I’m sure many of you are native in other languages other than English and come up with other mnemonics than the ones provided by WK or others that are obvious in English. Let’s share them here and inspire each other!
I can share some in Greek, my native language:
脳 - nou - “nous” (νους) means “mind” in Greek (which is the root word for “nootropics”, for example). Easy peasy!
薬 - kusuri - “kusuri” (κουσούρι) means “defect” in Greek. Kind of the opposite to “medicine.”
煙 - kemuri - “muri” (μούρη) in Greek means face. I think of a smoked face.
心 - kokoro - “kokoras” means “rooster” in Greek. I imagine the heart of a rooster, perhaps served with macaroni or something.
Whenever a Wanikani mnemonic comes up for “かく”, I like to replace that with a mnemonic using the german word “kack” (a word for shit), cause WK always uses “cock” which I don’t think fits the sound of かく at all.
In German it’s easy to distinguish transitive and intransitive:
下がる が ga-rnichts (nothing ) = intransitive so I know it’s to go down
下げる げ = Ge-genstand ( item ) so I know it’s to lower something
Best part is that this is quite a general rule:
投げる again with GE for Gegenstand (item) = transitive again
That’s a cool rule, but it’s quite narrow unfortunately, only working for verb with が げ pairs.
I like the rule of checking if it ends with an “-aru” sound, and if it is, it’s intransitive.
