1.1 你 (ni3): "you"

Let's learn and remember the Chinese character 你!

Have a look at the page below. Don't worry, you don't need to remember anything yet, we'll handle each component needed to remember 你 separately. You can use the lesson navigation menu at the top to get to the next lesson or to navigate back to the current lesson from any page, so feel free to explore.

The easiest and fastest way to remember Chinese characters is to learn their components, in this case: 亻 and 尔. We'll handle those in a few minutes, after having a brief look on the pronunciation "ni3" first. Click on "Next Lesson: ni3" in the lesson navigation at the top (or bottom) of the page once you're ready.

MandarinBanana uses a mnemonic system where each Pinyin is split up into two parts: an initial and a final. This is different from other systems for splitting up Pinyin into initials and finals, so you'll find different initials and finals in your 标准教程 Standard Course HSK 1 textbook. The creator of this specific method, Serge Gorodish, named it the "Marilyn Method". Sometimes I refer to the initials and finals of pinyin syllables as "Marilyns".

Let's not dig into the entire system here - instead, let's stick with our goal: to learn the character 你. In this system, the initial is "ni", and the final is "Ø3", which means "take the initial 'ni' and don't add anything to it, except for the third tone". On the next lesson we'll have a look at "ni" first before getting to "Ø3".

Here's the page for "ni", which can be combined with a number of Marilyn finals to form different Pinyin syllables. There's also a section with pronunciation tips!

Now let's slap on a mnemonic symbol to remember the pronunciation for 你, "ni3". A mnemonic symbol is a person or a thing which is used in mnemonics. I chose to go with Nefertiti to represent "ni", as I use a famous woman for each Marilyn with "i" in it. Feel free to add your own mnemonic symbol for "ni" below.

Further down on this page you can see that quite a few characters are sharing the pronunciation "ni". By associating "ni" with one mnemonic symbol, Nefertiti, it'll be easier to remember the pronunciation for all of these characters in the long run, although we first have to learn that "ni" = Nefertiti. By setting up a scaffold for making remembering the pronunciation of thousands of characters easier we set ourselves up for success.

The pinyin final "Ø3" indicates that you just take the pinyin initial (for example "ni") and just add the pinyin tone. Check out the examples below which pinyin uses "Ø3".

In our mnemonic system, pinyin finals are represented by locations. For "Ø" I choose a space station. The tones are indicated by individual areas of the location: 

1st tone: in front
2nd tone: in the kitchen
3rd tone: in the living room
4th tone: in the bathroom
5th tone: on the roof

In my mnemonic, any pinyin using "Ø3" as a final is represented by a scene in the living room of the space station.

Okay, so having learned and remembered the pronunciation "ni3", let's look at the components: 你 = 亻 + 尔.

So, let's learn 亻! This is a very common character component appearing in over 150 Chinese characters and refers to a person. Assigning a mnemonic symbol to this component has extremely high leverage: it makes learning literally hundreds of other Chinese characters easier!

When choosing mnemonic symbols, it's very important to be as specific as possible. "Person" could be anyone, you have to choose one specific person and stick with it. I choose "Rosa Luxemburg" because she's a famous historical person whose name starts with "r", as in "ren2". Remember that you can always add your own mnemonics with your own mnemonic symbols; but this comes at a cost, because then you'd have to rewrite all mnemonics that this symbol is used in. Choose wisely!

Next, let's have a look at the pronunciation "ren2", by first looking at "r". Click on "Next Lesson" when you're ready to go on.

"r" is for Robinson Crusoe.

(e)n2 is another pinyin final, which are represented as locations in the mnemonic stories. As a reminder, here are the different areas of the locations depending on the tone:

1st tone: in front
2nd tone: in the kitchen
3rd tone: in the living room
4th tone: in the bathroom
5th tone: on the roof

For me, when I remember a kitchen in an encampment, I know that the pinyin final (e)n2 is used for that character.

Here's another example how pinyin initials and finals come together: rén = r + (e)n2

Next, let's have a look at the components of 亻, 丿 and 丨. By itself, 亻 is very easy to remember as "person" due to the resemblance of the character itself to a person. We'll use this opportunity anyway to learn 丿 and 丨. Those are very common basic strokes, and learning mnemonics symbols for them will make learning Chinese characters a lot easier in the long run. Click on "Next Lesson" at the top to continue to 丿 when you're ready.

丿 is a banana. It's helpful to assign mnemonics to individual strokes: for me, 天 and 夭 are two totally different characters because one has a banana at the top.