Hi all, new user here. Loving the app… will love it even more when I finally get clear of level 4!
I would say that most of the mnemonics are really good and definitely help, although I’ve seen a couple of weak ones so far, so have been adding my own notes in various places. My favourite one is 男 - for the kanji I just think of the rhyme “Dan the man”, and for the vocab I decided that the man’s full name is actually Dan Otto, and he runs his own business called Otto Co (おとこ). Seems to work for me!
Hi tomds, welcome! Pretty new user here as well. I’ve come up with a few mnemonics, but they’re all in my native language (Dutch). The problem I experience a lot with the WK mnemonics is that I don’t know all the english words (like wth is a shougun).
Welcome to the WK Community!
I’ve been lurking around these swamps for a (short?) while. You will love some mnemonics and find yourself completely clueless with others (at least in my experience so far). The best mnemonics are the ones you make yourself, so if you ever find yourself not liking the given one, it’s strongly advised that you make your own, otherwise you’ll need to brute-force remember. Sometimes I just tweak the provided ones to make them more memorable.
As a side note it would be really good if there was a service where people could share their own mnemonics for each item in WaniKani for others to view.
Yes, that would be so cool! I was thinking with some of the not so good ones, “Surely someone out there has come up with a better mnemonic by now?”. Imagine if people could submit their own, and they eventually make their way into the app!
Ah, I think that one refers to the Japanese Shoguns from olden times, so it’s not actually an English word But yeah I can appreciate how that would not be obvious if you weren’t a native English speaker! Another case where I consider myself lucky to be a native English speaker…
Being an english speaker doesn’t help at all with knowing the word Shogun, but I’m also not saying it’s a bad word to use for mnemonics… it does feel like a pretty basic japanese word, not as basic as arigato, but definitely not an obscure term
“Shogun” is a… not unknown loanword in English, though I don’t think it’s commonly used. I feel like it’s got a colloquial usage in American English, but I’m not completely sure of that.
Kanjidamage is a fantastic source for alternate mnemonics, though different radical names can sometimes make adapting them tricky. They also don’t have kunyomi mnemonics most of the time.
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But yeah I can appreciate how that would not be obvious if you weren’t a native English speaker! Another case where I consider myself lucky to be a native English speaker…