My plan is to come up with a mnemonic device for each of the possible KUN / ON readings found in RevTK2, and then start memorizing tons of vocab by creating stories with these devices.

As for heterophones, i.e., words that have the same spelling for different pronunciation like tone change (correct me if I am wrong ) I will differentiate them adding another mnemonic to the story that determines the tone.

This idea arises from the frustration to realize that I am basically brute forcing every new word I encounter and it is not working so well, I am not failing epically either but I am already used to memory tricks so this plan, if it works, could improve things dramatically.

Another reason why I am liking this idea is because it is similar to the way RevTK works and I enjoyed it very much, to me it feels like tricking the Japanese language.

What do you think about this? good / bad idea?

EDIT: Since this is a very butchered form of RevTK2 maybe I don't even need the book but just a list of onyomis and kunyomis, any ideas where I can find it?

Importantly, you don't want to have to rely on the mnemonic everything you recall a word as it'll slow you down in the sense that you're adding an extra layer to the decoding process of going from word->mnenomic->english word->concept. But it does work well as a short term memory hook, especially for words with no relevances to anything you can hook it onto.

As for the heterophones, whilst Japanese do pronounce heterophones in a different manner, unlike Chinese where there is a high emphasis on tones, Japanese doesn't have this emphasis. The different manner of pronunciation comes from the word within the context on the sentence and the feeling the sentence is trying to convey.

Well, this is essentially what I think you are doing but coming up with the mnemonic hooks for all the readings upfront instead of on an each word basis. In fact, I could just create the mnemonic at the time I first meet the word and that saves me from conjuring up a list with the KUN and ON.

bcrAn Wrote:In fact, I could just create the mnemonic at the time I first meet the word and that saves me from conjuring up a list with the KUN and ON.

More or less, this is what I'm doing.