how did fingers ever become shrek...i see so many stories with this but i forgot the connection

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Shrek is an ogre who is fond of "human finger snacks" (think Twix).

I first thought of using severed human fingers, to make a distinctive image which would be less prone to confusion with actions or persons.

From there I thought of using the severed fingers as forensic evidence, or as a snack for an ogre. The first one didn't come up in any of my stories, but the second one worked very well. You can find some references in my stories for 657 "pinch", 659 "fingers", 665 "propose", etc.

By extension the "fingers" primitive almost became Shrek himself, but my personal preference was to always involve the fingers in the stories to keep a reference to the chinese radical (which is in fact a compressed "hand" if I remember well).

Someone also came up with "Fingers the thief" which is a great idea as well. In fact you could easily switch between both, with Fingers the thief living close to Shrek and very afraid of loosing his precious fingers, and hence leaving Shrek's property alone.

I must say the hands & fingers group of kanji are some of the hardest I came across so far, and the "human finger snack" loving Shrek has been good for me.

Am I the only person who just pictures the appropriate fingers/hand/two hands in my stories?

vosimura: yeah i found using fingers, hand and hands literally in my stories didnt create strong enough images in my mind and when it came to recalling Id simply overlook that they were a critical part to the kanji. I mean litterally every story involves someone touching, holding something so it led to confusion.

I went back and decided to use other objects/things to represent them. For fingers, I dont know why, but mens chocolate pocky came to mind as in chocolate fingers. For hand I used IT or was it called Thing from the adams family and for two hands i actually found i could get away using it as it was with the first two being clearly identifiable.

I think using people such as Shrek, Sherlock holmes, Fingers the thief is the best way to handle abstract and otherwise uninteresting kanji as a person can interact so much with the other primitives in a story. I know pocky is hardly an animate object but I decided to change it to a walking living pychopathci pocky like the peperami snacks ads in the uk.

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thegeezer3 Wrote:when it came to recalling Id simply overlook that they were a critical part to the kanji. I mean litterally every story involves someone touching, holding something so it led to confusion.

Agree. Concerning this and my previous post I'd like to explain a little further the reasoning behind the "severed fingers" primitive:

What I did with the "fingers" primitive, is turn it into an image where you can visualize the primitive itself, as a complete, separate object. Hence I came up with the image of "severed fingers".

It was not for the purpose of having a gruesome, rememberable image, although this can be useful too. Interestingly, I never actually pictured the "severed finger snacks" that Shrek is fond of. I always picture the character Shrek himself. So the "fingers" became Shrek by extension, but in my mind I like to know it as "fingers", so that I can directly think of the corresponding chinese radical.

It's something I found even more important when experimenting with kanji-chains. In kanji-chains, when you have several kanji which share primitives (as is often the case in ON yomi groups), you need to make sure to picture each kanji as a complete entity in its own distinct location, even if you have to duplicate some characters several times (such as Shrek here if you had a kanji chain with several kanji involving "fingers")... otherwise there will be confusion during recall.

It helps the recall if you can make sure that your primitives are stand-alone, separate, complete objects which give little or no way to confusion.

Of course you don't have to vividly imagine mnemonics all the time. I'm just getting into the "technicalities".

@MightyMatt : it's perfecly fine if you can work with the "regular", hands, fingers, eyes, etc. I've done it many times too. But on occasion, or for some people, this is more difficult so the elaborated version is useful. In any case we're in mnemonics territory so we shouldn't be shy of using our imaginative prowesses

Mighty_Matt Wrote:Am I the only person who just pictures the appropriate fingers/hand/two hands in my stories?

Don't worry, I do the same too. It was tough to come up with stories at times, but then again there are many things you can do with fingers: wag them at someone, flick things, lightly tap on stuff, stroke things, etc. If that doesn't work you can also tug on them, snap them off, break them, crack them, shred them, smash them, bite them, suck on them... be a little cruel to those dainty fingers and you've got yourself a painful but memorable story!

For the "fingers" primitive, I've used the Pokemon Groudon (Cover of the Pokemon Ruby version) I don't know how I got this but it seems to work for me. At first, I tried Hitmonchan for this, but interchanged with Groudon since it had Kyogre (Pokemon Sapphire version cover) as the rival and Hitmonchan's rival Hitmonlee. Also, it looked wicked.

I've extended the "shellfish" primitive to Blastoise squad/team of Blastoise/or simply Blastoise (final evolution of Squirtle). If you can remember in the Pokemon Anime that there is a Squirtle squad, assuming that they'll eventually evolve into Wartortle then to Blastoise.

