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* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taihang_Mountains
* https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/太行山
The name refers to it being West of the <<taihang-mountains>>.
[[chinese-cheatsheet]]
== Chinese cheatsheet (中文备忘单)
Single author open source Pleco + "Remembering Simplified Hanzi" in a single .adoc file? Let's go.
We'd use https://rtega.be/chmn/ as basis if it weren't for the NO in CC-BY-NO-SA? But that NO is evil, what the heck does it even mean to gain money from something? Too restrictive.
Format will be very constant, database like. Would therefore be cool to parse it from the Asciidoctor into a proper database as a way to verify and allow third party usage.
Base mnemonic components can come more or less directly from the 214 Kangxi radicals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical
One key principle is that characters and words often don't have a well translatable meaning: the minimal always translatable unit is a sentence: <<chinese-sentences>>!
You can't fully learn a language by learning words and characters alone, you must learn sentences.
....
[[<character>]]
=== <character> (<pinyin>, <mnemonic name>)
* <chinese-word-containing>
* <chinese-word-containing>
* <character-containing>
* <character-containing>
* <<english-word>>
** <<chinese-sentence-containing>>
* <<random-text>>
* <<random-text>>
....
* `Translations` is only used when it is a single character word, if it goes inside a word, only the word will contain the sentence
[[top-part-of-每]]
==== Top part of 每 (, pistol)
Mnemonic: Can't find the freaking Unicode. It looks like a **pistol**.
[[top-part-of-存]]
==== Top part of 存 (, market stall)
Mnemonic: the dot indicates something that stays on top of the head of a king (<<王>>)
Notes: there is no "proper" Chinese name for this, it is just known as "the top part of <<青>>" (青字頭) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/龶
Mnemonic: the **sun** (<<日>>) is so bright on that **one** (<<一>>) day, that it was almost **white**
Mnemonic: Kangxi 20 is "wrap". So we choose plastic wrap as a specific type of wrapping that will give good mnemonics.
Mnemonic: **one** (<<一>>) thing is always beloow a **tree** (<<本>>): **potato** roots
Mnemonic: an ancient spoon, looks like this: https://read01.com/aAEn50x.html#.XnfZDN_niV4 "古人吃饭最早不用筷子，用的是"匕"，那"匕"是什么？
Mnemonic: imagine a soldier wearing **green** (<<龶>>) camouflage **clothes** (<<衣>>), and checking his **watch** to know if it is time to attack
Mnemonic: the kangxi description is "divination". Since this is completely unrelated to common contexts of modern people, we select a wand use a magic-related object that can be easily put into fun stories: a magic wand.
Mnemonic: unclear, possibly **magic wand** <<卜>>
Mnemonic: every **dawn** <<旦>>, men have to **check** if their penises are hard as **wood** <<木>>, and if so they have to stay in bed for a while longer because it is too embarrassing to walk out like that, see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_wood
Mnemonic: the Jewish **child** (<<子>>) **survived** from the Nazis by hiding under a **market stall** (<<top-part-of-存>>)
Mnemonic: that **evening** (<<夕>>), **one** (<<一>>) **supervillain** attacked us!
Mnemonic: that lunch **bill** cost as much as buying **eighty** (<<十>> <<八>>) rice **fields** (<<田>>)!
Mnemonic: **dawn** is when the **sun** (<<日>>) is raising over the horizon (<<一>>)
Mnemonic: I saw a **person** (<<人>>) walking at **dawn** (<<旦>>). It was beautiful, **but** why wouldn't they be sleeping instead?
Mnemonic: **my** penis looks like a **white** (<<白>>) **wrap sandwitch** (<<勺>>)
Mnemonic: his **superpower** (<<力>>) is to **move** fart **clouds** (<<云>>) with his mind
Mnemonic: to progress slowly, adding **inch** (<<寸>>) by inch, **again** (<<又>>) and again, is the **correct** way to progress
Mnemonic: one **wrap sandwitch** (<<勺>>) is fine for lunch, but two on too **many**
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Mnemonic: I'll stab **you** with a **small** (<<小>>) knife (<<刀>>)
Characters:
* <<你>>
[[二]]
==== 二 (er4, two)
Characters:
* 元
[[肺]]
==== 肺 (fei4, lungs)
Mnemonic: he didn't have two **lungs**, but rather one **moon** (<<月>>) and one **lung** (<<巿>>)
Words:
* <<肺炎>>
[[巿]]
==== 巿 (fu2, lung)
Mnemonic: due to an infection, doctors had to dry up **one** (<<一>>) of his **lung** with a **towel** (<<巾>>)
Characters:
* <<肺>>
[[干]]
==== 干 (gan1, dry)
Characters:
* <<幸>>
Sentences:
* <<肺炎疫情下的武汉幸存者我是不幸之中幸运的人>>
[[该]]
==== 该 (gai1, dry)
Mnemonic: TODO **speak** (<<言>>)
Translations:
