Wow - I’ve just had a look at my list of leaches, and think it might be time to start trying to deal with them !
I’ve decided to shame myself by going through my top 10 leaches, and writing a little bit about each one in the hope this will help me remember.
10
So, coming it at number 10 …
欠席 - けっせき - absence.
number of times I’ve got this wrong - 31
looking at it - i think the reason i have started getting this wrong is that the kanji for seat (level 17) 席, is very similar to degrees (level 9) 度 - and I think these have merged in my brain.
Also the combination of lack and seat, doesn’t obviously add up to absence in my head !
Might go and write the two kanji together to help me differentiate.
欠席 has dropped out of my top ten ! seems writing about it has helped
SO to number 9 …
材料 - ざいりょう - ingredients - level 14 (oh my )
I’ve got the reading for this one 95% of the time, but the meaning only 69%.
Lumber (materials) + Fee … Okaaayyyyy.
Provided mnemonic -
You have to pay a fee for the material you use to make food. Those are the ingredients you’re paying for! Imagine making a list of all of the materials you need to make a stew, then making sure you have enough to pay the fees, so you’ll have all the ingredients you need to make it.
My trick for 席 is to remember that if it’s got a towel, it’s a seat, since you might hang up a towel on the back of a seat, like a sweatshirt or jacket. only seats have towels, not degrees.
度 is the only similar kanji to 席 so that should be enough for all levels:
Do it like them germans and reserve your seat with a towel!
(Actually only happens at pools, etc. I think. I’m German, and I don’t know what annoys the English ;D)
I find it so interesting that usually people have so different leeches. For example I don’t think I’ve ever mixed 席 and 度, although now that I look at them they do have similar components. I guess I didn’t use the mnemonics on those and just focused on the “feel”. I feel like I’ve seen those in context so many times it probably helps, too. I probably fail on some other ones which aren’t a problem for most
Most of my leeches are vocab but lately I’ve been getting 債, 績 and 積 mixed up all the time!
Most of those are typos of some sort, but typos I make every single time so I still count them as leeches.
Most frustrating:
The non-rendaku of 計算
犯罪: crime, criminal, gullt, guilty… ? I guess wrong every time.
お願い: I always put “a wish”. “A request”: “wish”: “a wish”
I’ve finally gotten 大した out of the top 20, mostly because once I complained about it on here I started remembering it. (that works!)
Just a word of caution about this, I also used mnemonic lightly, and relied a bit more on “feel”, but I have been at level 60 for almost a year now, and I still have so many deep-seated leeches because I didn’t pay enough attention to the fine detail of kanji components… I keep mixing-up visually similar kanji
Stuff like :
浴 谷 容 溶
衰 哀
崖 岸
挙 拳