Reading mnemonic for vocab 予め?

Japanese Language Questions
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Does anyone have a good one? I can’t understand the WaniKani mnemonic (and I’m not sure that I want to?).

What did you do beforehand? You had a raw casual (あらかじ) encounter with a raw Cage, Nic Cage. You probably should have planned something better ahead of time.

Anything that worked for you would be much appreciated.

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This one stuck out to me precisely because of how weird it is. I usually skip the mnemonics and only use them if an item is giving me a lot of trouble, but this one including Nic Cage for some reason made the reading stick well. I’m more than a little off put by the wording. Is this raw encounter supposed to be a sexual thing? Wanikani, what did you mean by this?

Possible alternative I’m brainstorming, the bottom of this kanji kind of looks like a handle, so for the reading, visualize a maraca. What sound does a maraca make? Ji, Ji. M(araka) makes a (ji) sound, and the (me) comes from the hiragana at the end. あらかじめ, 予め.

Not the best mnemonic, but I like it better than whatever wanikani is suggesting here.

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粗方(あらか(た)) + 締(し)め

Dunno really, just my wild guess.

Honestly, I indeed remembered by “A RAW CAGE-ji (me)”

Damn, Cageめ being raw.

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I know what it means and my brain just goes 予(aslkfdjalfkh)め when I read it. It doesn’t show up in my reading as much as I wish it did. Thanks for the reminder.

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I think I used “(you) are a kanji” but I don’t remember how exactly I made it make sense.

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I “memorized” the reading for 予め by looking at the kana vaguely and assuming it was the same as 諦める（あきらめる）, then getting the reading wrong 5 times in a row on the quiz before actually internalizing that it was different. Even now when it comes up for me I go:
“Ah, the one that was almost あきらめ… Wasn’t it different…?” →
“Wait, it has か instead of き… And something else…” →
“Right, the ら comes before か!” →
(Somehow the じ manifests once I figure out あらか)

This worked okay while I was getting through the Apprentice stages on WK, but I’ve actually encountered this while reading since then and my brain does the same thing every time. I’m not sure how to unlearn this, but I would like to. :melting_face:

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I think I remembered it as the reading of 新 in 新た and 家事 (housework) with the mnemonic being “no matter how much housework you’ve done ‘beforehand’, you’ll always have ‘new chores’ later”.
Not sure if this helps, but maybe - good luck :slight_smile:

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Thanks everyone, really appreciate your replies. Nothing really jumps out at me for this but last time I asked for help on something I ended up never forgetting it again. Hopefully this will be the same - cheers.

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Nice. It’s been updated. Thanks WaniKani. And thanks Jesus, and Judas, I like it:

" At the Last Supper, the apostles asked beforehand: “Can we order à la carte, Jesus (あらかじ)?” Jesus said no, but He also knew ahead of time that Judas would betray Him by ordering some expensive à la carte dishes. And also by doing that other thing."

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Judas finally getting some positive rep.

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