Let’s use these for easy examples since they’re the first I remember having trouble with:
大して
大げさ
大まか
大きく
I can’t make mnemonics for all of these + the countless others. I learn vocab in batches of 20 per day, I can’t sit and find native content with all of these different examples out in the wild to continuously expose myself. I look at example sentences and try to use those to learn off, but for all of these I simply had to rote them into my brain — I still get these mixed up often! If I DO see them out in the wild then my brain often blanks as to which one it’s supposed to be.
I’ve been learning for over a year now, am level 16 on WaniKani, use textbooks & Bunpro for grammar, and Torii for vocab that WaniKani doesn’t teach. I’ve recently bought a subscription to Satori Reader and am trying to go through it at a decent pace.
Are there any tips for how to approach these? Or am I already looking at them in the best way possible?
Cheers xx
6 comments
Unfortunately, it is a matter of brute forcing each one and then refreshing yourself constantly via Anki and immersion. Actually, the whole point of mnemonics and other memory strategies is to make the above process easier.
It sounds a lot like you’re experiencing [toxic memory](https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Toxic_memory) associated with your study time. In simple terms, that’s when “crap! I don’t know this” comes to mind more easily than the content you’re trying to learn.
By far the best solution is to stop studying the affected words and let natural exposure take over. WaniKani *should* have an option to stop reviewing specific words – as far as I know, it doesn’t, and that is reason enough to stop using it.
I make sure I can read out loud (in my head) everything I am reading as I read it. This means that the more I read (books, manga, games, etc), the more I get exposed to all these words. Eventually the kanji stops being a problem and the words just become words, like in any other language.
Same way you can read passages like:
“The murdered stabbed the victim in the ❤ 10 times as he professed he ❤ed her. In reality it was such a ❤less act.”
Where ❤ can be read different ways (heart, loved, heartless, etc). Once you know the **words**, your brain will do the rest.
Unfortunately there’s no shortcut for it. All you can do is drill them with flashcards and practice using them in your own speech or writing. When you do run into them in the wild, so to speak, it’s okay that you forget the correct reading. You should look it up though; each time you see it/ re-look it up, it will help cement the correct reading in your memory, until you’re able to properly remember. You’ll get there eventually!
Now I understand why I could never learn the kanji compound examples that were on some kanji flashcards.
I’d be unable to tell those apart too if I learned them all in close proximity to one another.
For words I just absolutely couldn’t internalize via flashcard (which started out as just a few and then eventually became all of them) I stopped trying to force the flashcards and waited for wild encounters to teach me the words. I got better results with words my brain felt like it needed or was actively using.
> Do you use brute force memorisation?
God no, stop that! Particularly with your examples of 大XX, if you look at all the variants, they have in common that they refer to something large or broad. Summarizing the definitions from JMdict:
大して — a bit of an exception so this one should be remembered.
大げさ — grandiose, exaggerated
大まか — rough, general, loose (or perhaps: too large to be specific)
大きく– in a big way or grand scale
So, most of the time when I see 大, even if I’m unsure of the particular meaning I can catch a vague idea. If the particular meaning isn’t clear from context or seems wrong, only then do I need to look the word up.
I realize someone might respond to me saying that if you don’t interpret it using the exactly right definition, you’re changing the meaning of the statement, and that’s right, but unless the goal is 100% comprehension that maybe doesn’t matter *too* much.
It took me a while to understand the phrase “embrace ambiguity” and advocates would talk about how this happens in one’s own native language, but are frequently sparce on examples. Well, here’s one: A reader who knows what “super” means and none of its derivatives might still understand the utterance “if you add superfluous flour to the batter, of *course* your cake will turn out dry.” Most English readers will probably know what “superfluous” means in that sentence even though few will have ever looked it up in a dictionary. Our understanding of many words in English is more subconscious and intuitive.
I personally feel that flash cards are a great way to rote memorize a bunch of important things, but that building an intuition to where one can recognize patterns is probably more important and that requires seeing similar ideas expressed in various ways and contexts over a long period of time.
Personally, I use flash cards for the big things and general concepts or if I need to memorize a particular thing even when another card covers something similar. For all else, I just try to expand my exposure.