Anyone have any thoughts on how best to remember stories or mnemonics for very common words like Of and From? Making up sentence or a story that contains the work "of", however prominently, just doesn't seem to work for me.

From; i think rote learning this is safe because it is used in a few characters, and heisigs notion of punch helps out with many of the meanings. ("from" was a borrowed meaning making it hard)

Of; What makes this difficult too is that it has a borrowed meaning, initially it was a pictograph of some shrub or something. I just rote learned this

(Turf, had grass ontop of that shrub, which kinda made sense for that one, but later the bottom part was simplified into 之)

yeah i have problems with "however" and other abstract type ones, my fail pile is roughly 200 atm, but im glad i got the 'untested' pile out of the way (which i have not touched for about 3 weeks).

With these ones though i think it is safe to just rote learn a story for them, something which grips your tongue easily. I kept failing however, until i raged and made my story 'however many times i fail this kanji I picture a poor person studying until night break', perhaps later on i may confuse 'person' with 'self' or something, or 'night break' with "wee hours" but maybe once i start learning readings, they may help-out as the onyomi here is TAN which is nightbreak.

Anyway I will go through the huge ass fail pile tomorrow, hopefully by which I will be able to answer you or seek help from others. Would love to hear others opinions on this too.


Good question ^^

This might seem a little weird, but it works for me. I associate "of" with the Spanish "de", which I in turn associate with the Japanese へ particle, which is pronounced え. Of course, 之 is just a less-simplified version of え.

之 has been easy for me ever since a Chinese guy in my Japanese class told me that it's used in Chinese exactly how の is used in Japanese.

mullr Wrote:之 has been easy for me ever since a Chinese guy in my Japanese class told me that it's used in Chinese exactly how の is used in Japanese.

It is also used in Japanese names such as 木之本 in that way.

Smackle Wrote:

mullr Wrote:之 has been easy for me ever since a Chinese guy in my Japanese class told me that it's used in Chinese exactly how の is used in Japanese.

It is also used in Japanese names such as 木之本 in that way.

And ironically (or more confusingly?), the hiragana の is actually a simplified 乃. In old-style fonts you sometimes see an extra dip in the final stroke -- that's where it comes from.

You might try using titles or phrases that feature those abstract keywords prominently.

Smackle Wrote:It is also used in Japanese names such as 木之本 in that way.

BTW How would you pronounce that name?

Ji_suss Wrote:

Smackle Wrote:It is also used in Japanese names such as 木之本 in that way.

BTW How would you pronounce that name?

きのもと, I think.

hknamida Wrote:

Ji_suss Wrote:

Smackle Wrote:It is also used in Japanese names such as 木之本 in that way.

BTW How would you pronounce that name?

きのもと, I think.

Yes, that is correct.

Thanks all.