Hi, Just wondering if anyone has used mnemotechnics to learn large numbers of vocabulary? What did you try and was it any better than individual mnemonics for each word? Interested in your experience before I try that route.

For those unfamiliar with these ideas, see this link. Basically it's a mnemonic system to memorize lots of things at once by using the spatial part of your brain in relating them to locations, movies, journeys or whatever else. These are not systems to remember one word in isolation, but to remember many things by their "location" to each other.

I'm interested in people's actual experience and wether you found it worthwhile or not.

Thanks!
Adam

Can you go into a bit more detail about what you mean for those who aren't familiar with those concepts (could be helpful for others too)?

I used it for memorizing Kanji after going through RTK, to learn the Onyomi pronunciations. First I used real life locations that I knew well, where I placed the Kanji (the primitives having visual representations).

For example, for the ショウ onyomi group (with over 60 characters) I used a certain path that I often go by when taking walks, so I spent a few times placing and reinforcing my memory all the kanji along that path. That was a year ago, and I haven't studied that group specifically since then but can still remember every single kanji placed there (and thus know the onyomi for them).

I sort of ran out of familiar locations eventually, and switched to movies ("The Movie Method"), which has worked so and so since I don't wanna spend too much time reinforcing all the memory journeys over and over, so some that I spent lesser time reinforcing, or with a weak association to whatever place/movie I chose, I remember less well.

For those not familiar with the terms, visual types of memorizing, like memory palaces, journey methods and so on are used by those who compete in memory competitions to memorize ridiculous amounts of data (like 50+ decks of shuffled cards, a few thousand digits of PI and so on).

I don't really know much about these techniques, but here's what I did.
For example, I always mixed up 朝食 and 昼食 (ちょうしょく vs ちゅうしょく)
Imagine waking up and getting "choked" by someone before breakfast. Obviously, the assailant isn't going to wait until lunch, because you'll most likely be at school or work, and he'll be more conspicuous.
I also used it for the reading of 彫刻 (ちょうこく) where you fend off the assailant with a carving.
To distinguish the reading of 刻 (こく) from 核 (かく）I just utilized the fact that A comes before O in the alphabet...so the "extra" is on the left side in かく and on the right side in こく
So, basically stuff like that.

@Termy, Did you find it more useful than individual mnemonics and/or brute force memorization?

@Kuzunoha13, Thanks for your input. However this is something a little different. It's not individual mnemonics for each word. Rather, you associate words or kanji to something you know well, for instance, locations in a room in your house. So when you imagine yourself looking though the door of this room, you see all of the items in the room and remember their associated kanji, vocab or whatever. Here's a video. There are several variations where instead of a house, it's a movie or a road that you know well.

yogert909 Wrote:@Termy, Did you find it more useful than individual mnemonics and/or brute force memorization?

I did find it more useful, but the ones I spent less time reinforcing are the ones I find less useful. I started with the biggest onyomi groups and worked my way down, and then ones at the bottom (like the ones with 3 kanjis for each onyomi, etc) are the ones I spent the least time memorizing... but I did do RTK first, so each kanji is an individual mnemonic to me, I've just lumped them together in their respective onyomi-journeys as well (which is what you do anyway with the method). To me, physical locations were superior to movie locations/scenes.

@Termy

I find interesting what you are saying here and have two questions, if I may.

1. How do you deal with the same kanji having different readings? Do you place that same kanji in separate yomi journeys? If you do, don’t you confuse the readings when you see the kanji? (I’m assuming you recall the reading by going: kanji -> yomi trip -> kanji yomi)

2. You say that you used journeys for remembering on-yomis. Why on-yomis? You didn’t think that it’s worth doing that for kun-yomis as well?

Inny Jan Wrote:@Termy

I find interesting what you are saying here and have two questions, if I may.

1. How do you deal with the same kanji having different readings? Do you place that same kanji in separate yomi journeys? If you do, don’t you confuse the readings when you see the kanji? (I’m assuming you recall the reading by going: kanji -> yomi trip -> kanji yomi)

2. You say that you used journeys for remembering on-yomis. Why on-yomis? You didn’t think that it’s worth doing that for kun-yomis as well?

Yes, I placed the same kanji in several journeys. It's definitely possible to confuse the readings if I don't know the word I'm reading, but somehow I seem to get it right more often than wrong.. perhaps there are some patterns to how onyomi-pronunciations are grouped together in Japanese words that are just more common than others because they sound more natural or better? I can't really say.. anyway, I think the せい and しょう ones are the ones I've mixed up the most, since they share so many kanji.

Sometimes (due to lack of practice) I have semi-forgotten some kanjis, their meaning/keywords but still remember where I placed them so I still know the onyomi.

The movie method was the first journey-type of method for learning kanji that I came across, and that guy did just onyomi and had an excel file with all the kanji listed and grouped into onyomi so I just decided to do it like that and then just learn the kunyomi along the way as I learned kunyomi-based words through vocab decks (Core, etc). Learning the kunyomi through such methods should work just the same way though I suppose.. or perhaps there's some way to combine them both into some super-journeys in some way I'm too lazy to figure out

I stopped creating new journeys when I came to the onyomi-groups with only 2 kanji in each. I was trying to continously perfect and reinforce the journeys I had also, but eventually felt like I needed to spend more time focusing more on other aspects, like increasing my vocabulary.

