Arqui3D
举人
I've seen Pleco's tone colors for years but never thought much about them. Some friends fon't even know what they mean. Until I watched "Inside Out". I immediately realized I could use the movie characters to memorize tones:
First tone (high tone): Red: Anger: Imagine a wife who is "hot angry" talking fast in an ear-piercing, chipmunk-like high pitch.
Second tone (question-like tone): Green: Disgust. Because when you don't like something, you say: "What?" while raising an eyebrow.
Third tone: (low tone): Blue: Sadness. Imagine a child who is half-crying, usng a low tone, sometimes even speaking with "vocal fry" or vibrations caused by the low tone.
Fourth tone (falling tone): Purple: Fear/Surprise. Because when you're afraid your team is about to lose the match, you might scream: "No!" with a falling tone.
Thankfully Pleco does not use the "Joy" color, that is, yellow, because Joy is the main character, the most multidimensional, and thus might cause confusion. Better stay with the four more cartoonish characters.
Actually... Make it three. You can safely discard the fourth tone (purple / fear) from your mnemonic toolbox, because a third of all characters are pronounced with a fourth tone. So when trying to read a new character for the first time, just assume it's fourth tone and 33% of the time you'll be right. Only if you are wrong, use one of the three remaining characters (Anger, Disgust and Sadness) for your mnemonics.
Of course, if the character matches exactly the pronunciation AND tone of the phonetic component, by all means use that clue instead. Only use mnemonics as temporary glue for things that won't stick easily. Normally Fifth tone pronunciations are so few and so frequently used that you'll just learn them naturally.
First tone (high tone): Red: Anger: Imagine a wife who is "hot angry" talking fast in an ear-piercing, chipmunk-like high pitch.
Second tone (question-like tone): Green: Disgust. Because when you don't like something, you say: "What?" while raising an eyebrow.
Third tone: (low tone): Blue: Sadness. Imagine a child who is half-crying, usng a low tone, sometimes even speaking with "vocal fry" or vibrations caused by the low tone.
Fourth tone (falling tone): Purple: Fear/Surprise. Because when you're afraid your team is about to lose the match, you might scream: "No!" with a falling tone.
Thankfully Pleco does not use the "Joy" color, that is, yellow, because Joy is the main character, the most multidimensional, and thus might cause confusion. Better stay with the four more cartoonish characters.
Actually... Make it three. You can safely discard the fourth tone (purple / fear) from your mnemonic toolbox, because a third of all characters are pronounced with a fourth tone. So when trying to read a new character for the first time, just assume it's fourth tone and 33% of the time you'll be right. Only if you are wrong, use one of the three remaining characters (Anger, Disgust and Sadness) for your mnemonics.
Of course, if the character matches exactly the pronunciation AND tone of the phonetic component, by all means use that clue instead. Only use mnemonics as temporary glue for things that won't stick easily. Normally Fifth tone pronunciations are so few and so frequently used that you'll just learn them naturally.