Hi everyone,

Using the mnemonics I'm able to easily remember the definition and writing of a character (usually it takes me no more than one or two reviews to write it quickly) but what gets me is the pinyin.

It would be interesting to hear what techniques/methods, if any, people use to remember the pinyin.

Hi,

I agree that pinyin is maybe even more difficult than writing. What helps me is a mnemonic to another character with the same pinyin. Example: to remember the pinyin of 签证/簽證 (qiānzhèng - visa) I have the mnemonic that to get a visa, I have to pay money 钱/錢 (qián) and I use the right half of the simplified character 正.

Just one of many possibilities, I guess.
Chris

Thanks Chris. Very interesting, I will definately try that!

Keep them coming nonetheless..

Hi,

I use the technique in Alison Matthews book 'Learning Chinese CHaracters', she just adds the 'sound' of the character in the mnemonic. Eg.

For 利 'Each GRAIN must be split open with a KNIFE to get the full BENEFIT of the nutrients, the DWARF cooks it in a LItre of water and leaves it to soak'.

She also has a system to remember the tone too - if the DWARF is in the story it is 4th tone. (a GIANT is 1st, a FAIRY is 2nd, a TEDDY is 3rd and a ROBOT is neutral.

You use the sound, not always the pinyin spelling, so you could use 'SHINGle' for xing， BANdages for Ban, BAcon for Bei etc. you just use a word that makes the story interesting that has the sound in it somewhere.

Her book already has stoies for 800 characters (and their components). I have just carried on with her system for new characters.

This technique has been the key to any success I have enjoyed!

Cheers,
Donna

I don't know how helpful this will be, but I can assure you that with time it will be a lot easier to remember the pinyin, since you will be able to recognize the 声旁 (sound part?) of most characters.

证整症征政怔 etc all are pronounced zheng because you the 正 声旁. Tones though will always be a pain in the ass ^^

DaXia -
Your last comment is not very encouraging. I am forever confusing the tones of 低 and 底, 争and 挣 ... and so many more; is there no hope?

sarac, why not make tone mnemonics for those characters which you frequently miss the tone of? That has been my useful solution for whenever I continue to mess up tones after regular practice.

DaXia and Sarac, I certainly don't have a problem with tones. In fact they are probably the easiest for me to remember strangely enough. Even if I don't remember the pinyin after I reviewed a character I still remember the correct tone almost invariably. I wonder why this is and similarly why I'm having such difficulties with pinyin.

Aurora, thank you for your quite interesting method. I don't know if it works for me yet or not but I will give it a try and tell you how it works out. It takes a bit more time than Chris method and I'm usually too lazy to come up with my own mnemonics but it could be worth the extra time.

I found this thread with the same question but on another forum.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=19708&PN=13

One poster wrote this:

"I'd recommend you to work on your pronunciation and speaking skills. After having to struggle to produce those sounds, and make them sound right, they tend to come alive in a different way and start feeling like old friends after a while, which helps memorization."

When I think about it the pinyin sounds I'm having the biggest problem learning are usually those that are not that common. For example if it's a "SHI" sound I'm usually able to recognise it as being that. Maybe the above poster is correct when he sais that the "sounds come to live after a while". For example, just before I wrote this I was struggling with remembering the pinyin for 制 but then again maybe the problem is that I don't know many characters with "ZHI" yet so it's not really familiar to me and I don't have anywhere to put it so to speak.

Any thoughts on this? Do you agree? More suggestion please!

funchinese, you should turn on pinyin/reading practice in your account settings. That will help you remember the pinyin!