Not sure if this is a good idea, but 月 appears in a lot of words referring to internal body parts, and upon looking up as to why that is, I found that the 月 found in those words doesn’t actually stem from the moon radical, but rather a simplified version of the 肉 (meat) radical.
It might be worth teaching that, so all the mnemonics wouldn’t have to relate to the moon, and could instead relate to meat as that’d kinda make more sense.
I don’t think it works well for the purpose of mnemonics. When you look at a kanji during a review you see the radicals and try to remember a story with the components, but now one of the components could either be a “moon” or “meat” so it’s harder to recall what the story was.
There’s an extra rule to memorize, something like “this radical probably means ‘meat’ if it’s on the left of the kanji”
It could work if you make this radical always mean “meat” from the start and use that definition in all the mnemonics, including the mnemonic for the 月 kanji itself.
Hmm, I didn’t think about that. That’s a good point.
I still think it’s worth noting the relation to the meat radical somewhere at least; I think right now it’s only mentioned in one of the mnemonics that the 月 radical is often used for internal body parts, but without mentioning why.
I’d never actually thought about that, as I just got used to the idea that 月 on the left side of a kanji generally (always?) relates to the human body.
From what I can tell, the 肉 connection is archaic, and it has been written as 月 for quite a long time. So I’m not sure that teaching this antiquated connection would be less confusing, sort of along the lines of learning obsolete kana – ゑ、ゐ 、etc.
I’m going to try to do an informal quiz to see how many Japanese people are aware of this and/or think of it this way. Interesting…
(I had also sort of internalized the logic that it was 月 because the human body is affected by the moon like the tides – if you’ve ever worked retail you know that nights with a full moon are bonkers!)
I was aware that the moon radical represents a simplified 肉 and it does help me with more quickly recognizing body parts. It’s a useful fact to know and I think it’s worth teaching at some point in the Japanese learning journey, but I don’t believe that introducing the radical itself as “meat” would be helpful to people learning on Wanikani for the first time.
I’m not convinced that it’s really useful or necessary, given that it’s not something even Japanese people normally learn since the 1950’s (and they seem to do just fine with the language!) But certainly it’s interesting to nerds like me.
I’ve been using “moon” radical as “moon” or “body part” personally, because most pre-made mnemonics that are for body parts but use “moon” don’t work for me.
For recalling, I try remembering it twice, once with moon and once with body part. Sure, it takes a bit longer, but it was easier than forcing “moon” into some of those mnemonics.