只
=
八
+
口
:
Mnemonic symbol: this character looks like something (a head?) on two legs. I'll just represent it by a cuttlefish (只). James II of England (zh) has been in the space station (Ø3) as the only (只) one for too long and went mad. He thinks he's holding a mandarin (口), but he's just about to bite into merely (只) an eight ball (八). On the top of his head is a cuttlefish (只) he mistook for a hat.
to be (followed by substantives only) / correct; right; true / (respectful acknowledgement of a command) very well / (adverb for emphatic assertion)
是
=
旦
+
龰
:
Mnemonic symbol: a skull, from "to be or not to be".
Sherlock Holmes (sh) starts his day in the space station's bathroom (Ø4) with a mug of coffee (旦). Holding a skull (mnemonic symbol for 是) in his hands, he asks himself "to be, or not to be" (是). He wonders if he can make the skull come back to life using lots of coffee, and injects coffee from his mug into the skull using a syringe (龰).
是
=
日
+
下
+
人
:
Mnemonic symbol: a skull, from "to be or not to be".
Sherlock Holmes (sh) watches the Neanderthal Man (人) trying to climb to the sun (日) on a ladder (下) in the space station's bathroom (Ø4). Sherlock is afraid that he'll open the window, so he puts on a big skull (是) and scares him off.