Hello! I am struggling to remember when a kanji reading has the extra う long vowel sound at the end. I feel like the reading explanations are not the best at distinguishing this either. For example, 去 (きょ - past) and 兄 (きょう - older brother), where both of them use きょうと for the reading explanation.
I can almost always remember the consonant sound / main hiragana, but often times will guess incorrectly on if there is a long or short vowel.
Another good example is 主 (しゅ - master) vs 州 (しゅう - state/province).
Has anyone found a good method to recall these correctly? Thanks!
For long vs. short vowels (and to be honest for mnemonics in general) I found it a bit helpful to make up my own mnemonics that were more memorable to me than wanikani’s.
I think for kyou/kyo I used the character Kyo from Fruits Basket normally (long vowel) vs. Kyo from Fruits Basket when he’s been turned into a cat (short vowel)…
That was at least more memorable than the “little Kyoto” thing and I got to imagine a tiny angry cat doing a bunch of stuff… so there’s that.
(but anything that makes sense to you and is very distinct in your head could help and would be fair game)
slight tangent, but do you have much practice listening to/speaking japanese? if you can’t already recognise/pronounce the long and short vowels, I’d start by practising that. it’s a lot easier when they’re distinct sounds in your head.
Yes I think that is a good idea! I think I’ll start finding words I know that use the kanji and listen for the short vs long vowel (as someone mentioned below) and keep that as the example I recall when learning the kanji. Thanks!
Yes, someone above mentioned something similar! That is a good call to associate the kanji with a vocab word it is used in that uses the specific reading being taught, and more specifically listening for the short vs long sound. I think that will definitely help more with recalling correctly instead of only learning from the kanji directly itself. Thank you!
I am totally also using Kyo allovertheplace. He’s so much more memorable. There was a time when Wanikani made you watch a very offensive / homofobic sketch to remember せい. Why not force everyone to watch Fruits Basket?
I like the cat-form trick. Somehow I get away with “Oh it was Kyo! No wait, it was that little Kyoto thing. Why is Kyo gone? Sadness.” My brain remembers that sad feeling well enough to remember きょ so far
I completely second this. Listening is probably the best way to get a better grasp of the difference and internalize it. But, it can be a bit daunting of course or people with little experience listening to Japanese.
To that I’d say, just watching JP dramas or anime with subtitles is fine to get this exposure to the sounds of Japanese. (keep your eyes on the subtitles, then make the connection to the sounds).
So, my trick is a variation of what others have said, but a little more generalized. I found trying to come up with multiple “long vs short” options, one for each kana (like the Kyo/cat Kyo case) was just too much to keep track of. I also wanted to deal with other things, like rendaku and elision which trip me up all the time.
What I came up with is a set of general modifiers (adjectives) that work in most mnemonics involving a character. For example, う is “undead”. So I make the character a zombie, vampire, skeleton, or whatever. お is “made of candy” (I don’t know why I chose this, tbh). For each of my problem cases, I have a modifier like this.
Having these consistent means I have fewer things to remember. I don’t have to have one for each kana. It can also help with not only the short vs. long, but the dreaded “long using お rather than う” cases, etc. It took a little getting used to, but it definitely streamlined the process for me.
Anyway, that’s what I do. I don’t know if that helps, but it works for me.
Oh wow yeah that is a great idea and easier to keep track of if you are sticking to the original explanation but just slightly modifying it. Thanks for the advice!!
Yeah, this is one mnemonic I really dislike… They both use ‘Kyoto’ however 去 is “little Kyoto”; yeah, like I said, utterly ridiculous.
Honestly, I create my own mnemonics for the “little Kyoto” readings. I put them in the ‘synonyms’ section so that I can view them easily.
If you’re wondering what I personally use in place of “little Kyoto”, I use きょnan O’Brian. I actually have very little knowledge of him. The most exposure I’ve had to him was in that one episode of the Simpsons. Nevertheless, I find this works fine. I make up little stories with him in for each kanji; it’s actually quite fun.
Beyond listening out for it, practising saying vocab words (ideally with the correct pitch variations) is a good way of getting a feel for the difference between long and short vowels. It might even provide you with a sort of ‘emotional connection’ to the sounds. In my case, I feel a sort of urgency when I need to pronounce a short vowel, because I have to be careful not to drag it out and confuse it with a long vowel. You should probably also use beats or claps to help you. For example,
去年 is 3 counts: KYO-ne-n (CAPS mean high pitch, lowercase means low pitch)
兄弟 is 4 counts: KYO-u-da-i (yes, I know the actual pronunciation is ‘kyo–’, but I’m just sticking to the rōmaji to make illustrating this easier)
That gives you an idea of how long you need to pronounce each sound, and the need to stop the sound in time to move on to the next syllable might help you remember, for instance, whether or not you’re dealing with a ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ syllable.