I tried as much as possible to use people to represent the primitive meanings in kanji also, because they're easier to visually see, I could use their voices and so on as well, and they tend to not get "lost" in visual clutter as much as smaller, inert items. Cartoon figures, famous actors or people I knew seemed to work well.

Previous experience indicates that it would be better for me to add an extra step (e.g. learn the most common on-yomi in an organized fashion) before starting on real Japanese (vocabulary and grammar in context). So instead of learning "a is for apple" and "b is for banana" it will be more like "this scribble is pronounced A" and "this scribble is pronounced B".

I've finished RTK1 for the third time (don’t ask!) about two months ago and have been diligently reviewing my RTK1-Anki deck ever since. So currently I have slightly over 90% of the 2200 Kanji (old RTK1 plus new RTK1) as mature but also have still about 40-50 Kanji to review every day with about 3 cards failed per day. Therefor I think I'm ready to try out memory palace in earnest now (using movies, books, real locations, etc.). I also plan to flip through RTK2 too, so that I get a better idea about the signal primitives in the pure and semi pure groups. Later on when I'm learning vocabulary I plan to add the RTK2 examples bit by bit. But that are dreams of the future ...


Now to the questions I currently have:


1. When placing the kanji in their loci, do you visualize them as the kanji floating in that location or do you link the meaning of the kanji with this location, or fix the original RTK-mnemonic with the movie-location?
I'll try to explain what I mean with an example. I'm using Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し) for the group セン. The kanji 線 (line) is located in the middle of the film, where Chihiro encounters the train and is about to board said train at the station. Currently I associate the kanji with the train sound and the tracks, but neither the original RTK-mnemonic nor the kanji itself are in the picture/location.


2. I intend to make an on-yomi deck which I want to keep separate from my RTK deck. But I'd like to get some advice on how to design the cards and what to watch out for.

(i) Cards for the individual kanjis:

Q: 理
A: リ [+ RKT kanji keyword & other useful information, as well as mnemonic]

When a certain kanji has two on-yomi and I have already learned them, then I think it would help to add a small info on the Q-side (e.g. 2) to remind me that I need to remember two readings for this kanji. The mnemonic would only be the part of the movie/town that is concerned with this particular kanji, and if there are more readings then there are more individual mnemonics.

my job: upon seeing the kanji I have to remember the meaning and the on-yomi, visualize the mnemonic, and write out the kanji.

(ii) Cards for the on-groups:

Q: サン
A: 三, 散, 参, 惨, 産, 山, 桟, 蚕, 算, 賛, 酸, 傘 [+ mnemonic story & useful information on the individual kanji]

I wonder if it is advisable to add the number or kanji that I have to remember for a particular reading on the Q-side. Also should I try to remember the RTK kanji keyword for the individual kanji in the group?

my job: upon seeing the on-yomi I have to recall the story/town and write out the individual kanji.


3. Any advice how I can avoid to unintentionally make kanji-chains out of the mnemonic stories? I'd like to avoid kanji-chains since I'm sure I'd break them sooner than later. Would it help if I changed the walk through the Movie/Town every so often?

4. I plan to start in the middle groups and then work my way up to the big groups and at the same way down to the small groups. I assume that the small groups are the harder ones and I want to avoid having to create 4 or 5 stories per day just to cover 12 to 15 kanji as much as possible.


Some useful links:

Experiences with movie method/kanji town: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3042
Movie Method - Group Submissions: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3250
Kanji lists, Joyo, non-joyo etc. (Sticky topic): http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...0#pid43560

Adventures in Kanji-Town (blog): http://kanjitown.blogspot.de/2005/12/how...-do-i.html
The movie method (blog): http://drmoviemethod.blogspot.de/
The movie method in action (blog): http://tmmia.blogspot.de/


Any advice on how to tackle this project is highly appreciated.

Another useful link: http://mt.artofmemory.com/. I've studied up on these methods, but eventually dropped it so my knowledge is limited. These guys can probably give you a more comprehensive answer. There is a category for language learning for your browsing pleasure.

Thanks, the link was quite helpful. Especially the "getting started" wiki they wrote.

I realize I posted my questions in the wrong part of the forum, but since I've started to slowly work through the different groups, most of those questions have been answered. I'll see how it goes and if new questions arise I better post them in a suitable thread.

Came here to post about Adventures in Kanji Town, but nothing to do here regarding that.

However, I'd just like to chime in with my 2 bits:

I used the Kanji Town method for everything up until around ショウ. As someone has already mentioned, there are far too many kanji in this on-yomi group to be manageable. Then after that I just got a feel for what a kanji's reading was. The radicals help out a lot.

Additionally, getting all the way to ショウ is a massive chunk of kanji in itself, so that could be why the rest was pretty plain sailing.

tl;dr Go for it, but watch out for the big on-yomi groups like コウ and ショウ!!