What are your weird mnemonic devices?

TOES – Transitive verbs

  • T – Transitive
  • O – takes
  • Eえ-row vowel + る
  • S – often ends in ~す

Someone does something to something.

IGAR – Intransitive verbs

  • I – Intransitive
  • G – takes
  • Aあ-row vowel in the pair
  • R~る ending (often)

Something happens / ends up in a state.

It’s not perfect but it helps.

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“cat war”

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“mommy ray”

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“zuck me”

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“orca”

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“cakey”

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“sun watch”

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I could never remember the word for “kitchen” (だいどころ)

I think of it as “the place of machines”. There’s the coffee maker, fridge, oven, stand mixer, etc:

だい (台) – counter for machines
どころ – place for

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James Comey (sounds a bit like 興味 / きょうみ) former FBI director was “interested” in all sorts of investigations.

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I’m so happy I could pass on something helpful! :smiley:

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I love this! You taught me something new!

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My first girlfriend dumped me for a rich guy named Tom. So remembering 富 means “wealth” has been pretty easy. Just wish I could use it for whatever is the Japanese equivalent of “I’m better off without all that anyway.”

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Dr Wes to the rescue
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HdM7c-HsgUA

For 月曜日・げつようび (Monday): What’s the firat thing you do in the morning? You GET up. What’s the first day of the week? GETSUyoubi! The week also “gets up” on Monday :grin:.

For 喫茶店・きっさてん (coffee shop): I realised it’s read as “kiss a 10” and somehow it works :joy:.

I like yours, but this kind of blew my mind…

月曜日 is moon day…or Monday.
Same thing for Sunday. 日曜日 → literally sun day :exploding_head:
And then Friday’s pretty easy, since that’s sort of the standard payday… gold day/金曜日

I don’t know how to make fire day, water day, tree day, and dirt day work, but they’re a lot cooler than what we have in English.

I feel like Tuesday is the worst day of the work week. On Monday, you still remember what the weekend was like and how nice it hopefully was.

Tuesday though? It’s like being in the middle of the week, but the weekend is so far away still. Plus, Monday’s unsolved problems happen on Tuesday, and it feels like everything’s on fire. So Tuesday is the Fire Day.

Hopefully the fires are put out on Wednesday. At least, I hope Water Day fixes it…

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Idk I think Tyrs day, Odin’s day and Thor’s day are all pretty cool!!

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I know this english phrasing isn’t grammatically correct, but this is how I remember すなわち: “The thing I said すな (sooner) (as in earlier/before) わs (was) ちt (shit) → now I’ll rephrase it”

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曲がる (maga / magaru) is crooked, twisted, or going around a bend. That’s because MAGA is…

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Idk if this technically counts as a mnemonic, but I remember the difference between だんだん・どんどん by picturing the sound difference between a very slender person chasing something
だんだん:gradually

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Versus

a very burly dude chasing something down with all his might
どんどん:rapidly

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This is how I remember it too :laughing:

mine is a little weird…
むね means breast (i think) and it sounds like money…
im not sure what connection i make in between but it definitely works

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Hospital (びょういん) is tricky, but I remember it because the Titan Submersible disaster of 2023 was falsely said to be in partnership with Boeing.

If the people survived the Boeing disaster, they’d be in the hospital (びょういん).

Maybe the Titan Submisible wasn’t necessary to make the connection but it helped me lmao

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There’s an Irish word “boke” meaning to be sick or throw up (I read it in an Oliver Jeffers picture book).

This helps me to remember byouki means sick, because you’re feeling a bit bokey.

And then it’s easy for me to link byouki to byouin.

木曜日: I don’t know about you, but the only way I’m watching a Thor movie on a Thursday is if I get high smoking lots of trees (木). Why? because it makes the movie more cool (もく). Hell I’d even try to smoke the world tree given half a chance. If you don’t like the nsfw type stuff then maybe just something like Thor shoots lighting and the world tree and it starts s-mok(もく)ing. The japanese also use もくもく to describe smoke rising, so if you know that it could work too.

土曜日:What do you do with all that money you get on Friday? you go out for a few drinks(リンクス) of course. On Saturday you wake up face down in the dirt (土) thinking WTF did i DO (ど) last night!? Not talking from experience of course :lying_face:

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