Hey everyone. I speak Mandarin Chinese pretty well and some Cantonese also, so I already know the meanings of the kanji. I find that remembering kanji readings which are multiple syllables is challenging for me, since this is a complete departure from Chinese, in which each character is never more than a single syllable. I study by reading in LingQ as well as reviewing a 2k Anki deck from Refold which has example sentences for context. I also loaded all the example sentences from that Anki Deck into LingQ for study. So just for clarification, I study whole words, not just characters in isolation.
Does anyone have recommendations for tools, resources, or tricks to quickly learning readings that aren’t sticking? I took a look into RTK vol 2, but from the information I see online without purchasing the book, it seems like it will only partially help. Has anyone in a similar situation as me used this book with success?
I see that WaniKani eventually ties in the pronunciation, but making any sort of mnemonic for character meanings before I can get to that stage feels like not only wasted effort, but also counterproductive.
My current personal approach has been as follows. When a word’s reading is just not sticking, I will ask ChatGPT to generate a mnemonic for the pronunciation only. An example would be 車: ChatGPT suggested picturing a “cool kangaroo wearing sunglasses driving a convertible and shouting “ku roooo ma!”. This worked for me to help that pronunciation stick and quickly I no longer needed the mnemonic. ChatGPT isn’t super easy to coax into doing this though and often will come up with stories which do nothing to help you remember. For example, “picture a woman saying kuruma”. Not to mention I have to manually ask for each of these.
Hopefully my approach is helpful to someone else, but very curious to hear of any other recommendations out there! Thanks!
by slalomkenny