* that, the afore mentioned
** <<目前该网站也和国内外很多大学的图书馆有合作例如武汉大学南京大学等等>>
*** Here, 该网站 (that website) is referring to a specific website mentioned in previous sentences of the Zhihu answer.
[[根]]
==== 根 (gen1, roots)
Mnemonic: **roots** one **root** (<<艮>>) plus one root and lots of **wood** (<<木>>)
[[艮]]
==== 艮 (gen4, root)
Mnemonic: radical of **roots** (<<根>>)
Notes: this is a Kangxi radical, but its English name "stopping" is just too close to the more important "stop" <<止>> and would cause confusion. So we just use the common phonetic compound **roots** (<<根>>) as the mnemonic. It was tempting to leave "root" for <<本>>, which looks perfectly like a root, but we did character first, and "potato" makes for even better mnemonics.
Characters:
* <<根>>
[[冠]]
==== 冠 (guan1, corona)
Mnemonic: when Queen Elizabeth was crowned, the **first** (<<元>>) thing they put a one **inch** (<<寸>>) **hajib** <<冖>> on her head, and then the **corona** of a Christian saint saint appeared on her head
Notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona
[[禾]]
==== 禾 (he2, grain)
Mnemonic: imagine **one** <<一>> **grain** of rice coming out of **wood** (<<木>>)
Characters:
Mnemonic: nothing is more **harmonious** than putting some **grains** <<禾>> in your **mouth** <<口>>
Mnemonic: **stepping** (<<彳>>) on a tree **root** (<<艮>>) is a **very** bad idea, it might be a tree spirit that gets angry and eats you!
[[交]]
==== 交 (jiao1, exchange student)
Mnemonic: we measured **six** <<六>> American **exchange students** <<交>> on a **balance** <<乂>> to see which one was heaviest. Idea comes from 交流 (exchange student).
Mnemonic: person carrying bath towel over shoulders.
Mnemonic: the **spirit** <<示>> of the **woods** <<林>> **forbids** <<禁>> burning trees!
Mnemonic: his **field** (<<田>>) streched over one **mile** (<<里>>), but it consisted of barren **soil** (<<土>>) without any plants
Mnemonic: the **king** (<<王>>) Louis XIV was a big patron of the mectric system, which intends to improve **science** by removing useless units like the **mile** (<<里>>)
Mnemonic: there must exist a **list** of **supervillains** (<<歹>>) with **knives** (<<刀>>) on the web? A knife-yielding supervillain **list**! https://techland.time.com/2010/09/03/top-ten-heroes-and-villians-with-big-knives/
Mnemonic: there are lots of **trees** <<木>> in the **woods** <<林>>
Mnemonic: the simplified character was completely mutilated into a bunch of senseless traces unmemorizable traces. The traditional 臨 can be broken into: the **Prime minister** (<<臣>>) temporarily decided to increase production of an important **product** (<<品>>): **pistols** (<<top-part-of-每>>), until the zombie apocalypse would be over.
Mnemonic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory[spoon theory] is very logical and explains how using **spoons** (<<匕>>) is a good metaphor for a **person**'s (<<人>>) energy consumption
Mnemonic: "**rationale**" the fancy way that engineers **say** (<<言>>) "**logic**" (<<仑>>)
Mnemonic: it is pretty **logical** (<<仑>>) that a **car** (<<车>>) needs **wheels**
Mnemonic: if you **do not have** any **water** (<<水>>) for your **coffee** (<<殳>>), it won't be very good
[[冖]]
==== 冖 (mi4, hajib [Muslim female head scarf])
Notes: the Wikipedia Kangxi is "cloth cover". Ciro guesses this was originally something to do with food covering. But let's just go with hajib which will allow for easy <<politically-incorrect,politically incorrect>> mnemonics. "Crown" from <<冠>> would also be another good one, but we had already used crown for <<龶>>.
