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+--- Thread: Kunyomi in mnemonics? (/thread-6422.html)
Kunyomi in mnemonics? - Spoke Lee - 2010-09-23
I notice a lot of systems include the onyomi in the mnemonics but not the kun, any reason why? If you are including the on, why not the kun?
Kunyomi in mnemonics? - Nukemarine - 2010-09-23
With onyomi, you have just one pronunciation where you can attach a number of kanji for the most part. Many have patterns where a primitive is repeated in kanji with the same onyomi. That makes it a prime candidate for some type of mnemomic or memory palace set-up.
With Kunyomi, you have the equivalent of "kanji injector" plug-in for English sites. It's the Japanese shoe horning kanji into their existing language. As such, there's many items that exhibit no pattern so your not getting much from mnemonics you wouldn't get from just remembering the meaning and pronunciation of the word.
That said, Heisig in RTK 2 offered up an interesting way to use visual mnemonics for kunyomi. Each pronunciation of the kana charts is given a visual character (rabbit, fly, sled, rain) and you then go about using those characters to create stories for the meaning of the kunyomi word. He cautions to not lean on it very much, but to save it for words that are proving overly difficult to remember.
Personally, the onomonapaea (spelling?) words and the glottal stop words (is there a term for that) are prime candidates for this method as they're only kana, have one or two kana in them, and are similar is writing but not in meaning. I'm thinking of breaking into that.