Hard Gay didn’t even need to be offensive to be worth removing.
WK has never said they removed Hard Gay for being offensive.
And if they did, they are not going to declare they did it to be political. You are declaring that for them. That’s fine though, because it sounds like your mind would be made up regardless of their stated reason.
Hard disagree. Maru the cat made learning 丸 incredibly easy. Sheen is kinda american-centric and questionable, but it was at least memorable.
I appreciated the Japanese culture references (really part of the reason most of us are here) but I have no real say in how the site is run other than post about it.
My only complaint is that the new mnemonics don’t feel as memorable and that this change was kinda rushed, maybe. I don’t think I could remember 転 very well at all with the new “cloud” radical mnemonic that replaced the other one, among others that I see now and again. Plus one on the 世 mnemonic being kinda hard as well, but may be biased since ハドゲイ is stuck in my brain already.
glad he’s gone. never been memorable for me, since i’ve never been the slightest bit interested in him.
My eye keeps seeing this thread in the list as “Bye Bye Hard Gay, HELLO SAILOR!”
Just saying
I do miss some of the old mnemonics too, though I think that even worse than whether or not a mnemonic is memorable (we can always write our own) is to see them changing too frequently, since some previous mnemonics using the same pronunciation build upon the same idea or story to help us remember others later on. It makes things confusing when you learned one mnemonic for a certain sound then later on you are seeing a new mnemonic for that sound and wondering what the “story til now” is.
For example one of the new “sei” mnemonics (affected by the Hard Gay change, I think) was for 青 (blue: sei, shou) and part of the mnemonic said “You’ve been feeling really blue. Mostly because your skin, hair, and eyes have all turned blue. The Shougun found out and now he’s back.” and I got confused thinking “back? where was he?” and I wondered if a previous “shou” mnemonic had been changed to have some story about the Shougun leaving, and maybe it was part of a running story for the mnemonic. Turns out after searching through other previous “shou” mnemonics this was not the case (so the “he’s back” thing is still confusing, though I’ve stopped worrying about it), but it sure felt kind of distracting/confusing to have to search around to find that out. If the mnemonics hadn’t changed I wouldn’t have had to go digging to see what the new “story” was.
Side-note: Pusheen would make a pretty good “sheen” mnemonic. Kinda shocked at the missed opportunity since she is kawaii-inspired and pretty popular these days.
Now who’s generalizing? Seriously, though, I think in the Japan of 2019, there’s a trend to a much more nuanced view of lgbtq issues than there was 15 years ago when Hard Gay was a thing. But I’ll leave it at that since it’s off topic.
[this next bit is not meant as a reply to anyone in particular.]
My imagination is that Koichi basically wrote all these mnemonics by himself at one point using whatever he happened to think of that could be memorable. Some of these items have aged or scaled better than other things. And there’s nothing wrong with that because you have to start somewhere.
Nothing wrong with making updates either. If you liked using Hard Gay as a mnemonic for せい, then by all means, continue doing so. No reason to get upset because he’s gone.
You can keep using the mnemonics you like because by definition, they’re part of your memory!
I relate
On the subject of Hard Gay and being offensive and such, I think it’s important to try to avoid presentism (for those not familiar with historiography, aka most everyone, here’s the wiki page Presentism (literary and historical analysis) - Wikipedia)
Even though it was just 15 or so years ago, what was considered acceptable in comedy was much much different. The shift in what is considered acceptable targets for humor has occurred quite quickly, and it’s easy to forget that this kind of comedy which we now view as poorly handled was extremely common, both in the east and west. The line for what can be made fun of then is not that which it is now, so it kind of irks me to see people just saying “it’s offensive, done deal” when in the time it was made in, the attitude would be “well of course it’s ok, no one’s getting hurt over it.”
Because they genuinely did not think anyone would get hurt over it.
But that really has nothing to do with the mnemonic and is just a historiography side note. There’s no reason to be too upset for it being removed, since it’s a clear business trend going forward to remove anything that could be seen as questionable. But everyone has pretty much already said that so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Generalising? Hard Gay was a bad figure. Promoting in anyway it’s a bad thing itself. I never said that they used him as an example to hurt anyone.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I felt it was a generalization to imply that all of us (“we all”) “know that countries like japan view gay people as comedy.” That’s generalizing two groups, “we” and whatever “countries like japan” means. I don’t think it’s fair to make sweeping statements like that about such large (and undefined) groups.
I was talking about the media and I made it clear right after my first post. I’m sorry for phrasing it wrong but that wasn’t even the point of my post in the first place
Also I’m sorry if I’m sounding aggressive these are not my intentions at all. But I have to admit that I’m very salty when it comes to lgbtq+ rights in “countries like japan” because I love them so much but my eyes have seen and keep seeing some pretty unfair things that I’d like to address but this conversation is going to be unnecessary and off topic.
I’m just saying this to explain where that specific phrase that you quoted was coming from.
Fair enough. And I hadn’t noticed your second post, so I’m sorry about that. I’m sure we’re basically on the same page.
It’s certain that lgbtq people face discrimination and marginalization in Japan as they do in many (most) other cultures, and that’s very unfortunate. But I think it’s also important to recognize the degree to which positive strides in general attitudes have been made in recent years. This article published just a couple weeks ago shows some of these gains.
That’s why I didn’t feel it was fair to write off all of Japan (or even all of Japanese media) as completely insensitive to lgbtq issues.
Injustice (level 4 vocab) seems to be one of my worst leeches, so can I just say what an injustice it is that hardgay has gone. I dont really believe that, but hopefully posting here will squash that leech.
WK leaves Hard Gay as the mnemonic: people complain. WK takes away Hard Gay as the mnemonic: people complain. No matter what WK does, someone will find some way to criticize it.
From all the care and effort the WK team has put into this site, I’m pretty sure we can trust that they are trying to make the best product they can to actually help us learn kanji. And it works. If we put the same effort into learning as we are into complaining, we’ll learn せい either way.
Not the same people, though. And not all complainers are equal. Those who complained because Hard Gay was a mnemonic should be ignored, because they’re wrong.
You seem to be so sure of yourself, that’s impressive.
There, I fixed your post for you.
Hint: just because someone disagrees with you, doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Sometimes people just have differing opinions and that is fine.