A website for creating mnemonics for Chinese characters

[Matthias]

Hey folks,

 

I've started a website for creating mnemonics for Chinese characters and wanted to ask you for your opinion. It's called http://www.mandarinbanana.com. You can create mnemonics and add images to already existing mnemonics using a paint-like front-end. There are also example sentences taken from "Spring in a Small Town" (thanks to the forum user who extracted the subtitles for that movie). You can also review characters. I built the website because I feel like this is the way I want to learn more Chinese, and I think it's only logically to collectively build a collection of creative, memorizable, informative mnemonics. What do you think about it?

 

Actually I wanted to post a thread like this yesterday, but then I saw that there are a zillion rules about posting introductions to your own website on this forum. So I wrote an email to the admin(s) but got no reply. I hope this thread stays online because I would really like to find out one thing: When visiting the website, do you feel it's useful or not?

 

Cheers

Matthias

 

 

[imron]

So I wrote an email to the admin(s) but got no reply

If it was the admin@ email account then it is admin (singular) that receives those emails.  I guess Roddy is on holiday.  Anyway, the main rules are - make sure you tell people your connection to the website and don't go posting in every topic that is marginally relevant.  Stick to that and you should be fine.

[Shelley]

Do you want my honest opinion?

 

If not you can ignore the rest of this post or even ask me to delete it.

 

What a lot of hard work. It is like learning another language to learn Chinese with. As for Gorodish wow even more hard work.

 

i would/will rather put all this effort into learning and memorising characters with out this extra layer of confusion. i don't know why people want to try and do this sort of thing.

 

I have never seen anything like this for any other language people might try and learn so why do people insist on doing it for Chinese?

 

If you learn Chinese correctly ie learn the history, etymology, origin of characters and some Chinese culture, characters make complete sense and do not need this extra layer of confusion.

 

At first I thought well it might be ok for kids but on second thought no, don't muddle their little brains with all this unnecessary stuff.

 

Sorry not to be more positive but it is my opinion, and remember that it is only my opinion and that doesn't really count for much in the long run. In the big picture it means nothing.

 

I don't wish you anything bad, just maybe some advice about rethinking what you are spending your time on.

 

So there it is.

 

Just say the word and i will remove this post, as I don't want to upset you, but I did feel I had to say it as I saw it..

[Matthias]

Thanks for your feedback. Of course I want your honest opinion, and I know not to take it personally. On the contrary, this is what I want: honest, constructive criticism. So I want to encourage everyone to write about the shortcomings of the website. I can only profit from it!

[roddy]

I did start to reply to your email, but I felt I had to say that I don't think there's a lot of demand for (more) intricate mnemonic schemes. And it took so long to phrase that tactfully that I think I wandered off and did something else.

 

I like the lining up of video clips though.  

[hedwards]

I'll take a look at this, it has potential.

 

You'll find that some people like imron are a bit more old school about how they go about it. For them it seems to work out fine, even if to me it seems to border on masochism at times.

 

Personally, I tend to prefer a radical based mnemonic system when the character doesn't just stick on it's own. Drawing is an interesting wrinkle, usually I don't bother drawing the mnemonic, but I can see how that might be useful for some people.

 

I think the biggest benefit that this site could provide is examples for people to help them learn to create their own when a character isn't obvious to them.

 

@Roddy, I think you're mostly right there. In my experience, some characters need that sort of thing and I think that just having a site with examples would be a great benefit for people that are having a hard time remembering a character. But, I don't personally recommend creating a hugely complicated mnemonic unless one has to. Most of the time, with enough exposure to the writing system in general, one just needs a relatively simple mnemonic.

 

I've contemplated creating my own system, but I have come to the conclusion that it's more work than it's really worth as most complicated characters don't require that much of a system. Remembering the radicals that are present, the pronunciation, tone and meaning is more than sufficient. And usually just knowing one meaning at first is enough. Attaching a second, third or eighth meaning seems to be easier than trying to do it all at once.

[Matthias]

Okay, so thanks everyone for the suggestions. I thought about them and I think I got one or two good ideas from it. Cheers!