liquid and features a thick, creamy off-white paper label with charred-edge detailing and bold, black serif typography. It is sealed with a natural cork stopper topped by a dark walnut wood cap, finished with a crimson wax seal dripping down the neck.
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