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).
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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”?
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.
I tend to remember those kinds of readings in groups of similar readings. If 昔 is difficult to remember, then it sounds similar to 難しい (difficult). I guess that mainly helps if you already know one of the words in the group. I also don’t split it into blackjack and day, but into flowers on ground and day. I think about a particular grandparent who would refer to the good old days long ago, when everything was better (there were flowers on the ground everywere). Visiting that grandparent also usually meant snacks or sweets (お菓子) although some of them had obviously been stored a long time and looked a little peculiar (おかしい).
Funnily enough that’s the word that keeps popping up in my head whenever I do review it (as in give up and look at the answer) so I think I’ll use that to my advantage and see how it goes!