November Day 28
Back around the end of 2014, Cure Dolly wrote about what she calls “Sound Sisters”.
Sound Sisters are similar to WaniKani’s mnemonic system.
The key points for Sound Sisters (and where they differ from WaniKani) are:
- They focus only on the reading of kanji (with no regard to the meaning).
- Different kanji with the same reading use different mnemonics.
- Different mnemonics for the same reading are grouped together.
WaniKani uses the same mnemonic for all matching readings.
In WaniKani, 司 uses sheep as its reading mnemonic. The kanji 士 also uses sheep. And while the kanji 次 is given Jesus as a reading mnemonic, 姿, 諮, and 資 all use sheep.
There’s nothing wrong with this. But for me personally, it’s too vague. I often can’t remember the mnemonic to get to the sound.
I’ve always struggled with WaniKani’s mnemonics.
I can create my own, but whatever mnemonic I come up with for a sound for one kanji may not work out for me for kanji I won’t learn until later. That results in having to concoct absurd stories, which WaniKani states to be a plus (and I don’t doubt that), but the concept of making stories absurd to be easier to remember doesn’t work for me personally.
Sound Sisters uses different mnemonics based on the kanji.
The kanji 司, 士, and 次 are each given their own mnemonic. As a group, the mnemonics are called “She-Knights”, because they share the reading シ.
It’s very easy to think of a trio of characters involving a sword-carrying warrior, a helmet-wearing knight, and a companion. I mean, such groups have been popular since Ancient Greece:
(Even Gabrielle, Warrior Princess Xena, and Joxer the Mighty are in awe as they look up at the quoted mnemonic.)
Tying a sound to a kanji allows you to utilize it in more complex kanji.
Once you have in place that the kanji 司 is read as シ, it helps with reading words such as 伺候, 歌詞, and 飼料.
I recently learned 候 in WaniKani. Although WaniKani doesn’t teach 伺 with the reading シ, I’m able now to read 伺候 as しこう. I won’t learn 飼 in WaniKani for a while, but I do know 料, so now I can read 飼料 as しりょう.
Granted, there are kanji that include 司, 士, or 次 and are not pronounced シ. 売店 is one example. I’ll tackle those as I encounter them.
As a fiction writer, creating unique individual people that are very memorable to me is a strength of mine.
I plan to take Cure Dolly’s “Sound Sisters” Anki deck, mine the kanji out of it (already done), group them based on their Sound Sister kanji (already done), and look up WaniKani vocabulary that use those kanji plus their meanings (in progress).
By pulling together the meanings of the WaniKani words, I can create specific characters without fear that they won’t work for kanji I learn later. (This won’t help me for kanji not taught by WaniKani, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it in a few years.)
Samurai 士: The kanji 士 appears in words involving work, in words involving intent and will, and at the end of various job titles. It’s also used in magazine. Thus, I picture the samurai as a Jack Jill-of-all-trades type. A hard worker, who will take on any role to help out others, whether it means being a soldier, an attorney, or a shogi player. Her flaw is she tends to switch roles based on what she sees in the magazines she’s always reading.
Helmet Knight 司: The kanji 司 appears in words including boss, sushi, grammar terms, and domestication of animals. Combing the her top grammar, her nurturing experience with animals, and how often she buys sushi for the group, it’s no wonder the knight became the group’s boss.
Dependable Follower 次: Aside from 次 meaning next, it’s also used in words related to figure and posture, as well as table of contents, consult, and resources. She may not be a warrior, but she is a vital member of the group as she manages all their resources. She holes the strings of the purse, and the others must consult with her on what they can and cannot buy. She is considered an esteemed member of the group, so she is able to stand stall and proud.
I worked out the details for my version of the “She-Knights” on Thursday, so I won’t go over any this weekend (gotta get in some reading!), but in December I plan hope to plan to go over a different “Sound Sister” group each weekend.
The Sound Sisters only cover 289 of WaniKani’s 2,055 kanji.
That sounds like a small amount. Clearly I’m not getting a huge boost WaniKani from this.
However, in the past couple of days, I’ve already encountered a few reviews that I would have gotten wrong had I not noticed a “She-Knights” group kanji in the word.
As it turns out, the Sound Sisters cover 14% of the kanji covered by WaniKani. I don’t know how many of the individual WaniKani vocabulary words this covers, so if we imagine it’s also about 14% (just for sake of argument), then that means if I have 70 vocabulary reviews in a day, about 10 of those may be Sound Sisters.
In all, I’ll have to create 92 characters for the whole Sound Sisters Anki deck’s material.
That’s somewhere between Fire Emblem cast levels and Musuo cast level.
For now, I’ll focus on the first 6 groups Cure Dolly introduces, which covers 22 main kanji, and another 98 kanji that incorporate them.