I’m going to have 古 in my apprentice forever (and similar ones). This also goes for ご, ごう, じょ, じょう, etc. Sometimes I get them right, but I always have a hard time remember which applies to the kanji in question when it comes up later. I generally have a hard time remembering which of two things is which (e.g. a Dodge Challenger vs a Dodge Charger). I always try to give myself a point of reference and then I always get the reference backwards lol. I’m terrible.
Anyways! Does anybody have any advice? Anybody have the same problem?
Sometimes the mnemonic accounts for short/long vowels, which might help. Other times you can make something up. For example, the mnemonic for 古 uses the word 子 (こ). You can think of it as something like “a child is small, so it’s a short vowel”. Maybe coming up with similar mnemonics of your own will help, make good use of the notes you can take on each item.
It may also help to guru the kanji and learn the corresponding vocabulary words. Since they have audio, listening to it a few times might help you remember how to correctly spell a word in hiragana, and by extension remember the kanji reading.
Thanks. I don’t learn new ones every day, like I should, because I’m stacked pretty heavily on hobbies and work. I’ll get there eventually. I’m trying not to beat myself up for not going as fast as I wish I was as long as I am making progress.
I did just learn five more for right now. Two of them were 光 and 交 . Whyyyy?! lol. I also try to quiet the jerk side of my brain that tries to tell me this is way too hard. There’s waaay to many ways to pronounce certain things or the same pronunciation for many different things. Gotta love that part of our minds
A few days ago, I got four different reviews items wrong because I forgot the long vowel… I started reading it out loud and/or copying and pasting it on google translate so google can read out loud for me. For me, it seems that hearing a word that uses the kanji has helped.
I, too, have been trying to read them out loud and trying to use that to remember. I’m sure eventually I will get it, but as I said in the original post my brain will flip and/or flop them as it sees fit. So I’ve just got to try and make up my own mnemonics to add onto the WaniKani ones as to why it’s a long vowel.
There’s generally a lot less short vowels than long ones. Remember short ones as special cases and assume that all the rest is long?
古 is one of the viral ones, it not only is こ itself, it causes many more complicated kanji its in to be こ as well, so I tend to be sure it’s こ when I see 古 somewhere in the kanji. 80% kanji are like that - have a bit that gives them a reading, and the rest gives a hint on meaning, so each kanji with 古 may be thought to mean „read it as こ and the rest tells you which こ it is”.
I came up with a whole different set of mnemonics for the hard ones.
1)古 This kanji looks like an OLD grave. Do you want KOUichi in a grave? No (hopefully) then this one is KO not KOU.
2) You were K.O ed. and you wake up but this is not your body it’s an OLD one!!!. Then a nurse comes to you to explain. You’ve been in a coma for 100 years. You are sooo OLD.
This may not be helpful to hear, but with regular reviews you will pick them up! There are kanji / readings that I would CONSTANTLY get wrong that I now get right most of the time, just by keeping up with WK, and going over them often enough.
I don’t know if this would work for anyone else, and it may not work for all vowels, but when something has a double vowel, I tend to either imagine multiple objects, or a physically long object in my mnemonic. For instance for SHU, i imagine one shoe, for SHUU, I imagine lots of shoes. And for HO, just a hoe (obviously), but HOU, is an absurdly long hoe. I think it words for TO vs TOU, and JO vs JOU too. But everyone minds work in different ways.
If you’re stuck on a reading, it is simple to overcome. Don’t rely on only one input method, utilise all your input sensory, such as get a book and every night and morning just right the word and the reading your struggling with 5 times, within 3 days you will never forget. To apply this technique properly you must also say the word and reading whilst you write and dont just say it five times, say it over and over as you write it.
Write the english word as you already know that meaning, whilst writing it dont think of the english word just say the reading many times. Then write the reading and this time, dont think of the reading keep saying the Japanese word or meaning in the case of kanji in full many times. Say it out loud as you then hear what it sounds like. Thus using more of your sensory than just reading, it’s amazing how much you will retain when you start writing, speaking, reading and listening all at the same time, use your brain, dont trick it into memorising just let it happen with this method.
I hope the explanation is clear enough to follow…Write, read, speak, listen.
Only focus on one reading per kanji, as you will learn more readings within the words.
