If you haven’t already, you can read part 1 of this article here.
Now, with regards to whether I make up a mnemonic for every word or just ones that present a particular problem:
Well, since I am the “mnemonic man” I probably make more mnemonics than others because I need to continue coming up with content for this blog. If I weren’t doing this blog I would still use lots of mnemonics. Here is why:
When I was learning Spanish, I would very quickly learn words that were cognates or had even the smallest relation to English (recognizing this relationship is basically a mnemonic device in itself) and thus I didn’t need to invent a mnemonic story for those words. The problem with Chinese is that there aren’t very many cognates. In the beginning stages, the words are just random noises. In the beginning, “courtesy” can be just as difficult as “mesothelioma“.
However, as time goes on I suspect that Chinese words will become easier to remember without creating a mnemonic story and that I will be able to remember in a way similar to the way it was with Spanish in the beginning. Not that I will relate Chinese words to English words, but that I will relate Chinese words to other Chinese words.
One of the advantages of Chinese that I plan on exploiting is the large amount of compound words. If I know two words separately, when those two words come together to form one word, then I will be able to easily remember the new compound word.
Let me know what you think of this. Please leave a comment below.
Yup, I like what you’re saying. Especially with regards to the inbuilt Chinese character mnemonics – that’s something that makes Chinese and Japanese very easy after the intial hurdle of learning all the characters.
Interested that you plan on dropping the mnemonics after a while, although I do think that once you’re used to all the sounds in a language remembering new words becomes easier. A guy posted over on my blog saying he’s used mnemonics to learn 40,000 words in Spanish, which surprised me – wouldn’t have thought you’d need to rely on them after a while.
Thanks for taking the time to answer those questions, it was really interesting
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Twitter: chinesemnemonic
If it is true that he really had to keep using mnemonics after knowing 1,000 words, then I really doubt that he actually speaks Spanish. He probably only knows lots of words but hasn’t had a chance to practice in the real world very much.
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I think I may have misquoted him – looking back, I think he actually said “words and phrases”. But I nonetheless think you’re right – it’s neither necessary nor wise to keep using mnemonics after a certain point, since exposure ought to take a more dominant role.
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That is one of the most fascinating thing about the Chinese language; when you know the meaning of the individual characters and are able to discover the meaning of the word by yourself in a sort of “Aha” moment!!!
I overheard 2 Chinese people talk and heard them say the word “Jiqi ren”; I immediately realized “Machine + people = robot”. I have had countless examples of these “Aha” moments.
I think my favorite compound is how Chinese people say ugly. When I asked for the meaning of “Ugly” the Chinese person told the compound “Nan Kan”; literally translated as “Difficult to look at”.
I think figuring out the meanings of compounds are one of the best parts about learning Chinese.
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