Sorry, but if someone could help me with these three characters, that would be great.

条 支 枝

I had twig fine, but then branch and bough come along and I'm utterly stupefied as to how to keep these three separate in my mind.

Any genius ideas?

The sense of "branch" is "to be a branch of" something -- like a branch office of a bank or a branch line of a railway. That's why it appears in "岐", for instance.

A "bough" is part of a tree which branches off is a branch of the main tree.

As for "twig" I never forget that most men think they have a wooden pole between their walking legs, but in fact it's usually not much more than a twig.

Thank-you, that did help.

Now I just need to get needle and crotch into a story so I can remember a branch off something. The bank/office idea was quite good - keeps the differences in kanji clear.

Just be careful, because the keyword for "岐" is "branch off".

又 is traditionally used as a hand radical. So creating a story for branch using that in mind will make much more sense than using crotch. I still think of friend 友 as two hands shaking. There are no stories using crotch creating as clear of an image as this. The choice as crotch was Heisig's biggest mistake in creating the book. It can't really be thought of as "crotch of the arm" as he suggests as armpit 脇870 is used later. I mostly used sitting cross-legged to keep with the theme of other user's stories though.
条 always reminds me of the Sanjou 三条　district of Kyoto. It is lush with sakura trees and the wooden twigs fall and get crunched below my walking legs.

Thanks for the help everyone! I've got them now. Thinking of 又 as a hand radical or crossed legs certainly does make some of the characters easier.

There are way too many hands though, i don't see what the difference is between cross legged and crotch really. The aim is the vulgarness that's what i love about crotch.

liosama Wrote:There are way too many hands though, i don't see what the difference is between cross legged and crotch really. The aim is the vulgarness that's what i love about crotch.

That is why hand was not used. Though when the connection is obvious, like in friend, using hand can help. 又 looks like someone sitting cross-legged from the waste down. Sitting cross-legged makes me think of deep contemplation. Crotch is a very specific area. It is fairly obvious from the stories what a crotch makes one think of. The vulgarity of it would work if it was just for a few stories. 又 is used in so many stories that the benefit from vulgarity wears off as it gets mixed up with 100 other vulgar stories.

It's a question of what works for a particular person or not. Personally I've found "crotch" to be one of the easiest primitives to deal with and I usually remember it well. Plus there are lots of combination with other primitives that occur regularly and crotch has allowed me to have memorable images for those as well.

bodhisamaya Wrote:

liosama Wrote:There are way too many hands though, i don't see what the difference is between cross legged and crotch really. The aim is the vulgarness that's what i love about crotch.

That is why hand was not used. Though when the connection is obvious, like in friend, using hand can help. 又 looks like someone sitting cross-legged from the waste down. Sitting cross-legged makes me think of deep contemplation. Crotch is a very specific area. It is fairly obvious from the stories what a crotch makes one think of. The vulgarity of it would work if it was just for a few stories. 又 is used in so many stories that the benefit from vulgarity wears off as it gets mixed up with 100 other vulgar stories.

又 is actually the hand in 右 and 有 as well. So 友 IS really two hand shaking, very obvious if one checks the etymology, the kanji used to look way more like this: 双 in shell and bones characters.

For anyone who is interested in radicals like this, i recommend http://www.kanjinetworks.com/etymologies.html
The site is horribly created though, on my Firefox I have to use ctrl+a to select all the text on a page to make it readable in the actual tables of characters.

I've got stories with a sentient, disembodied crotch every time that kanji comes up. I wish like crazy I could undo that image, but it's stuck like glue. And as a sad commentary on my baser nature, I remember every kanji with it without effort.

Do you watch The Office? Only the funniest tv sitcom ever made?? I used that for branch, and it helped out tremendously. I just imagined a crotch and a needle on Pam's front desk. And for bough, I imagined watching an episode of The Office on the bough of a tree. Haven't forgotten it yet.

And when pelt comes into play, good ole Dwight is showing off his rabbit pelt he brought to work, and the stories build from there.

支 is a generic branch, not a tree branch.
枝 = tree + branch, a bough is a branch of a tree, straightforward

I have no idea why 条 has the keyword "twig". Rikaichan brings up "article" as in statutes &c. which is how I remember it.

For walk + tree = article, you need some imagination. I remember it with "I was walking and I tripped on a root of a tree and tried to think what article of law I need to reference to get compo."

Of course, stories dealing with crotch would most likely not be considered vulgar to an actual Japanese person:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/e-chan/904738161/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13029754@N03/1361171868/

Raichu Wrote:支 is a generic branch, not a tree branch.
枝 = tree + branch, a bough is a branch of a tree, straightforward

I have no idea why 条 has the keyword "twig". Rikaichan brings up "article" as in statutes &c. which is how I remember it.

'Twig' is the original, now archaic, meaning of this character. It doesn't get used for this meaning anymore. The modern usage of 条 is strictly in the sense of 'article.'

Thanks, Thunk, for the idea of "The Office" for "branch". I just remember "Scranton branch" and I'm all set. For "skill" I've got Dwight Schrute showing off his martial arts skills with his fingers.