Leech Squashing

Hope it helps!!

These are “writing” leeches for me, because the “good” radical (艮) has several different forms.

It can either have a “drop” on top, or not.
The bottom half (including the downward stroke that starts from the top) is either 2 or 3 strokes.

And all combinations are possible, so I’m categorizing them once and for all.

Joyo kanji that WK doesn’t teach are in italics.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with this information, but here it is.

No drop, 2 strokes
即 - そく - instant
既 - き - previously
節 - せつ - season
概 - がい - approximation
慨 - がい - sigh
郷 - きょう - hometown
爵 - しゃく - court rank
響 - きょう - echo

Drop, 2 strokes
郎 - ろう - guy
朗 - ろう - bright
廊 - ろう - corridor

No drop, 3 strokes
退 - たい - retreat
限 - げん - limit
恨 - こん - grudge
根 - こん - root
銀 - ぎん - silver
眼 - がん - eyeball
痕 - こん - mark
墾 - こん - break ground
懇 - こん - courteous

Drop, 3 strokes
良 - りょう - good
浪 - ろう - wander
娘 - じょう - daughter

Drop is more like “ground” here, funky bottom
餌 -じ - (animal) feed

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Totally squashed that leach, @Chezmax. Thanks a ton for the great mnemonic!

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Recently, 警視庁 and 警察庁 have been slowly driving me insane. They’re so similar, and neither one has anything that really indicates national or metropolitan, so I’m always just like “Oh great, it’s one of the police agency things. But it is the metropolitan police department or national police agency. Let’s flip a coin! And I’m wrong again…” Rinse, repeat

Any advice/mnemonics would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

警察 actually means police as in “call the police”, so it sounds more important and national :slight_smile:

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警察庁 is the National Police Agency. It’s the central office under the government for the police. It is the government police. Since the word has the full 警察 in it, it’s clear they are the big guys.

As for 警視庁, for some reason I initial looked at the kanji and thought of “The police you can see!” as a strange mnemonic to Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials for the reading of 視 in imagined Engrish. And my own confusion to why that even happened someone allowed me to remember metropolitan police department.

I also immediately gave them the synonyms “NPA” and “MPD” because I’m a lazy person and I know it. :rofl:

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I’m not far enough along to have seen these vocab/some of these kanji, but what I’m looking at is the 視 kanji in 警察庁. Maybe if you imagine that there’s been budget cuts within one metropolitan area that all they can afford are some pelicans to watch over the city. Internationally (警察庁), the police force isn’t having these problems, but this one metro area? Pelican Police Officers.

Idk its silly and I don’t necessarily like taking things back down to radicals for vocab, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

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They also have the habit to drive around in those ridiculous small cars, so I figured they can’t be that important.

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Thanks for the replies! I think they’ll really help me remember. And @EiriMatsu I totally understand about adding abbreviations as synonyms. I abbreviate half the vocab on here because I suck at typing and don’t want to take forever to complete my reviews…

That is a pretty ridiculous looking police car. The downside is that I live in the middle of nowhere in Japan so I’m not really familiar with Tokyo’s police

Moar leeches discovered:

土 and 地、the readings and the meanings. I know they are both related to earth/ground/soil/land but because those are SO similar in English, I keep getting them conflated. And I keep mixing up the readings for them, too. Basically it’s a big, confused, why-are-these-two-different-words tangle in my brain that I keep stumbling on.

Generally, 地 seems to refer more to the surface of the earth whereas 土 is more like the dirt that worms live in and stuff. I think? Maybe someone with more knowledge can clarify better.

Question: If I have a leech in apprentice and I (finally) do get it correctly and it moves up to guru. Does it still count as a leech? Or does that mean I squashed it to bloody kana pulp?

It really depends on how one defines a leech (is getting an enlightened item wrong considered a leech?). I’d say being in Guru doesn’t guarantee that you know the item well enough, but that itself doesn’t mean that you didn’t succeed with learning the item either. I have most of my leeches on Guru, but I’m sure there are items there that stopped being a leech/problem to me.

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So I’m a pretty firm believer in “let the SRS do its work” but I feel like over time I accumulate more and more leeches. Should I be worried? Should I be doing supplemental work (say putting my leeches into ANKI or writing them out by hand or some other external effort)

the leeches are the numbers in the lower right hand corner

Yeah, the SRS does work if you keep at it and it punishes you if you don’t. I’ve been distracted by work and school for the past month and there are days when I don’t do any lessons because of time / my body requires me to sleep (Soooo inconvenient). So then when I do catch up, the leeches have a force multiplier in that I haven’t seen them for a longer period of time than the SRS has spaced out. So nooooow, they are totally stacking up. Before this semester I had about the same ratio of leeches as you; it’s about doubled at this point. Plus I haven’t leveled up in almost a month. But you know, priorities. I try not to get down about it and do what I can.

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頑張って下さい

I make it a prioritiy to do it 3 times a day

  1. Right after I wake up (before even brushing teeth
  2. when I get home from work
  3. when I got to bed.

WK is about the only thing I have consistently done in my japanese studies

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Nice dude, I’ll give it a try and see if I can make an improvement. :+1:

I currently fight with about 40 words which have “not optimal” mnemonics

勢い - Force
There is much force behind you, so when you come at me I scream: “EEK! OI! (いきおい), Get away from me!”

I’m doing no lessons at the moment to get my apprentice items clear but they always come back ;(