I don’t know what it is that I am meant to do when I sit down to learn vocabulary.
With RTK, I can remember a kanji by connecting each radical with a picture and making a story from those radicals. With actual words, I struggle connecting meaningless sounds to what the word means.
EG, Kid with *top hat* (亠) and *scarf* (衣) being “praised” by (over)*protective* (保) parents.
亠+衣+保 = 褒 = Praise.
But I can’t connect the sound ” ほめる ” with “to praise”. Ho + Me + Ru is just meaningless sounds to me – I don’t have a system.
Are you just meant to look at the words and hope your brain somehow connects the sound to the meaning?
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In general, you can’t break up an individual verb into any more components. Also, in general, it may not be correct to assume that one mora corresponds to one morpheme. There is no way around the fact that you’ll need to do a lot of rote memorization.
Not sure why this is necessarily a problem for you though. Kanji exists for a reason. Almost any time you see 褒める written you’ll see it written like that. In other words, you don’t *need* to memorize how it sounds. You just need to memorize how to recall it when you read it, or hear it spoken while looking at subtitles. As long as you can do that immersion will fill in the gaps and connect the two skills over the long term.
>Are you just meant to look at the words and hope your brain somehow connects the sound to the meaning?
Your brain will connect the sound to the meaning a lot more easily if you read/hear the word being used in context.
A lot of people use Anki to help them memorize words.
Homeru – Homer Simpson praising his big pile of sugar. Done.
Sentaku – Send tacos I’m stuck doing laundry! Done.
Etc.
It all needs to be personal to you or it won’t stick. After a while the pneumonics fade and you just remember the meaning. I do still think of Homer though when I say ほめる .
You got it… keep going you are gonna start remembering some and making connections (mnemonics, sound alikes, anything is fair game).
Just like kanji looked impossible and now you can call out praise. Little by little you’ll get it. Like others said context helps a lot. Seeing it use its almost necessary since “words” can be closer to a grammar point or just different uses like pull, pull out, play an instrument (pull strings)
I personally break them down. Word recognition, then write plus sound out loud…
Weird enough when you are knee deep in it it gets easier. You recognize a kanji in a compound word and make a guess or reinforces the older word and so on
Yea, more or less you just grind it out. No amount of cognitive tricks or strategies will change that.
>Are you just meant to look at the words and hope your brain somehow connects the sound to the meaning?
isnt that… how english works…? and other languages…?
Hi op, I know what you mean. I struggled with 消しゴム (eraser) because the sounds felt so random. Ke-shi-go-mu, that’s 4 syllables to remember for a simple thing! But I stuck with it in Anki and eventually it just clicked. Now it’s in my long term memory.
Much later on I learnt the etymology of the word and it just reinforces the learning. 消し means to get rid of, and ゴム is rubber.