I’ll take “sheep” for remembering “shi” than the old one which was “Charlie Sheen.” The Charlie Sheen mnemonics were pretty cheesy IMO
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Hi, wasn’t sure if this was worth its own post, and I tried searching for other mentions of this, but anyway.
The mnemonic for “fat” feels unnecessarily…mean? Insensitive?
“You have a big guy here, with an extra drop of something below his thigh, hanging down. That’s fat right there. He’s so fat he has things of fat hanging off his fat.”
“Imagine him trying to tie the tie but he can’t lift his hands around to do it. You have to help him out.”
What’s the point in being so aggressively (and casually) fatphobic? The mnemonics have been generally fine and at most a bit silly (if not a little violent too??) up to this point, but this one took me by surprise. It seems like there’s a better way to help folks remember the meaning, without the cost of alienating any fat learners (customers) with a mean mnemonic. Animal fat, a fat stack of cash, etc.
Anyway. Brutal that is my first post here, but here we are. Is there a sticky for general feedback? Thanks.
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The kanji’s meaning is specific to something being fat, so it wouldn’t really make sense to create a mnemonic around English alternate definitions of the word. And given the first words taught using the kanji are “to get fat” and “fat” (adjective), the mnemonic really should center around the concept of fatness.
Don’t disagree that it could stand to be adjusted. As pointed out in this thread, mnemonics are meant to be a little shocking at times so they really make an impression (hence are easier to remember), which is probably the reason behind the violence you’ve observed.
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I think most of them are okay. However, whenever I see, “じょうrm” it annoys me. I can’t really explain why, I’m just like, “What kind of name is ‘Jourm’?” I never remember the rest of the mnemonic so I make up my own for those ones.
There’s a lot of contrivances to make the mnemonic English even late in the game, when the learner easily has enough Japanese background to make more straightforward associations. Not every kanji with a kan reading can be related to Genghis Khan.
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