How to make Chinese easier by using mnemonics and memory techniques

Mnemonics are clever memory techniques that can be used to memorise everything from decks of cards to speeches, but how do you use them to learn Chinese?

This is a follow-up to my article Remembering is a skill you can learn: Mnemonics for Chinese learners. If you haven’t read it already, I suggest that you do before reading this one.

In this article, we’re going to look at how we can apply everything we learnt about mnemonics in the previous article to learning Chinese in particular.

1. Chinese is easier to learn if you know its building blocks and how they fit together
2. Learning characters and words is largely about combining building blocks
3. Understanding the Chinese writing system
4. What aspect of Chinese vocabulary should you memorise?
5. Don’t use mnemonics for everything
6. How to create long-lasting associations
7. Make associations uniquely tied to the components
8. Five common Chinese character components and how to use them in your mnemonics
9. Becoming a master of mnemonics: Trial and error
10. Mnemonics can’t be mastered by learning from others

Chinese is easier to learn if you know its building blocks and how they fit together

Mnemonics are great for learning Chinese, more so than for learning most other languages. The reason is the modular nature of the Chinese writing system.

Words in Chinese usually consist of two or more characters. In turn, the characters often contain two or more components. Sometimes, even the components have components. Building blocks all the way down.

The point is that almost everything in Chinese means something. If you break a word into characters, the characters mean something. If you break characters down into components, they also mean something.

Learning characters and words is largely about combining building blocks

Assuming that you know a bit about the structure of the writing system, becoming literate in Chinese is not about learning thousands of unique characters, but about learning how to combine a few hundred components into compounds.

If you don’t already know about the building blocks of Chinese, I suggest that you read or listen to this series after you finish this article!

The building blocks of Chinese, part 1: Chinese characters and words in a nutshell

Understanding the Chinese writing system

The most powerful principle when trying to learn anything is understanding. This is not only because it’s easier to remember things you understand, but also because you can avoid many pitfalls.

For example, even if mnemonics for compound characters that ignore the components can work in the short term, this is really bad in the long term.

Let’s look at two examples:

• Memorising 吃 (chī), “to eat”, as a mouth and a nose 乞 (qǐ), eating an ice cream, 口 (kǒu). You have taken an abstract character and turned it into a memorable image. Sounds good, but your goal is not to learn just this character, but hundreds or thousands of them. In that case, doesn’t it make more sense to let 口 actually be a mouth? That makes sense in most characters where it appears because this is the actual meaning of the component.
• Memorising 因 (yīn), “reason”, as a tent with flaps. If this allows you to remember how to write it, you’d think that it’s a good mnemonic, but the problem is that it completely ignores the structure of the character. This is a compound; use the building blocks.

This does not mean that you always have to fully understand every character and word that you learn, or that you need to care about their true origin.

However, make sure to at least check what’s going on before you make something up.

If the real story is useful, you kill two birds with one stone: you memorise the character, but you also learn something real about the writing system that can come in handy later.

What aspect of Chinese vocabulary should you memorise?

For each vocabulary item you want to memorise in Chinese, there are at least three main types of information you could potentially memorise:

• Writing
• Meaning
• Pronunciation

If you want, you can also split these into several separate types of information, so for pronunciation, we could include initial, final and tone, for example. In theory, you could also add other things, such as parts of speech, usage and much more.

Don’t use mnemonics for everything

I think it’s a serious mistake to try to use mnemonics to memorise all of this for every character and word you encounter. You will spend way too much time on creating and working with mnemonics, time you could have used to read more instead.

Most of these things should be learnt through input, through listening and reading, not mnemonics or flashcards.

Remember, the problem with making up stories is that remembering stories you made up yourself is likely not part of your goal for learning Chinese.

So don’t use mnemonics for everything.

Don’t use mnemonics for everything when learning Chinese

Don’t use mnemonics to remember the initial and final if you find them easy to remember anyway (but do use them for the tone if that eludes you).

Don’t use mnemonics to learn every single character. Some of them just stick without much effort. Bring out the mnemonics for the characters you struggle with.

A flexible approach allows you to maximise the gains of mnemonics while not losing focus on what really matters.

How to create long-lasting associations

In the previous article in this series, I said that the brain is very good at remembering associations that stand out. It’s time to look at that statement a little bit more closely.

Stands out how, exactly?

Well, that’s a bit tricky, because it differs from learner to learner.

There are, however, a few basic ways of making associations that are easy to remember. Not all of them might work for you, but they are worth considering.

