Hm, I may have made a connection about the ざい readings. Would it be fairly accurate to say that ざい seems to be used for words relating to money, even if the kanji is usually read as さい? I had a quick look through the さい and ざい search on Wanikani, I didn’t see anything money related for さい.
I failed 私財 again which just got me thinking, since it’s related to money and read with ざい.
…Ah, I just found an exception to this rule… 財布 is さいふ. Very sad. That’s quite a common word though so maybe I can remember it as an exception, or not even have to think about it.
Maybe if I just apply the rule when trying to think about if rendaku is happening or not. Either way I think this helps a bit.
I promise you it will all sort itself out when you’ll engage with reading material and such. I fail items on wanikani that I recognize and understand when reading. The fact we are tested on words in isolation contributes to the odds of failing them more than I realized until I started engaging with reading a lot of text extensively outside of wanikani/text book/educational apps.
Also the さい mnemonic wasn’t reallllly sticking for me until level 36 when you sold the cyborg off and suddenly I felt sad and the emotional connection meant something to me. Maybe you’ll have a similar moment at some point.
Or maybe context is key. Everything that I do see in the wild sticks way better than things that are purely SRS…even if I sometimes have to look them up when I “know” them already.
Yeah… I have tried to engage with some stuff but not a whole lot. Less reading and more just watching and listening, like videos and stuff. I think it’s more engaging for me than reading easier content, and more interesting content to read was still difficult I think. Also just been busy in general, and have a bunch of other interests too that take my time. Plus, I kind of don’t love reading books at my computer, prefer physical books but it’s hard/expensive to get physical Japanese stuff.
Oh no, I see that kanji has a bunch of words that don’t change the reading to ざい but are related to money so I guess my theory is completely broken haha.
But yeah I mean, I think the cyborg mostly works for me, I just get confused when it changes and when it doesn’t. But yeah hopefully by then I will have sorted myself out.
Okay I have an item here that just straight up has a mnemonic I don’t get. For the 評 (evaluate) reading.
When you say “peace,” you end up making a really bad pun and you hear somebody say “Heyo!” (ひょう) You look at the people around you and try to evaluate who said heyo, but you can’t tell. You start talking again when somebody exclaims “That’s what she said” and another person shouts “Heyo!” once again, but you still can’t evaluate who’s saying these things.
I don’t really get it, am I missing what the pun is? I don’t really get why the people are shouting phrases. Maybe someone can clear up this mnemonic for me?
You’re not missing anything here, this mnemonic is a stretch… didn’t even bother to read it to the end when I got there. The situation it portrays is the kind of scenes you’d see in the american version of ‘The Office’, but again, it’s a stretch.
The reading is one of those meaningless sounds that gave me a hard time until it stuck, so I used two other kanji with that reading to make something that is more meaningful for me.
I used 僄 (signpost) and 表 (express). So I’m basically evaluating the peace sign I hold in my hand, and then I just wrote You evaluate the Peace by saying and expressing it.
Probably not very helpful for you, but maybe it will give some ideas for how to deal with this kanji.
I have no idea if I would be able to recall it when it reaches master or enlightened, only time can tell.
Oh and btw, dealing with the economy/economic/economics triplet here on the thread really helped me when I eventually got to review them.
Yeah I guess I could see it being The Office, like you say though, this whole situation is a stretch and doesn’t really make sense to me, nor is it really explained why it’s happening. I don’t have an issue remembering ひょう as heyo, it’s worked in the past for previous items. The problem in this case is linking it to 評 though, I guess.
Hm, I did just think of a dumb alternative mnemonic. Maybe Santa is saying “ひょう, ひょう, ひょう” while evaluating who has been naughty or nice. Kind of dumb but it might work, I think I could try that. Hopefully that doesn’t make me think the reading is ほ.
ooohhhh this is soooo good! I can really see this, your idea for this is a Christmas movie hit! I can see the entire situation in my mind - I mean just think about it Santa is really into rap and hip hop and he’s gonna start rapping instead of saying yo yo yo he goes ひょう ひょう ひょう! (it’s the h from the ho ho ho he can’t help it), and he’s starting to rap evaluating if you’ve been naughty or nice but he has to say it peacefully cause it’s the middle of the night… and then when he goes back to his sled he’s like fading it out going “ひょう ひょう ひょう evaluating in the snow”
I don’t know about you, but I think there’s a chance this turtle is moving on up all the way to burn!
I’m just going to put this as a note for myself here mostly. Four corners 四隅 uses the kun’yomi よ for 四 when it’s usually よん everywhere else (except 四日, which I thought was an exception reading…). Wanikani doesn’t include a mnemonic for this, since “I should know the kun’yomi already,” so I’m going to start saing YO 4 corners everywhere. YO did you know my laptop has 4 corners on the screen?
Honestly I think expecting to learn everything from Wanikani would be the crazy thing :X hopefully everyone who really wants to learn Japanese can get to a point during their studies where they can learn other vocabs and kanji from other resources
This pair of vocab has caught me up so many times: 勝敗 (victory or defeat) and 勝負 (match).
The first one uses the kanji win and failure whereas the second one uses win and lose. I honestly find them indistinguishable, the kanji feel like they point to the same concept and I feel like when I put in the meaning, it’s a 50 50 coin toss on if I got the right meaning. 敗 and 負 mean really similar things in my mind.
well at that point - at least what i’ve found effective for me - it’s best to connect the reading to the meaning, since 勝敗 reads しょうはい and 勝負 reads しょうぶ…
When I read 勝負 my head automatically goes “ahh しょうぶ that can be match - do the Kanji match? Yes! alright it’s match”
Haven’t learned the other vocab (敗 really, had to google the reading and meaning XD) so I can’ really speak for that, but I could imagine that once one of those words made the leap into your vocab memory that might make things easier, because right now I imagine when I someone would have told you “what does match mean?” your brain doesn’t necesarily jump to the word 勝負(しょうぶ).
Well to recap a bit - try to learn the vocab words so you think by reading first and kanji second - at least a bit.
Somehow 負 gives me an image of a seaweed covering on the top of a shellfish, just barely floating above water surface (from RTK?), so it also sounds like 昆布.
In addition, there are lone Kanji vocabularies, like 負の感情. Anyway, 勝負 as a vocabulary itself is pretty common, at least in Shounen and children stuff.
For 敗, I see 敗北, and it sounds like 背 in 背後 / 背景 (different radicals, though).
I already burned 勝負 because it comes first on level 9, so I think trying to use the time line of when those words appear on Wanikani might help.
Also perhaps using the alternative meanings would also help, first you have a match 勝負 then you get the outcome 勝敗.
And of course there’s the matter of radicals, not a lot to work with the fact that both lose and failure share a shellfish, however, lose has prison as a radical so that’s the where do you gamble or have a match? in prison, when does the outcome plays out? in winter.
I have this kind of pairs where I haven’t bothered to distinguish their different component and it backfired in the long run, so it is probably the same struggle where the difference is either on kanji or one radical in a kanji and I answer too fast ( like 警察署 and 警察官 so annoying, and I have to remind myself that the one with the office is the station and the one with the bear is the officer, hopefully I’ll stop failing those too).
Mm yeah maybe I can associate the readings with each. Probably thinking of some kind of mnemonic in that case might help. Nothing springs to mind, neither “bu” nor “hai” makes me think anything related to a match or winning/losing. I’ll have to think on it, I don’t think it will magically go in my head otherwise.
