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How many sounds in pinyin (for example, a ai an ang ao = 5)?
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realmayo –

Quote:

Gogou:
If you want to use mnemonics, wouldn’t it be easier to just remember the story for the character?

It seems to be that some kind of underlying structure is necessary, a fixed skeleton to the
otherwise rather wibbly wobbly abstract stuff.

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m.ellison –

Matthews and Matthews, Learning chinese characters already has system of mnemonics worked out for
this. For example, giant = first tone, fairy = second tone etc.

leosmith –

Quote:

In case you’re interested why: I’m finally getting around to using a system to memorise how to
write characters. In a nutshell, you have to assign every pinyin sound its own “person” and
“place”. For the “people”, you have to write down the names of 10 memorable characters from a film
or tv series or whatever that you know well, and do that for about 40 films (hence, just over 400
people, grouped by cast list, for the 400-odd sounds).
The “places” are determined by identifying around 15 buildings you know well (eg places you’ve
lived) each with five rooms or so: and in every room you have a little journey (in a set
direction, eg clockwise) which moves around five key places in that room.
So, for example, for the letter A which I reckon begins only 5 pinyin sounds, I might assign the
top half of the cast of CSI Miami, and the living room of an old flat I lived in in China: hence:

a … Horatio … telephone table
ai … Frank … desk
an … Calleigh … tv
ang … Delko … water dispenser
ao … Wolfe … nasty hard wooden armchair

So to recall the character for love ai4 爱, I can first bring to mind the setting of my old desk.

Also: each of the four tones is to be associated with four brand new individuals: say I’ve chosen
Richard Branson (I haven’t…) for all fourth tones.

And various radicals and key character components also have their own associations, associated
with the “people” if the component is itself a character (“you” for 友, the bottom part of 爱).

So: a version of my “story” for 爱 would take place at my desk in my old room in China. Branson
is there, looking in love, holding up a cooked chicken foot (which I’m associating with the
radical at the top of 爱) while the “person” I’m associating with 友 is cowering embarassed
under a bit hat (which I’m associating with the middle part of the 爱 character).

This method taken from a defunct website called haoyao.com.
I was pointed in its direction by a thread on sinosplice.com –
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archi…in-tone-tricks –
to the archived version of the haoyao.com website:
http://web.archive.org/web/200012041…oyao.com/#body .

realmayo,
Interesting, using a memory palace for memorizing Chinese characters. I hear that’s how Matteo
Ricci did it, but never found an explanation. I considered it for Japanese kanji, but in the end
chickened out, thinking seperate stories are easier. So lets say you want to memorize 5,000
characters, containing on the average 3 components, 1 pronunciation, 1 meaning and 1 tone each.

If you memorize seperate stories, you would need 5,000 of them with 6 items each = 30,000 bits of
information. I would just like to say that a 6 item story is somewhat difficult to memorize.
That’s why Heisig, for example, reduces the number as much as possible, leaving out tones and
pronunciation. But that’s another topic – just trying to point out the relative difficulty. The
links in this structure would be pretty isolated. You would have no reason to associate all the
“ai” characters, for example, because they have their own stories.

If you use a memory palace, you would need 5,000 locations for the meanings, about 300 components,
400 pronunciations (I didn’t break it down by the a’s, b’s, etc, out of laziness) and 5 tones =
5,705 bits of information. That’s the good news. The bad news is the very complicated link
structure you’ll have to create to make this work. But if you have these locations really well
memorized, that will help a lot.

I’ve seen a guy set up a memory palace for 2042 kanji just to add one piece of information – a
pronunciation for each character. It was a long, difficult process, but he loved it. Google
“kanjitown”

So, not only are you going to do everything I said, but you’re going to learn multi-character
words this way too? That would be adding a lot more links. Sweet. Let us know how it goes!

realmayo –

Hi leosmith,
Sadly it’s not a full-on memory palace … setting up something on that scale (ie 5,000) would I
think take a very long time. Instead I’m using a kind of half-way house: there are only 410 places
– one for each pinyin sound. there are also four key people, one for each tone, regardless of
what the pinyin sound is (ie the same guy is involved for all first tone sounds).

