Are mnemonics bad?

WaniKani
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I would create a mnemonic myself, also I trust my ears and my imagination best, so it wouldn’t be odd if a mnemonic is made of other Japanese words. (Also, many words can be broken down, even seemingly made of single Kanji.)

About the pitches, I believe they can be learnt early on, if you find a way to easily remember them (e.g. visually). However, it might be necessary to realize the theory to notice them at all in native audio.

Also, some pitch changes aren’t directly in a vocabulary, but in subsequently constructed phrases.

I am not sure if Kanji readings have pitch or not. They might be some tendencies.

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I guess ethnically? Don’t know whether he has Japanese citizenship. He’s not native though; he never learned Japanese as a kid. Not that it’s discrediting him, just pointing it out.

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The rise of mnemonic-語…?! :eyes:

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Kanae and Mami are native though. Even if WK started as being a project by a non native, surely just about everything and especially the new content has been checked by a native speaker.

I’m not trying to disagree with you or something like that. I’m just confused that it’s part of the original argument honestly.

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Yeah, honestly I wasn’t even thinking about the original argument; just being nitpicky :sweat_smile:

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Q: Do Japanese use mnemonics?
A: Yes, everywhere from security codes to bicycle locks to ATM card Pins. I learned this in Japan.
Example: 兄さん 良い 子 2-3-4-9

Q: Is it un- Japanese to use mnemonics?
A: No, the first Japanese who learned English used only this type of memorization.
Here is the story of John Manjiro, born in 1827.
The most favorite of his mnemonics is 掘った芋いじるな
ほったいもいるな
＝What time is it now?
http://johnmung.org/who_is_johnmung_e.html

Q:Does the mnemonic method work?
A: John Manjiro worked as translator after returning to Japan and was very respected.

Here is a test on if native English speaker can understand the meaning

My personal opinion is, that it is a good tool to recall something you wouldn’t otherwise.
It is not a tool to memorize pronunciation that’s why you shouldn’t expect it from it.
A computer for example is not a better tool than a toothpick.
The worth of it lies only in the fact if it does what you need right now or not.

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My current theory is that they SHOULD be learned early on. The common practice is to “get through learning the language” and then swinging back around to learn pitch accent. If you learn pitch accent as you go, it’s almost no extra work, but the more Japanese you acquire without it, the more work is required to manually append each entry you’ve already indexed in memory.

It isn’t something most people acquire naturally through immersion either, because they haven’t trained themselves to hear it (it gets filtered out as background noise). So, learning to hear pitch accent VERY early on is basically the only thing you need to do to acquire it passively, according to my theory at least.

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Comparing with English (as a second language), stress and inflection are usually taught earlier on.

I also saw old textbook photos here annotate pitch accents very clearly. However, I am not sure how well pitch accents are annotated in textbooks these days (MNN, Genki); even if I definitely saw some diagrams at sentence levels. Also, what about the theory? And English translation of terms?

Worth noting that Kana isn’t a complete notation either, and Romaji can represent to some extent and not necessarily in word processor form. Some symbols can be introduced to make phonetic annotations more complete, and unnecessary / unsaid parts might be able to be reduced too.

I feel as far as – how well are Japanese people willing to write in textbooks and accommodate learning for foreigners? They might not be so open.

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I’m not sure what Genki does or doesn’t mention about pitch accent, but I don’t believe it’s much. Vs MNN which, in the first few pages of the first lesson, gives at least word-level diagrams describing pitch accent.

My theory is basically that, we are “deaf” to pitch accent due to the pruning process that we all go through at a young age which predispositions our brain on what information it’s going to notice and what information it’s going to discard. We have to run through special exercises to regain our ability to hear pitch accent, and until we do that, most of us won’t naturally pick up pitch accent no matter how many hundreds of hours we listen to Japanese.

If we DO this training at the very very early stages of learning Japanese, we can then begin to absorb pitch accent through osmosis (just passively acquiring it through immersion). If we skip pitch accent, learn Japanese first and try to swing back around to it, then we have to put in nearly as much effort in learning pitch accent as we did learning Japanese in the first place. According to my theory.

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The problem is, that as soon as you start to see yourself, a human being, a walking monkey, a vertebrate with the ability to make sound with your throat, tongue and whatever. as “Japanese”, you won’t be able to either speak, learn or teach a foreign language anymore.

Because the strongest point of being “Japanese” is exactly that, that “Japanese” have their special language only they can naturally use compared to the foreigner who are entirely different kinds of animals.

Look at a parrot, they can sing like a mobile phone, but once they gain a certain degree of consciousness and identify as “bird” they can’t do that anymore.

Same goes for humans. Babies can do that because they don’t identify.

John Manjiro could do it because he lost his Japanese identity. He was excluded accidentally.

A Japanese learning a foreign language succesfully and a Japanese teaching Japanese to a foreigner successfully is an extreme double bind situation. If they would succeed doing it automatically they wouldn’t be “Japanese” any more. This is something that goes very deep and people are not aware of it consciously. By failing to learn English you are Japanese. Really, just listen to random people.

That’s why I came to believe it is better to learn Japanese from someone who doesn’t identify as Japanese, like someone with a Japanese parent but being raised anywhere outside of Japan or a foreigner who studied Japanese seriously.

I saw this happening life in front of my eyes to my kids who changed to Japanese schools.
It is a very interesting phenomenon though and doesn’t happen so much in other cultures I think but also with dialects. People with a local dialect also believe that outsiders cannot speak or learn it which is not true, it follows even simpler rules usually. What I mean is, that the difference between two languages is usually higher than the difference between a language and one of its dialects. But people don’t learn dialects because they can’t identify as a local mushroom farmer.

But to understand this one has to read the Nihonjinron and honestly who does it?

The easier and also foolproof method is to do the opposite of the language learning tips from Japanese.

  • You can’t learn Kanjis other than writing them over and over again
  • Mnemonics are inferior and only for the weak
  • You have to start with polite language
  • You don’t need to study Keigo
  • Don’t bother to study pitch accent
  • Learn by studying a lot of grammar that’s very rare
  • etc
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Many of us have seen Japan Sinks 2020, kaiju movies, or any of the animated films aimed at… men of culture… So we already know that if we’re in Japan when it slides off of the continental shelf, or giant radioactive space lizards attack, or some Cthulu-esque tentacled creature with personal boundary issues rises from the deep, we are at the bottom of the totem pole in who’s getting evacuated.

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I agree, and disagree.

Yes, most of us won’t know what pitch accent is, but if you hear お母さん or お父さん a hundred times, you’re not gonna say ókaasán or ótousán.

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But you’ll still likely be asking for a bridge to eat your ramen with.

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I honestly don’t understand what you’re talking about.

One of the best teachers at my school, and I’m sure this is the case for a lot of people, is a Japanese native who came to Mexico in their middle age.

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I don’t know how good your Japanese is so I can’t say anything to this.

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No?

That’s one of the most common words…

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So foreigners in Japan basically don’t use incorrect intonation at all? I don’t know what argument you’re making.

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Haha. Why are both of you talking in absolutes?

The argument I’m making is that saying, “we can’t do X”, “if you’re Y, you can’t do Z”, is not an argument.

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I’m not trying to be rude. I’m just genuinely baffled by the seeming implication that the average second language speaker in Japan doesn’t butcher pitch.

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In my experience, with English, I won’t say “most”, but easily a great deal of people.

Actually, even with theories taught, it isn’t certain that the accent is perfect.

Greatest predictor to sound-like-native, is living abroad for a long while.

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