Mnemonic: **person** (<<人>>) **you** (<<尔>>)
Mnemonic: you need **claws** (<<爪>>) to **climb** (爬) **Brazil**'s (<<巴>>) tallest mountain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_da_Neblina[Pico da Neblina]
Mnemonic: you need a lot of food **products** to feed the three **mouths** (<<口>>) of three children!
Mnemonic: to transform a frog into a princess, you have to **tap** your **magic wand** (<<卜>>) **again and again** (<<又>>) on it
Mnemonic: a super powerful <<十>> with an extra trace
Notes: careful to not confuse with <<干>> which has a straight top.
Mnemonic: the **crown** (<<龶>>) of the king was **blue** and **moon-shaped** (<<月>>)
Notes: it is more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyan[green-blue/Cyan], see also https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/青色 but let's call it blue because it will be used in many constructs.
Mnemonic: imagine a Caribbean sea **water** (<<水>>) was is **blue** (<<青>>) and **clear**
Notes: clear in the sense of "not dirty" and "a clear explanation". "Clear colors" use TODO 浅 as in 浅蓝.
Mnemonic: in his **heart** (<<心>>), the greatest **lust** was that of **blue** (<<青>>) underwear
Mnemonic: imagine one **big** (<<大>>) **dog** wagging its tail, the extra dot is the tail
Mnemonic: it is something that you would put inside **plastic wrap** (<<勹>>)
Notes: this is one of the main words for spoon, but that mnemonic is already taken by the Kangxi <<匕>>, so we had to go for something else.
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Mnemonic: **God** <<申>> **spirit** (<<示>>)
[[审]]
==== 审 (shen3, inspect)
Mnemonic: if you are going to **inspect** what's making those noises on the **roof** (<<宀>>), you will certainly find that it was **God** (<<申>>)
[[生]]
==== 生 (sheng1, be born, birth)
Mnemonic: as soon as the prince **was born** <<生>>, only **one** (<<一>>) **crown** <<龶>> was put on his head, not two as expected since he was the child of the rulers of kingdoms
Words:
* <<生存>>
[[十]]
==== 十 (shi2, ten)
* <<单>>
[[时]]
==== 时 (shi2, time)
Mnemonic: if the **sun** (<<日>>) moves an **inch** (<<寸>>) in the sky, then that means that 1 minute of **time** has passed
* make someone become some way
** <<what-doesn-t-kill-me-makes-me-stronger>>
*** here we see the common pattern "使 someone 更 something" meaning: "make someone become more something"
Mnemonic: imagine **two** <<二>> **small** <<小>> child **spirits** playing with one another, maybe they died during a nuclear explosion and never noticed what happened
Mnemonic: **privacy** is all about storing your precious **grain** (<<禾>>) in a **private** (<<厶>>) location
Mnemonic: his **coffee** keeps falling from the **side table** (<<几>>) on the floor **again** (<<又>>) and again
Note: this shows what a 殳 weapon actually was: http://wenzhengwenhua.com/article-2023-1.html
[[树]]
==== 树 (shu4, trees)
Mnemonic: it is **correct** (<<对>>) to say that **trees** (树) are made out of of **wood** (<<木>>)
[[讨]]
==== 讨 (tao3, discuss)
Mnemonic: in their **discussions** (<<讨论>>), they always **talked** (<<言>>) about how his penis was only one **inch** <<寸>> long
Mnemonic: he was doing something **private** (<<厶>>) to her with his **mouth** (<<口>>) on the train **platform**
[[体]]
==== 体 (ti3, body)
Mnemonic: the Irish **people** <<人>> eat so much **potato** (<<本>>) that 90% of their **bodies** are made out of potato molecules
[[土]]
==== 土 (tu3, soil)
Notes: the normal Kangxi translation is "earth", but we are afraid that this could be ambiguous with the "Planet Earth", so choosing soil instead
Mnemonic: atoms are part of **matter** <<物>>
Mnemonic: **cows** (<<牛>>) are made of **atoms** (<<勿>>), both of which are made of **matter**
Mnemonic: you will have much better **luck** cycling when the **soil** (<<土>>) is **dry** (<<干>>)
Mnemonic: to **give birth** <<生>> to a **person** <<人>> you must first have **sex** <<性>>