Remembering is a skill you can learn: Mnemonics for Chinese learners

Remembering is not a fixed, innate ability; it’s a skill you can learn. In fact, there are many proven and easy ways to improve your memory!

Forgetting is the nemesis of language learners.

You hear a new word in a podcast and look it up, but when you encounter it again later, you’ve already forgotten what it means.

Learning Chinese characters feels like trying to hold water in your hands. You scoop it up and hold on for a moment, but if you do nothing, it slips away through your fingers.

What if we could forget less and remember more?

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Remembering is a skill you can learn: Mnemonics for Chinese learners

In this article, we will discuss the following:

1. Mnemonics are clever memory techniques that help you remember
2. Mnemonics can be used to remember almost anything
3. You can use the same tricks memory champions use
4. Why mnemonics work: Hacking the brain’s ability to make connections
5. Mnemonics: key principles
6. Using mnemonics to learn Chinese
7. Using mnemonics in different areas of Chinese
8. Reflections on using mnemonics for learning Chinese
9. My story: How I came into contact with mnemonics
10. Conclusion: Remembering is a skill you can learn

Mnemonics are clever memory techniques that help you remember

While it’s not realistic to remember everything we learn, we can improve our ability to remember important things by using the right techniques.

Such memory techniques are called mnemonics (pronounced as if there was no initial “m”; from the Greek word mnēmonikos, meaning “relating to memory”).

Most mnemonics rely on the mind’s ability to notice and remember connections between things and events. By linking things together in vivid and memorable ways, remembering them becomes much easier.

For example, if you want to remember “water”, “sheep” and “ocean” (this will make sense later), repeating these words over and over only works if you want to recall them very soon or if you have very few things to memorise.

Try this instead: In your mind’s eye, picture a giant sheep wading across the Atlantic Ocean, wool wet and dripping with water. If you make this image vivid, it’s likely to stick for a long time.

Mnemonics can be used to remember almost anything

Mnemonics have been known about for thousands of years, yet are still either unknown to or frowned upon by the general public. Here are a few things anyone can do quickly and with some practice:

• Remember a large number of objects in a list, in order
• Memorise a deck of cards (or ten)
• Commit to memory as many PIN codes as you want

There are people who compete in trying to remember things. You might think that people who win such competitions are savants, born with a fantastic ability to recall digits of pi, playing cards, Rubik’s Cubes or whatever they are memorising.

But it’s not so.

These techniques can be learnt by anyone.

Yes, that includes you!

You can use the same tricks memory champions use

My goal in this article is to convince you that remembering is a skill you can learn. There’s only so much I can say about this in one article, so I will rely on others for help.

Please watch this TED Talk by Joshua Foer. I promise it will be worth your while. If you want a written version, you can check his article in The New York Times. If you want a longer written version, you can read his book Moonwalking with Einstein (also available in Chinese: 与爱因斯坦月球漫步).

Here’s the “too long; didn’t read” version in case you really can’t watch the video or read the article, but I strongly recommend that you do.

Joshua Foer started as a journalist covering a memory competition. He thought the participants had innate, phenomenal memory, but it turned out they relied on learnable skills. He tried it so he could write about it better, and he ended up winning the US Memory Championship.

Why mnemonics work: Hacking the brain’s ability to make connections

Learning is largely about connecting things you want to learn to things you already know.

As mentioned earlier, the human mind has evolved to be very good at noticing connections between objects that stand out. Connecting the colour pattern on a mushroom to later disease, or the sound of an animal to danger, is vital for survival.

This ability can be hacked. If you know how and why it works, you can make connections between objects stand out in a way that is hard to forget.

Do you still remember the sheep wading through the ocean? Good.

Mnemonics: key principles

Depending on what you want to memorise and why, there are many different techniques you can use. They all rely on the same principles, so let’s look at the most important ones:

• Association and linking: As mentioned, the brain is well adapted to notice and remember connections. Not just any connections, of course, but those that stand out. Make them stand out when you form them.
• Visualisation: Both a poisonous mushroom and a dangerous animal are real, tangible objects. To hijack the mind’s ability to remember, we need to make it as real as possible. People differ in how vividly they can visualise images, but this is about a connection feeling real, not about creating a high-resolution, accurate mental image.
• Stories and events: Humans are also good at remembering stories as a series of connected events (episodic memory). If you want to remember longer chains of objects, connecting them together to form a story can work well.
• Locations: There are many mnemonic methods, such as memory palaces and the method of loci, that rely on our ability to recall physical locations. By mentally placing what you want to memorise in known locations, you can later revisit that location to retrieve the memory. This works best when you only need to memorise things temporarily, so it’s very popular in memory competitions.
• Pegs: It’s hard to remember something without a concrete meaning. Visualising a sheep is easy, but visualising the number 8 is harder because it’s abstract. A peg system maps things you want to remember (but are hard to visualise) to things you already know (and are easy to visualise). For example, you could associate the number 8 with sunglasses. When you want to memorise a PIN code containing the number 8, you use sunglasses instead. Perhaps the code to the garage door at work is sunglasses, camel, cable car, sunglasses. This is much easier to connect into a memorable chain than 8368 is.

