Share your funny personal mnemonics!

Pas mal ! :smile:

The radical reminded me of a ghost, so…

image

I don’t think this is really funny but I found it very useful! I have been struggling with 仲良し and 仲良く since learning them. One way to remember 仲良し as good friend vs 仲良く as good term is that SHE is a good friend!

3 Likes

Kind of an easy one I’ve had to make as some earlier kanji are tripping me up. 死 and 亡 both mean death, but I kept getting them mixed up in terms of the readings. So instead of using the reading mnemonic for 亡 I just remember that it looks like a bowl (BOU-l). :wink:

Another one for 付近 (neighbor). My downstairs neighbour is horrible and blasts loud music during the day, and won’t turn it down because it’s not an unreasonable hour. She’s a f*ckin’ (FUKIN) idiot.

2 Likes

いい加減(いいかげん)I don’t know why, but when I first read the WK meaning description for this I heard it in the voice of GLaDOS. It just sounded like something she would say! So it’s not really a mnemonic, but the funny memory is working just as well as one.

2 Likes

落 is fall. Onyomi is らく
You can clearly see the kiss (the band) and there is loud music so this is a rock concert.

2 Likes

To differentiate between にん and じん, I’ve always thought じん is cooler for some reason, so if it’s じん I imagine that whatever occupation, type of person, whatever, is cool, and if it’s にん I imagine a complete loser. For instance, 料理人 is りょうりにん, so of course I imagine Linguine from Ratatouille, who is, shall we say, definitely a にん.

3 Likes

Sliiightly dirty, but mine is for 名 = name. It’s made of the radicals 夕 (night) and 口 (mouth). What do you want in someone’s mouth at night? Your name eyyyyyyy

I’ll show myself out

1 Like

拾 as you can see, this hero is Gandalf. Picks up stuff in dungeons…

Not that bad I have one worse :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

1 Like

I’m really having trouble with remembering 婦人 means “lady” right now. (Not wife, lady.) For the Carrot Problem (にん/じん) I use “Gene” the dorky AI avatar from the Jackbox games to remember じん…

My emergency mnemonic for this: Gene is a cross-dresser. His workmates see him while he’s out on the town in full lady regalia and he manages to stutter out, “I’m not Gene! (ふ-じん) - I’m a lady!” before he flees and trips over on his high heels and grazes his knee. It’s so awkward that afterwards everyone pretends it never happened.

Gene doesn’t have gender dysphoria though - he just enjoys angora sweaters.

1 Like

If you 一人 you just sit at home and looking at the curtains (literally shi_to_ri in russian)

1 Like

That mnemonic for Office has been so helpful! Thanks for sharing it!

A funny one I have been using is for right (権利). Have any of you ever seen that American Idol knock-off from another country of that woman singing what she thinks is “Ken Lee”? :smiley:

2 Likes

共 actually, there are two pieces glued together so split it in half vertically. You find out that they are glued together with a strong (きょう) glue.

1 Like

配る to distribute
ok, left one is valve. it is ditributing fluids at 9bar ( kubaru) :slight_smile:

三日

Mikka (みっか) got pregnant on her third day (三日) of marriage, wow that was fast!

2 Likes

Level 5 had three kanji whose on’yomi is きん: 斤, 金, and 近, so I came up with: keep your golden axe near you.

2 Likes

Sh-to-ry sounds nothing like ひとり to me… But whatever helps :wink:

For me, watching a ton of anime helps. In many cases I hear vocab forst in the wild and the connect it to kanji on WK.

1 Like

Better than nothing, so many reading WK mnemonics not quite looks alike actual pronunciation imho.

Here is a Level 11 mnemonic I have adjusted for myself to help me remember:

級 – pretty much the same meaning as Wanikani but I remember the reading as “there is a long QUEUE (Kyuu) on the escalator”

My biggest leech in this level is 昔. I really can’t stick with the “mucky foot” mnemonic at all and I have a 10% score for the reading as a result. It might be one of those kanji where I don’t use a mnemonic at all, I just have to brute force it into my memory. I think I’m going to add it to my Anki deck and try and learn it visually.

1 Like