Mnemonic comic for 白

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.

Beelzebub (b) wants to stop the sun (日) from scorching the airplane’s kitchen (ai2), so he tucks a petal (丶) on top of its head like a flower crown; the charmed sun stops blazing and waves a white flag (白).

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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 9 days ago
+ ai2 final

In the airplane’s kitchen.

By Matthias • updated 9 days 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
丶
zhǔ = zhu + Ø3
"dot" radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 3) / see also 點|点[dian3]
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日
rì = r + Ø4
abbr. for 日本[Ri4 ben3], Japan
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日
rì = r + Ø4
sun / day / date, day of the month
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Characters with 白 as component

的
dī = di + Ø1
see 的士[di1 shi4]
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的
dí = di + Ø2
really and truly
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的
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.

白
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

Prompt snippets

The white flag is a rectangular piece of plain, slightly creased white cotton cloth, about the size of a tea towel, fastened along its short edge to a straight, unpainted wooden stick with a rounded tip.

AI Images