I got this error today and it made me realize the mnemonics distract me. In this case because there is a story about a volcano, so apparently the wrong word kept lingering in my mind. I am fine by calling this thing a hole, but it doesn’t look like a hole at all and I can’t seem to link the はち (eight) radical to the なべぶた (lid) radical to be a “hole” either. Isn’t it better to have a story about 8 lids or something? Is there a reason the term " hole" is used for this radical other than some mnemonics for kanji that use the eight+lids radical?
Also, the 八 (eight) is called “fins”, but why? And how is this related to a hole? And why is there no mention of fins in the mnemonic?
Note: It is possible I am overthinking this 
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Yes, because it actually is the kanji for hole. 穴
I tripped over quite a lot of the mnemonics early on too. In the end I ended up just thinking of my own to help remember things. And made sure to always check what the radicals actually mean as a kanji before they end up creating unnecessary confusion later down the line when they’re introduced as a kanji with their actual meaning.
Like 階, the kanji for floors, as in how manieth you are on in a building. To me it looks like an elevator shaft. You have the mechanisms and counterweights to the side. The carriage on the bottom right, and the cables holding it up above it. This is what brings you to different floors.
I appreciate the concept of mnemonics, and this site has helped me figure out how to use them. But I am not a huge fan of a lot of the ones used by the site itself.
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I’m trying to just trust the process; overall, I see the mnemonics as a net positive. I make mistakes—or have to really sit and think—with radicals I’ve learned elsewhere at times because WaniKani comes up with its own names for some of them. An example is 幺, which is “poop” on WaniKani but usually “small” or “faint” elsewhere. I don’t really see a reason for it to be called “poop” except to try to make the mnemonics more interesting.
I think the meaning here is fine, but the story uses the word “volcano” based on the way the radical ハ looks while ignoring its earlier definition entirely.
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Oh, I get that. But radicals on here very frequently switch between actually reflecting the kanji, or just being made-up nonsense for the sake of mnemonics. So in this case, it is hole because that’s what it actually means. There’s a better reason for it to be hole than for it to be a mnemonic.
Which in turn only ups the confusion for me in a lot of cases. Or before I started renaming most of them, frustration because I’d know the kanji early. Like because it’d show up in lessons already. So you get slapped with the “That’s the kanji meaning, we want the nonsense fantasy one.” Often feels like you’re being pushed back for knowing too much at times with this system.
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Yeah. I’ve encountered a few places where the radicals and/or mnemonics confused me. I had a hard time with 場, for example, because it is given as a combination of 土 and 易, but the latter isn’t exactly the same as what appears in the character; it just looks similar. It looks like there’s an extra stroke on the right side of the character.
For a while, every time I saw 場, I would think of it as 土 + 日 + 一 + 勿 instead of 土 + 易 and the story wouldn’t work.
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Just nitpicking, but as you seem to want to use the Japanese names, note that なべぶた is 亠 (two strokes, dot and a single horizontal line).
The one in 穴 is called ウかんむり (krown placed radical that looks like katakana “u”) :宀 (3 strokes).
There is also ワかんむり for 冖
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Actually it does look like the entry of a cave.
穴 is among the minority of kanji that are pictograms (they are a picture of the thing).
You can look at Wiktionary, search for 穴 and look at the"glyph origin" section.
Doesn’t it look like the typical entry of a far west ghost town mine ?
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