Singularity on the Plane

Here’s my way of memorizing kanji. It is based on my experience of learning Japanese writing for around 1 year. I always tweak it from time to time.

The first is about picking which kanji to learn:

1. Choose a batch of kanji to memorize. For example, I’m now memorizing grade 3 jouyou kanji (200 kanji). Some other examples are all kanji in a specific Japanese Wikipedia article and all kanji in a Japanese song. Making a list reduces the sense of being overwhelmed by the gigantic amount of kanji one needs to master Japanese, while at the same time creating a challenging target to accomplish.
2. If the list is too large (like my current case), break it into more managable chunks. For example, I pick at least 10 kanji (from the total 200) to learn everyday.

Now to the individual kanji. For each kanji to memorize:

1. Pick one reading and meaning from the Japanese to English dictionary EDICT. Dictionary programs like Wakan and JquickTrans use EDICT for their data. At its core, EDICT is just a text file (SHIFT-JIS encoded) and browsing the contents using Firefox is possible. I use my own console program EdictReader which displays homophones and homonyms for a search result (also supports grade filter and super-limited regex):

   

   To give a concrete example, let’s suppose I’m rying to memorize 光. For 光 I can choose the reading ひかり (hikari) with the meaning “light”. Another possibility is 光る which reads ひかる (hikaru) and means “to shine”. Note that some kanji cannot stand by itself, which means that it needs okurigana (hiragana suffixes) like 暑い (あつい, atsui, hot) or appears in a compound like the 曜 in 日曜日 (にちようび, nichiyoubi, Sunday).

   When the kanji only appears in compound and I doubt about its meaning, I take a look at the kanji dictionary KANJIDIC. KANJIDIC has information about associated meanings for a kanji. Again, dictionaries like Wakan and JquickTrans use KANJIDIC for its kanji data. I eat my own dogfood, using SharpJiten to do it. For example, the 曜 mentioned before has the meaning “weekday” associated with it.

   PS: As a side note, “weekday” means any day of the week except Saturday and Sunday. However, the kanji 曜 is used in both Saturday (土曜日) and Sunday (日曜日).

2. After that, I make a mnemonic to associate its shape to its meaning. For the kanji 光, I separate its shape into subshapes:

   

   and assign the mnemonic “he walks (儿) with a hat (亠) to protect himself from the LIGHT of the sun ray (\ /)”. This is a creative process which is limited only by imagination (see other examples here). The weirder, funnier, and more personal the mnemonic is, the easier it will be to remember.

   After creating a mnemonic, I write it in a computer file for future reference. This is obviously useful when I forget the mnemonic.

   When you have memorized lots of kanji and radical (shapes occuring in various kanji, like 广), memorizing new kanji will be a lot easier. This is because many kanji are just a mix and match of other kanji and/or radical. Some examples are the kanji 明 (bright) (mix and match of 日 (sun) and 月 (moon)) and 線 (line) (mix and match of 糸 (thread), 白 (white), and 水 (water)). Making a mnemonic will then be only about making a sentence out of those well-known shapes. An example is “the sun (日) and the moon (月) are both visible on the sky so it is very BRIGHT (明) today”.

3. Next is to make a mnemonic to associate the sound to its meaning. Here’s an example for ひかり (hikari, light). In English, ひ (hi) is read like “he” and かり (kari) sounds somewhat like “curry”. So one possible mnemonic is (he (HI) cooks curry (KARI) by exposing it to sun LIGHT).

   I also archive the mnemonic in a computer file.

   After this step, the kanji, its reading, and its meaning are interwoven nicely with 2 mnemonics:

   kanji (光) -> mnemonic -> meaning (light) <- mnemonic <- reading (ひかり)

   For the sound-to-meaning mnemonic, I freely make use of Indonesian, English, Japanese, and any other language I could think of (Javanese, for example). I sometimes use my program WordFinder to find Indonesian words for the mnemonic ingredient (data from the Indonesian dictionary for OpenOffice.org, kindly provided by Benitius Brevoort):

   

4. Then I see see the stroke order using my program StrokeReplayer (data from Taka and KanjiCafe). Then I scribe the correct stroke order in my stroke order reference book (the usual tree-killing book, not a a digital thing). I then try to "feel" the flow of the strokes by writing the kanji several times in my practice book.

5. The finishing is to put two entries in Mnemosyne so that there will be computer-scheduled optimally-spaced review. One entry is to ask the reading and its meaning from its kanji, for example:

   Q: 光
   A: ひかり (light)

   Here’s an example entry for a kanji that has multiple meanings (note that multiple meanings is indicated in the question):

   Q: 体 (2)
   A: からだ (body, health)

   And here’s an example entry for a word that has more that one reading and meaning:

   Q: 一日 (2) (2) (1)
   A: いちにち (one day, first day of the month), いちじつ (one day, first day of the month), ついたち (first day of the month)

   PS: “(2) (2) (1)” means that there are 3 readings, two of them having 2 meanings and the other having 1 meaning

   The other entry is to test your writing, like so:

   Q: ひかり - light
   A: 光
   (grade info in category, for example “Japanese - Writing - Kanji - Grade 2″)

   When I encounter a writing question, I write it on the canvas of StrokeReplayer and compare it with the correct answer there also.

That’s all there is to it.

Is all the mnemonics really that useful? I can ascertain that it works great! When I can’t instantly recall a shape, word, or meaning, mnemonic allows me to rediscover it. When I’ve become familiar enough with the item, I won’t consciously use the mnemonic so it certainly isn’t a hindrance to instant recall.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 10:47 am by Agro Rachmatullah and is filed under Japanese, Study. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.