The advantage of this versus just creating a “story” for each character is that the pinyin “place”
provides a location, a background, for the story to take place; and this I hope will bring the
story to mind much more easily (ie “oh yes this takes place on the desk in my old flat, now …
wasn’t there a chicken foot involved?…”)

The disadvantage is that some “places”, eg for all characters that have the “shi” sound, will be
very crowded! This is mitigated slightly by the tones — only the shi4 (4th tone) characters will
have a story involving, say, Richard Branson…

One unexpected feature of doing all this is that another part of the process — associating the
radicals (and a few other key non-radical components) with objects — is very similar to what I
understand your man Heisig suggests. And from what m.ellison says here too, another book as well.
I need to have learned (by brute force) about 200 of these things for everything to work well.

Right now I’m finding it all particularly useful to remember things I’ve always found annoying to
remember. The correct ordering of the components of 喜 xǐ, for example, was something I used to
spend ages fretting over. Now I just remember that there’s a Samurai standing on someone’s mouth
(士 on 口) and the rest follows. (If I had to learn that character from scratch, though, I’d
need to expand on the rest of the structure too.)

roddy –

That one annoys me too. But ten beans going into your mouth 十豆口 works great. Makes me
happy, anyway.

leosmith –

Quote:

Sadly it’s not a full-on memory palace … setting up something on that scale (ie 5,000) would I
think take a very long time. Instead I’m using a kind of half-way house: there are only 410 places
– one for each pinyin sound. there are also four key people, one for each tone, regardless of
what the pinyin sound is (ie the same guy is involved for all first tone sounds).

Oops, I explained it wrong, but you’re doing pretty much what I was trying to describe.
Here’s what I think you’re doing:
a) 1 palace
b) 410 rooms (one for each pinyin sound)
c) “x” items in each room (one for each character – the total number of items is 5000; I shouldn’t
have call these “places” before)
d) 1 person (1 for each tone) gets tacked on to all items that have tones
e) 3 (on the average) components (1 for each item, but these are re-used, for a total of about
300. The oficial radicals make up most of these, but there are quite a few others that aren’t real
radicals)

You have 2 goals (I’ll keep this to single character words because I’m lazy).
1) you want to be able to look at a character and know the pronunciation and meaning
2) you want to be able to write (or type) the character, given it’s meaning and pronunciation

Using 喜, sample recall for goal
1) 10 beans mouth (十豆口)? Hey, I remember Sandra Bullock (3rd tone) feeding those to happy
the clown (happy) in the she-male bar (xi).
2) xǐ, happy? Hey, I remember happy the clown in the she-male bar was so happy because Sandra
Bullock was feeding 10 beans into his mouth.

Quote:

True, but there are some things that might help.
First, you could create seperate rooms for shi, shi1, shi2, shi2, shi4 if it helps.

Second, there is no real need to associate all the characters in the room with eachother. And
there is no real need to be able to recite all the characters in a given room (quick – what are
all the characters pronounced shi?). You don’t have to create an order; you don’t have to be able
to walk around the room and see each-and-every-thing that’s happening. So you can still create a
bunch of little stories within a room, ala Heisig, and it won’t be contrary to your goals.

realmayo –

Oh I see, yep sorry I misunderstood.
Yes that’s broadly it, except, chiefly: it’s not “x” items per room, but “x” (actually 5)
locations per room: memorable locations in which the relevant “story” takes place. So 5,000
stories in 410 places.
And in fact, the “items” are instead the c.300 components (radicals + others) that you refer to.
As for Sandra Bullock, if the location for “xi” happens to be the table in my kitchen, that’s
where she’ll be feeding beans to the clown…

This “memory palace” thing is actually less gimmicky than I’d assumed. Been reading that for
centuries people used these techniques to memorise absolutely masses of information (obviously
that would require loads of training, certainly not something I’m planning on doing). And I read
online that Roman orators would “plan a journey” along a familiar walk with each point they wanted
to make “located” in sequence, hence, according to this website, the reason we say “in the first
place.”