Other primitives for Pokemon
King - Nidoking or Slowking
Upside down child (Top hat and Elbow) - Elekid
Left side of "Going" - Deoxys
White - Tried a Pidgeot, but hasn't worked too well
Or Again - Scizor
Claw - Sneasel
Tree - Shiftry/Sudowoodo
Spoon - Alakazam

These are some of my primitives just to add more flexibilty for the stories.

I have a bit of trouble sometimes distinguishing between my different people I use for the person radical, the thread radical, and the left part of 待 radical (Mr. T, Spiderman, The Flash)

I guess this is because they all battle bad guys. Other characters I use include Legolas, Alice, and Snape...who generally I don't mix up.

I just use "fingers" for the finger radical...though if the story is to vague sometimes I use Fingers the Thief

johnzep Wrote:I have a bit of trouble sometimes distinguishing between my different people I use for the person radical, the thread radical, and the left part of 待 radical (Mr. T, Spiderman, The Flash)

Yeah, I was gonna go with Spiderman for thread also when I saw your stories but I went with daredevil instead. I picked Green Goblin/Norman Osborn for person so I couldn't use Spiderman because I stuck him in a lot of the person images. Since they're both different enough I haven't had too much trouble, but I've been trying to avoid making other primitives for similar people. The only other person I have is The Taskmaster for taskmaster.

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johnzep Wrote:I have a bit of trouble sometimes distinguishing between my different people I use for the person radical, the thread radical, and the left part of 待 radical (Mr. T, Spiderman, The Flash)

Yeah, although most agree by experience, and Heisig himself suggests, that using a colourful character can help memorization for "person" and by extension, other abtsract primitives; Heisig's other point about sticking to one image per primitive is still valid.

So using one person of your choice for the person primitive (especially such colourful characters as super-heroes) is probably best.

So regarding cracky's comment above, I think it's ok to use characters for several primitives if you don't overdo it. If you take care to use distinct characters (i.e. a political person, a super-hero, a music celebrity, ...) then you shouldn't be confused.

Several members also said they used a "group of persons" succesfully as a primitive image. Hence you can have a group of super-heroes as your "person", but the logic is still the same, for purposes of the image, it is always the group then that should be emphasized.

When a colourful character is used to help with a primitive, I've found it was easy to switch between the primitive itself and the associated character. So with "fingers" I often used Shrek, but also used "fingers" without any associated character succesfully for easy kanji like 打 "strike". So I effectively used more than one image, but only one character. And there is a relationship between the character and the primitive's "root" image, which helps if I have any doubts during kanji -> keyword recall ("Fingers the thief" was a great example of this). Out of my head, something like "Superman" for "power" would be a good example as well. Sometimes the abstract "power" alone could be sufficient in short, "snappy" mnemonics, other times Superman will come to the rescue

I tend to find when I use characters or people as primitives I recall those stories the most easily, and in stories where the primitives are a mixture of people and objects or actions, that I remember the people the most quickly. I've switched a lot of verb primitives to specific characters and even adjective primitives aswell. a few examples:

mend- Luigi ( a guy who mends pipes)

determine- Wario (like luigi, but determined to destroy mario)

yawn- Sleepy Brown (a singer often features in Outkast videos, he sings the chorus in 'I like the way you move') before changing this primitive it was probably the primitive to give me the most trouble
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next- Aoi Kiji (iceman character who suffers from narcolepsy in One piece, being a
mixture of the ice and yawn primitives)

mediocre- J.D. from Scrubs (this is not a cruel jibe, but I can just imagine him finding a lot of things to be mediocre, its worked wonders for my recall)

street- Ryu (StreetFighter , don't use this too often, only when a spike just doesn't seem to do it, never use it as street)

court- Judge Judy
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porter- The porter at my university specifically, not just someone dressed as one.
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juvenile- Bart Simpson
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siesta- Gordon Brown (this was a trouble primitive before I changed it, I live in London and siestas are only heard about on tv so I could not remember it well or easily distinguish it from yawn, but Gordon Brown is our Prime Minister, and the primitive features in the kanji for brown)
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deceased/perish- Grim Reaper
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hemp- weed smoking rasta
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when mouth and floor appear together (i.e. range, beguile)- Mick Jagger ( his lips reach to the floor)
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just so- Rudyard Kipling (author of Just So Stories)

These are just a few. Using a person tends to be more of a lifesaver in trouble kanji, which are hard to create a concrete image for. I usually just associate with a particular person I feel in some way embodies that word.
-distinction- my old music teacher who would give me distinctions in my tests bumping into an I-bar wrapped in wool.
-accomplished- Donald Trump the accomplished mogul slide tackling a sheep covered in soil on a long stretch of road.
stature- Mike Tyson, a man of considerable stature, holding a North Pole candy cane with a hunk of meat one end.
tailor- Oswald Boateng, the famous tailor, throwing his new garment under the thanksgiving meal table.