I started learning Japanese, and the first section is learning Higagana (one of the Japanese forms of writing). For each of the characters, the book draws a little character, or something, and with a mnemonic to help you remember what it sounds like.
For the character “wo”, (pronounced more like “oh”), they altered the character to appear as a person riding a unicycle. The caption reads, “Oh, I can ride a unicycle.”
What can I say, I’m just easliy ammused.
jl
Hiragana
I always thought the Unicyclist mnemonic for “wo” in that book was a bit of a stretch, image-wise…
… but if it helps you remember it, great. Ganbatte!
This is not how Japanese learn the Hiragana, by the way. They just learn them by writing them over and over… the same way English speakers learn the alphabet.
Re: Hiragana
> this is -not- how Japanese learn the hiragana, by the way. they just
> learn them by writing them over and over… the same way English
> speakers learn the alphabet.
That’s not how I learned the alphabet. My mom or dad would be reading Dr.
Seuss to me and point to a letter. I could read and write fine before I got
to kindergarten.
Of course, when I got there and the evil troll kindergarten teacher (hi Mrs.
Wall! Remember me?!) made me write right-handed, I lost the latter skill for
that year.
I used Lorayne mnemonics to learn kana. It took a weekend instead of a
semester.
Re: Hiragana
Not uni related, but ‘wo’ for me is the
Planck constant over the speed of light:
h(bar)/c. h(bar) is h over 2*pi, if memory
serves…