Now maybe this is a little bit daft, but just to see how it works, I’ve set up a “journey” with
over 250 points along the way, and I’m going to see if I can use it to learn most of the radicals
+ a few components … although because it smacks of
spending-too-much-time-planning-learning-and-not-actually-learning-anything I’m going to learn
them by rote too.

leosmith –

Quote:

They used memory palaces to remember long speeches, stories, or even books (there’s some
basketball player who used one to memorize the entire New Testament aparently). The thing all of
these have in common is that they all need to be remembered in order. Hanzi don’t have this
requirement.

So I thought to myself, there must be a more efficient, easier way to memorize Chinese characters.
And I settled on seperate stories.

Let’s examine that a little closer. I made seperate stories, which saved me from having to link
everything together. But on the other hand, linking them together allows you to take advantage of
the fact that many have common readings. I can see that having that extra link might make
remembering the readings easier. Plus, from what I’ver heard, having a big palace with tons of
links all over the place, actually makes memorizing much easier, rather than complicating matters.

Anyway, other than littlefish, I have yet to hear a detailed account of using a memory palace
successfully to memorize Chinese characters. And in the end, I wasn’t too impressed with his
results, although it’s hard to tell how well it worked (he seems to exaggerate). So I will
probably stick to my seperate stories, unless you come back here to brag about fabulous success!

noname –

414 ?

