Hi All,

I`m fairly new here. I started with RTK about a month ago. Thanks for making this site such a great resource!

I have an idea.

I`ve been looking at the linkword method for learning foreign vocab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkword) and I`d like to use it to learn all of the JLPT 4 vocab.

The idea behind linkword is pretty intuitive. You think of an english word (the keyword) that sounds similar to the japanese one and use your imagination to form an association between the two (the mneumonic). I`ve found it to be a great trick for retaining new words.

Quick example:

Japanese-English-Keyword-Mneumonic
Furoba-Bathroom-Fur Robe-I imagine myself sitting on my toilet, terribly constipated, in a tiger fur robe.

If a person starts with a list of words, keywords, and mneumonics it is *supposedly* possible to learn and retain a 1000 word vocabulary with only 10 hours of study.

Sooo, I`ve put a JLPT 4 vocab list (http://www.spurrymoses.com/jlpt/4/jlpt4_vocab-list.html) on a spreadsheet and am currently going through adding keywords and mneumonics. I`d love some help. I just started, you can see the word I`ve done so far here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p...r7Eg&hl=en

If you`re interested in helping, send me a PM or an email and I`ll make you a collaborater. If there`s enough interest we could do the vocab for JLPT levels 3,2, and 1. This would be a GREAT resource for anybody studying Japanese. For all the terrible things you can say about the JLPT, the vocab lists are pretty solid.

Do you think this will work? Has anyone had lots of experience with this mneumonic system?


Sorry for rambling so much! I hope this draws some interest.

Best,

Chris

I've never heard it being called "linkwords," but this technique is very common among language learners. I use it all the time if I have trouble with a specific vocabulary word. In combination with an SRS, it's a very effective way to move stuff to your long term memory.

Great!

People have been visiting for the past couple hours and there are already a few new collaborators. Anyone, please feel free to contribute. If you want to replace an existing one, write in your suggestion in the provided collumn, unless your positive that yours is better, then just go ahead and change it.

This link *should* give everyone editing privledges. If it dosent, send me an email and I`ll invite you personally.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p...8hHO5sr7Eg

not sure if this would be efficient for a large list, but it is probably a good trick for remembering the occasional word you find problematic.

Though if it works for you, I guess run with it

When I studied latin in high school and college, I had a really stupid way to remember the word "paene" (phonetically, pie-nay / パイネ) and it means "almost"

my mnemonic was "Paene almost sounds like pineapple"

[ファブリス]

Good initiative, blackstockc. This might be best suited for kun readings in the long run?

Linkwords was my first introduction to Japanese actually. They have a cool demo on their site here.

I learnt about 300 words over a weekend with Linkword 1, it was a bit of a confidence booster, similar to Heisig. I got bored about 3/4 into it because they have vocab for business men who come over Japan for the week-end, not all the vocabulary interested me although most of it was common words. It does also give you the very basic sentences (subject, adjective, why, when, etc.).

Sounds interesting. I'm a programmer, if you need help on that end.

~Ether