Yeah, convoluted for sure, slightly is an understatement, but you don’t really need to remember the mnemonic verbatim since you’re in on the joke now, perhaps “Is 得る an える verb? I’m sure I acquired that knowledge.”
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Yeah, often just talking about things that give you trouble can be enough to give you a solid memory about it, so there’s that. Honestly, I think I maybe just don’t really think about if something is an える verb in the first place. Maybe that’s making this mnemonic more hard to me.
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So I’ve been thinking about this item and your mnemonic so much that even though the mnemonic doesn’t really come to mind, I’m actually just remembering the reading now and passing the item, so that’s cool haha. I think it’s weirdly valuable to just discuss items that are tricky. This thread seems like a good tool to overcome leeches. Anyway, wanted to say thanks.
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That’s a pretty awesome result and part of why having the community forum is so valuable.
Maybe changing the thread header to “Confusing Mnemonics and leeches help centre” would lead more users to use this thread for this kind of issues, instead of opening a new one? (there used to be threads for this but I haven’t seen them in the feed for quite awhile)
Speaking of potential leeches, I just learned 借家 and even though 借家 is an optional reading, I really wanted to cement the 借家 reading.
Since we’re talking about renting a house or a house for rent it sounded like borrowing/renting and store 屋 and I wonders whether
借家 can also be written as 借屋. Well, not only it can be it has the same meaning, and this connection is more meaningful for me than the english mnemonic. I also wrote 家屋 to see what would it be translated into and it means house or building not a や reading but writing its reading correctly 家屋 will give you 
as one of the first options for kana to kanji transformation.
Sometimes going with the Japanese I already know can be better than making a new mnemonic.
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Perhaps recalling しゃくや by sound without relying on Kanji in advance, then think of odd Kanji substitution like in names, so 借家. When doing SRS, that would be going to meaning first, before coming back to the reading. Meaning to reading, without focusing on how it’s written, may work in this case.
家屋 is another fun word to know by sound. Otherwise, I repeatedly failed to guess its reading before.
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Good idea, I’ve updated the title now. I definitely think a focus on leeches as well as mnemonics would be beneficial too. I know I also have a bunch of items that I just keep failing, I’ll have to look out for them and ask about them here when I remember what they are. But yeah I do find it often comes down to bad mnemonics that just don’t stick that causes them.
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The 屋 reference is totally a sound reference in this case, it simply sounded like a store, the way that you say 本屋 or パン屋 . There were several cases that I was already familiar with a word because of a song like 幻 and what really made me remember it for good was (素敵だね from FFX) that and the fact that in my language ma béroshi means what’s in my head? which illusion is a great answer to, so again it’s mostly sound cues. so yeah, I’m hoping the sound will be the dominant element in my recall process when it goes to master and enlightened.
Funny enough, 屋家 is a last name.
Nice, and same problem. You can see your leeches on wkstats in the item section, they’ll be all the lower level items that still stuck in guru or one of the apprentice levels.
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Looking at wkstats is a good idea. Definitely highlights what’s still around from earlier levels. For now I might just wait for an annoying review to come up rather than try and pick something from there though.
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Okay, so I’ve been reminded that 植える (to plant something) has been repeatedly tripping me up. I do get this item right often but I also fail it often enough that it’s just remained a leech.
You decided to plant an uni (う) tree in your backyard. That’s right, you can plant sea urchins and they’ll grow like fruit off a really spiky tree. Just picture it. And then you’ll get to eat all the uni you want!
I think the reading is more the problem for me, so I’ve put up the mnemonic for that part. For some reason I just sometimes think the reading is は rather than う, maybe because I associate leaves with this. Maybe it doesn’t help that I hadn’t heard of uni before wanikani. And now I think about it, I think the uni mnemonic trips me up in other places too, like in 宇.
Anyone have any advice?
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How about ⇑ 上.る ?
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Hm, I don’t think I would really associate that with planting something, that seems more like if the plant was growing itself.
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In that case, just remember sentences containing 植える and 生える? (And 殖える for the matter.)
植木 as a vocabulary may help.
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I don’t really use sentences to learn a word. Wouldn’t that be more difficult than just learning to remember the word? Since you’d still have to remember the word to remember the sentence.
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I suspect what’s really trips in that mnemonic (I think it trips me too) is the mention of to grow which is 生える
And… @polv has already mentioned the connection while I was writing this.
So feel the irritation when I put it in a sentence
昨日は木を植えました
生えましたか
I don’t know how much you write in Japanese (this was perhaps the third time I ever tried to write something of (off?) the top of my head and hoped the grammar is correct, so the effort itself can help my brain remember this…) but since the end goal is not just to learn a word but to be able to use it in a sentence, maybe letting leeches push us in that direction is actually a good thing?
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To add to the confusion, there is 生む.
For 生える, I also associate with 見栄え.
In some levels, Kanji do signify meanings, but sounds do too.
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Yeah, I think I confuse it with 生える. I don’t write a lot in Japanese. I haven’t really felt comfortable enough to yet. Maybe I should try more, but I don’t really know how I should go about it. I think I also am afraid of picking up bad habits by writing things for myself, but at the same time I am afraid of writing things publicly because I still feel like I have much to learn.
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I’m so trying not to 
生 is a really good example of how complex one kanji can be. I had to pay extra attention to it, the nuance are wide as well as the reading variations. It’s a leech magnet.
Haven’t reached level 26 yet (the highest I got was 24 four or 5 years ago), is it just the はえ and ばえ or is there another layer to it?
Same, I wasn’t feeling comfortable at all writing it, because I haven’t practiced doing it. The thing is, if you don’t try, it won’t change. I told myself while writing those 2 sentences that all I need to do is use the masu form, just simple masu form, it was a good test to see whether I am able to actively apply the grammar I learned. It’s a good start, and if I make a mistake, someone will point it out, which is actually a good thing.
Any chance you have to “exploit” the forum to practice your Japanese will only improve it, I’m less motivated to do this on my own (I should, though) that’s what makes threads like this so helpful.
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Yeah, fair enough. I’m still not sure if writing sentences will help me remember specific words though to be fair, but if that works for other people then that’s great.
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Maybe a sort of bad mnemonic like this one could work:
You’ve decided to plant an umbrella. Why would you do this? Simply because this is actually an umbrella plant, that will turn into more umbrellas!
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Hm, yeah that might work. It’s pretty similar to the original, but I think the problem was more with using uni, so using a common object like an umbrella would be an improvement I think. I’ll try it, thanks
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