1 A
2 AI
3 AN
4 ANG
5 AO
6 BA
7 BAI
8 BAN
9 BANG
10 BAO
11 BEI
12 BEN
13 BENG
14 BI
15 BIAN
16 BIAO
17 BIE
18 BIN
19 BING
20 BO
21 BU
22 CA
23 CAI
24 CAN
25 CANG
26 CAO
27 CE
28 CEN
29 CENG
30 CHA
31 CHAI
32 CHAN
33 CHANG
34 CHAO
35 CHE
36 CHEN
37 CHENG
38 CHI
39 CHONG
40 CHOU
41 CHU
42 CHUA
43 CHUAI
44 CHUAN
45 CHUANG
46 CHUI
47 CHUN
48 CHUO
49 CI
50 CONG
51 COU
52 CU
53 CUAN
54 CUI
55 CUN
56 CUO
57 DA
58 DAI
59 DAN
60 DANG
61 DAO
62 DE
63 DEI
64 DEN
65 DENG
66 DI
67 DIA
68 DIAN
69 DIAO
70 DIE
71 DING
72 DIU
73 DONG
74 DOU
75 DU
76 DUAN
77 DUI
78 DUN
79 DUO
80 E
81 EI
82 EN
83 ENG
84 ER
85 FA
86 FAN
87 FANG
88 FEI
89 FEN
90 FENG
91 FO
92 FOU
93 FU
94 GA
95 GAI
96 GAN
97 GANG
98 GAO
99 GE
100 GEI
101 GEN
102 GENG
103 GONG
104 GOU
105 GU
106 GUA
107 GUAI
108 GUAN
109 GUANG
110 GUI
111 GUN
112 GUO
113 HA
114 HAI
115 HAN
116 HANG
117 HAO
118 HE
119 HEI
120 HEN
121 HENG
122 HM
123 HNG
124 HONG
125 HOU
126 HU
127 HUA
128 HUAI
129 HUAN
130 HUANG
131 HUI
132 HUN
133 HUO
134 JI
135 JIA
136 JIAN
137 JIANG
138 JIAO
139 JIE
140 JIN
141 JING
142 JIONG
143 JIU
144 JU
145 JUAN
146 JUE
147 JUN
148 KA
149 KAI
150 KAN
151 KANG
152 KAO
153 KE
154 KEN
155 KENG
156 KONG
157 KOU
158 KU
159 KUA
160 KUAI
161 KUAN
162 KUANG
163 KUI
164 KUN
165 KUO
166 LA
167 LAI
168 LAN
169 LANG
170 LAO
171 LE
172 LEI
173 LENG
174 LI
175 LIA
176 LIAN
177 LIANG
178 LIAO
179 LIE
180 LIN
181 LING
182 LIU
183 LONG
184 LOU
185 LU
186 LV
187 LUAN
188 LUE
189 LUN
190 LUO
191 M
192 MA
193 MAI
194 MAN
195 MANG
196 MAO
197 ME
198 MEI
199 MEN
200 MENG
201 MI
202 MIAN
203 MIAO
204 MIE
205 MIN
206 MING
207 MIU
208 MO
209 MOU
210 MU
211 N
212 NA
213 NAI
214 NAN
215 NANG
216 NAO
217 NE
218 NEI
219 NEN
220 NENG
221 NG
222 NI
223 NIAN
224 NIANG
225 NIAO
226 NIE
227 NIN
228 NING
229 NIU
230 NONG
231 NOU
232 NU
233 NV
234 NUAN
235 NUE
236 NUN
237 NUO
238 O
239 OU
240 PA
241 PAI
242 PAN
243 PANG
244 PAO
245 PEI
246 PEN
247 PENG
248 PI
249 PIAN
250 PIAO
251 PIE
252 PIN
253 PING
254 PO
255 POU
256 PU
257 QI
258 QIA
259 QIAN
260 QIANG
261 QIAO
262 QIE
263 QIN
264 QING
265 QIONG
266 QIU
267 QU
268 QUAN
269 QUE
270 QUN
271 RAN
272 RANG
273 RAO
274 RE
275 REN
276 RENG
277 RI
278 RONG
279 ROU
280 RU
281 RUA
282 RUAN
283 RUI
284 RUN
285 RUO
286 SA
287 SAI
288 SAN
289 SANG
290 SAO
291 SE
292 SEN
293 SENG
294 SHA
295 SHAI
296 SHAN
297 SHANG
298 SHAO
299 SHE
300 SHEI
301 SHEN
302 SHENG
303 SHI
304 SHOU
305 SHU
306 SHUA
307 SHUAI
308 SHUAN
309 SHUANG
310 SHUI
311 SHUN
312 SHUO
313 SI
314 SONG
315 SOU
316 SU
317 SUAN
318 SUI
319 SUN
320 SUO
321 TA
322 TAI
323 TAN
324 TANG
325 TAO
326 TE
327 TENG
328 TI
329 TIAN
330 TIAO
331 TIE
332 TING
333 TONG
334 TOU
335 TU
336 TUAN
337 TUI
338 TUN
339 TUO
340 WA
341 WAI
342 WAN
343 WANG
344 WEI
345 WEN
346 WENG
347 WO
348 WU
349 XI
350 XIA
351 XIAN
352 XIANG
353 XIAO
354 XIE
355 XIN
356 XING
357 XIONG
358 XIU
359 XU
360 XUAN
361 XUE
362 XUN
363 YA
364 YAN
365 YANG
366 YAO
367 YE
368 YI
369 YIN
370 YING
371 YO
372 YONG
373 YOU
374 YU
375 YUAN
376 YUE
377 YUN
378 ZA
379 ZAI
380 ZAN
381 ZANG
382 ZAO
383 ZE
384 ZEI
385 ZEN
386 ZENG
387 ZHA
388 ZHAI
389 ZHAN
390 ZHANG
391 ZHAO
392 ZHE
393 ZHEI
394 ZHEN
395 ZHENG
396 ZHI
397 ZHONG
398 ZHOU
399 ZHU
400 ZHUA
401 ZHUAI
402 ZHUAN
403 ZHUANG
404 ZHUI
405 ZHUN
406 ZHUO
407 ZI
408 ZONG
409 ZOU
410 ZU
411 ZUAN
412 ZUI
413 ZUN
414 ZUO

monto –

Quote:

An example would be 忒,

to type 忒 using pinyin, you should iput “tui” instead of “te” or “tei”.

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