Peg systems can be very complex. The more you plan to use them, the more it makes sense to invest time and effort into building them.

For example, if you want to get good at memorising numbers, having one peg for every number between 0 and 9 won’t cut it. Instead, have one peg for every number between 0 and 99. This way, you halve the number of objects you need to associate when memorising numbers. Naturally, learning the peg system takes much longer.

When learning Chinese, tones and pronunciation are good examples of abstract things that are hard to visualise. I discussed how to use pegs to solve this problem here: How to use mnemonics to learn Mandarin tones and pronunciation.

How to use mnemonics to learn Mandarin tones and pronunciation

Using mnemonics to learn Chinese

So far, I’ve used examples not related to Chinese. This is because I wanted to highlight the general effectiveness of mnemonics and introduce them without also needing to explain how Chinese works.

You can, of course, use mnemonics to learn Chinese. You can use them for everything from memorising characters to remembering tones.

Using mnemonics in different areas of Chinese

In my series of articles about the building blocks of Chinese, I explain how the Chinese writing system works and why it’s crucial to be able to identify building blocks and understand how they fit together.

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

In short, we have simple characters that can form compounds, which can then be combined into words. Every step here is great for mnemonics:

• Use vivid images to visualise basic characters. Example: Don’t just note that 火 means “fire”. See the flame flicker and the sparks flying; feel the heat.
• Link components in compounds in memorable ways. Example: The character for “ocean” is 洋 and contains the components “tawer” and “sheep”. You already have a mnemonic for this.
• Chain characters together to form words. Thinking of “computer”, 电脑/電腦 (diànnǎo), as “electric” + “brain” is great, but also visualise frying that wobbly piece of fatty tissue with huge electrodes sending bolts of lightning through it.

I think Chinese characters and words are uniquely well-suited to using mnemonics, but as mentioned, you can use them to remember pronunciation as well. They can also be used to remember abstract or vague character components.

How to create mnemonics for general or abstract character components

Reflections on using mnemonics for learning Chinese

I have used mnemonics a lot to memorise things like credit card numbers and Rubik’s Cubes (for blindfolded cubing; more about this later), but I’ve also used them to learn Chinese.

Here are some insights I want to share:

• Mnemonics can be a stepping stone. The goal with using a mnemonic is not always the end of learning, but a point along the way. This is true for most mnemonics related to the spoken language. You can rely on a mnemonic when you first learn a word, but as you speak more Mandarin, you don’t need the mnemonic, and it will fade. Relying on mnemonics to recall common words is too slow.
• Mnemonics are especially suited for learning Chinese characters. This is because you usually have time to stop for a bit and recall how to write a tricky character, compared to stopping mid-sentence to recall the tone of a word.
• Mnemonics can work long term, but they also need reinforcement. Most people can’t rely only on mnemonics to remember things; they also need reviewing, preferably spaced repetition. This doesn’t mean that you should review the mnemonic specifically, but that you should use it to review whatever it is it’s targeting.
• Don’t use mnemonics for everything. Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should encode everything you want to learn with mnemonics. That would be extremely tedious and time-consuming. You’re better off using mnemonics deliberately when you need to.

Why spaced repetition software is uniquely well suited to learning Chinese characters

My story: How I came into contact with mnemonics

I became interested in mnemonics when I studied psychology at university. It wasn’t part of the syllabus, but a classmate recommended a book about memory techniques that I devoured.

I then started applying what I had learnt to many things, but mainly practical ones such as remembering phone numbers, PIN codes, credit card numbers and the like.

A few years later, I became interested in Rubik’s Cube and found a guide on how to solve the cube blindfolded (if you want to learn this, do not use that guide; there are easier methods today, such as Old Pochmann).

Just like Joshua Foer, I thought this must be a feat reserved for geniuses, so when the author claimed it could be learnt in a week, I didn’t really believe him.

So I tried. At the time, I could solve the cube sighted in roughly a minute.

Almost exactly one week later, I solved it blindfolded for the first time.

Something I had thought impossible took one week to learn.

When I started learning Chinese, I found it natural to use the skills I had acquired to learn characters, which turned out nicely. I haven’t used mnemonics for all the characters I know, far from it, and I don’t remember most of them today (see the note about stepping stones above), but they’ve worked well for me,

For more about Chinese characters and Rubik’s Cube, see also What a big Rubik’s Cube taught me about Chinese characters.

What a big Rubik’s Cube taught me about Chinese characters

Conclusion: Remembering is a skill you can learn

The goal with this article was to convince you that memory can be trained, that mnemonics work and that they can be used to learn Chinese.

Check the next article in this series for more details about how to do this in practice: How to make Chinese easier by using mnemonics and memory techniques.

How to make Chinese easier by using mnemonics and memory techniques

Please leave a comment below if you have any questions or feedback!

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

Editor’s note: This article, originally published in 2013, was rewritten and republished in March 2026.