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 tael boat gold bullion.
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.
two / both / some / a few / tael, unit of weight equal to 50 grams (modern) or 1⁄16 of a catty 斤[jin1] (old)
The tael boat gold bullion is a solid, cast-gold ingot shaped like a traditional curved Chinese junk boat, featuring a polished, reflective metallic surface and embossed, intricate character markings along its hull. It possesses a dense, heavy appearance with slightly rounded, smooth edges and a warm, deep yellow luster.
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