Recently, I have found this one 八紘一宇 which means universal brotherhood. I don’t know if this help to remember “universal” as far as “outer space”?
I’ve had it with every word for hill, summit, and peak
丘 hill おか
岳 peak たけ
崖 summit がけ*
峰 summit みね
岳 kanji がく*
崖 kanji がい
*and WK uses a nearly identical mnemonic ('gawk") for these differently-pronounced words.
1 Like
To be honest, I’m surprised I got 〜年来 wrong only 18 times 
%(^#(^#^# 上手. Oh I certainly can remember it means “good at/skilled”, and even that you are using your “jo” stick at the zoo, but the problem is that all the other “jo” mnemonics are じょ and not じょう. But no, this one is じょうず. So I get it wrong every time it comes back up. Maybe ranting about it will make me remember it forever just like ranting helped with 外れ and 外れる. Bahaha.
Edit: I know they are overhauling some of the mnemonics right now, I really hope this is one of them. Maybe the “gawk” that @chrispthompson mentions, too, I hope!
1 Like
You need to speak with a native urgently then That’s literally one of the most common words 日本人 use when they see you writing in Japanese, even if it’s the most simple thing 
1 Like
Yeah, 日本語が上手ですね is a common greeting in Japanese. Almost exclusively used when meeting a foreign person.
7 Likes
I brushed past the difference between 身 and 者 because the kanji meanings didn’t force me to learn the difference and the vocab I just learned case-by-case, but I’m thinking I really should get the difference (especially since they’ve turned up as radicals with 身 as ‘somebody’ and 者 as ‘someone’, and with radicals only having one meaning, getting them mixed up means getting it wrong). It should be easy to remember that the 身 radical is ‘somebody’ since the 身 vocab is ‘body’, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to the difference between the characters.
Maybe it’s a little complicated a mnemonic, but the 身 kanji contains the 自 (‘self’) radical, and I know ‘self’ and ‘body’ are sort of metonymic in Japanese (e.g. お体に気を付けて - “take care of yourself”). It’s also associated in that 身体 has the regular on’yomi reading of しんたい, but also has a gikun reading of からだ, which is the same as the kun’yomi reading of 体 alone.
I just went with the word “somebody” being more “heavy” than “someone”. Why? Because the slash on 身 is lower compared to 者. Because somebody is more heavy, the slash goes down easily (身).
I just added synonyms so that “someone” and “somebody” are both accepted for 者 and 身. They literally mean the same thing in English, so creating an arbitrary distinction for these kanji is pointless. It’s not like arbitrarily chosen English meanings will help you learn the nuance in usage between the kanji anyway.
3 Likes
Readings of 心身 and 信心
If you train body and mind, you must treat them equally, even pronounce them the same.
信心 and 信じる start with the same 3 Mora.
1 Like
I don’t think I’ll ever burn that one.
1 Like
I burned 年来 because I couldn’t properly pronounce it for some years.
1 Like
Yeah, I know. I just made sure to create a stronger “distinction” to better identify the 2 Kanji, that’s all 
1 Like
I think the problem is that 身 rather refers to a physical body, I have no idea how it relates to “somebody”, actually. WK is creating the confusion.
WK is not alone in that meaning for 身
But both seem to veer away from what a monolingual kanji resource says.
http://www.kanjipedia.jp/kanji/0003589000
Most things English-Japanese on the Internet are based on jmdict in the end, anyway.
I was just looking at the vocabulary with 身, and body or oneself seems to catch most things.
This Kanjipedia seems like a resource I’ve been needing! 
Arrgh. 画像 is a relatively recent word for me but on track to become a major leech because I keep reading 画 as “ei” (as in 映画). Once I make a mistake I can usually remember it, but I barely finally got it guru’d only for me to just miss it again.
I have resigned myself to never ever keeping any verb involving 当 straight.
3 Likes