• Absurd: The more exaggerated the association, the easier it is to remember. Logic is not your friend here. If you want to remember 洋 (yáng), “ocean”, don’t picture a sheep 羊 (yáng) next to some water 氵(shuǐ). Instead, and as we saw in the previous article, picture a giant sheep with dripping wet wool wading across the Atlantic.
• Shameful: Embarrassing associations work well, especially those that relate to taboos. For example, sex can be great (purely from a language-learning perspective, of course). Many people report that shameful and embarrassing images stick the longest.
• Funny: Use humour whenever you can. It’s fun and funny things are easier to remember. One of my favourite mnemonics is remembering the traditional character 覬 (jì), “to covet; long for” by picturing myself “seeing” (見, jiàn) my neighbour’s huge “mountain” (山, shān) of beans (豆, dòu) and coveting what he has; “the other man’s bean mountain is always taller”.

Nothing stops you from combining these principles. Absurd things are often funny, and exaggerating something shameful makes it even more so.

Pro tip: You don’t have to share your mnemonics with anyone.

Make associations uniquely tied to the components

An essential but often overlooked principle for creating good mnemonics is to rely on the unique characteristics of the objects you’re connecting. For example, compare these two ways of associating 氵 (shuǐ), “water”, and 羊 (yáng), “sheep”, in the character 洋 (yáng), “ocean”.

• Picture an enormous sheep standing next to a pink ocean, from which water trickles upwards into the air.
• Picture an enormous sheep wading across the ocean. It’s completely soaked, and its wool drips water and stinks.

Both these mnemonics combine the same components. They are also both absurd and exaggerated.

However, the second one is much more likely to stick because it relies on the unique characteristics of the elements it contains.

• The sheep interacts with the ocean in a way that’s unique to oceans (the sheep wades or swims through it).
• The water has a direct effect on the sheep (its wool is wet and stinky, and it probably looks goofy).
• The trickling water is the direct result of the interaction of the other two elements.

Now, this was just an example, and it’s not always as easy to come up with three-way associations where all parts interact like this, but at least try to make every part interact with something else in a way that is unique to at least one of the objects.

In other words, make elements interact with each other, not just appear next to each other.

Five common Chinese character components and how to use them in your mnemonics

Here are a few more examples of how to use the unique characteristics of five common components:

• 手 (shǒu), “hand”, can slap things, grab things, drag things, and so on. Make it do things only hands can do.
• 山 (shān), “mountain”, can squeeze things into a pancake, or let the object smash one of its peaks, or get impaled on it.
• 氵(shǔi), “water” (vertical variant), can, as we saw in the example with the sheep, make things wet. If you want to keep it separate from the full form 水, you can let 氵 be a trickle of water and 水 be large amounts of it.
• 灬 (huǒ), “fire” (horizontal variant), is great for putting a fire under things (literally). Burn them up! Or down. Again, you can keep it apart from the full version 火 (huǒ) by letting that one be a bonfire.
• 口 (kǒu), “mouth”, is great for putting things in. This often results in bizarre or disgusting results without really trying. Chew it, taste it, eat it.

Coming up with mnemonics that work for you takes practice, though. I can show you the door, but you have to walk the path behind it.

Becoming a master of mnemonics: Trial and error

As mentioned in the previous article, I have spent a lot of time on mnemonics, some for learning Chinese, some for memorising other things.

When first starting with mnemonics, many people feel a certain amount of resistance. Some people think it’s weird, some think it’s hard, some think it’s both.

Weird is just a different way of saying “unfamiliar”; you’ll get used to it. Discarding a method that works because it’s ”weird” is also incredibly narrow-minded.

If you think it’s hard to come up with bizarre or exaggerated ways of associating objects, don’t worry! This is a skill you will develop. It takes time and effort to figure out what suits you, but it’s well worth it!

Mnemonics can’t be mastered by learning from others

The only way to master mnemonics is to use them yourself, note what works and what doesn’t, and repeat. Hundreds of times.

Naturally, you don’t start from scratch and guess at what may work; you start by relying on principles that have been proven to work for most people (as discussed in this and the previous article).

Then, through trial and error, you gradually master the art of mnemonics.

And Chinese will be both easier and more fun to learn!

All articles about mnemonics and memory techniques on Hacking Chinese

Here’s a complete inventory of articles about mnemonics and memory techniques for learning Mandarin, beginning with two introductory articles you should read first:

1. Remembering is a skill you can learn: Mnemonics for Chinese learners
2. How to make Chinese easier by using mnemonics and memory techniques

Once you know what mnemonics are and how they work in principle, it’s time to look at specific aspects. You don’t need to read these in any particular order, just choose topics you find interesting.

• How to use mnemonics to learn Mandarin tones and pronunciation
• Don’t use mnemonics for everything when learning Chinese
• Are mnemonics too slow for Chinese learners?
• How to create mnemonics for general or abstract character components
• Chinese characters and words that refuse to stick: Killing leeches
• Cultivate your Chinese flashcard garden… or burn it down and start afresh