I was wondering how you guys remember the Chinese readings. I have gone through most of RTK1 in last month, and I decided to learn Chinese instead. In Japanese at least the Hiragana endings give you a hint. After encountering the same text with 10 “Xi” “Shi” “Qi” etc, it gets confusing after a day or so when I try to reread the same text.

I made a system for myself so I could guess the readings. It looks like the RTK way of remembering kunyomi. For every final I made a keyword (always a character from a movie/series etc). Examples:

“In” final as in “Bin” 賓 : reminds me of inception ->I picture Leonardo Di Caprio. I use him the way I would use mr T in RTK stories.

“Ang”: Angel from Buffy series
Ian: Ian Mckellan as Magneto
Iang: Ian Mckellan as Gandalf

For example when I learned the word up/on 上(shang4, final is ang), I imagined the Angel character sitting on a table. Anyway it helped me better remember texts that I read recently, with many “shang”. Also I don’t write down my stories. I didn’t bother with tones or the first consonants (I left that for the memory). I noticed that as long as I know the finals, the consonants are easier to remember. And I imagine tones will be also easier to remember with more exposure.

For character compounds of two or more characters, I just make stories for the two characters or more doing the action, on the go. Again I don’t write them down.

I also usually look up the phonetic characters of each new character I meet, by using this website http://chinese.exponode.com/r2_4.htm. If you have a better one arranged by frequency, I’d love to hear it. I also arranged that list by component frequency the best I could: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=...ey=CJrFpHE

I think it’s better if one does make the mnemonics themselves. And sometimes it doesn’t have to make much sense, like my U stands for Bruce Willis. SRS it with Anki after a day and it will be firm in the mind. Notice that I included h consonant as a final:

a ai an ang ao e ei en eng ha hai han hang hao he hei hen heng Hi hong hou hu hua huai huan huang hui hun huo i ia ian iang iao ie in ing iong iu o ong ou u ua uai uan uang ue ui un uo ü üe ün

While you certainly have more Chinese learning experience than I do, I usually always find that sheer exposure is the best way to learn. Just keep plugging away and you'll get it. It definitely helps to read along with text, at least for me.

That being said, I can see how with only so many sounds, they are going to repeat A LOT. So, I like your idea. In fact, I even inadvertently did it a bit while studying RTH. Since I already know all the characters in there (90%+), I decided to learn the readings at the same time. So, I was going through it and started working the reading into the story sometimes. It came out with interesting results. I usually had to make sure I worked the tone in as well, though. So first would be someone singing or something, and second is someone asking a question, etc.

In short, I think your method is good and if it works for you, just keep on using it, no?

Thank you for your encouraging words