Similar Kanji: Compare and North
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
Compare (比)
Use the image of a spoon (ヒ) to create your stories.
Here we see two spoons and if we “compare” the two, the one on the right looks like the normal kanji for spoon (ヒ) but the one on the left looks a little squashed.
Use this “comparison” to get this kanji firmly separated in your mind from “north”.
Just to mess with your brain – ヒ is also the katakana for “hi”. Don’t get them confused ^^
North (北)
The Heisig primitive for ヒ is “two people sitting on the ground”.
Your mnemonic here is to visualise two people sitting back looking up at the “northern” stars in the sky or two people sitting back to back to keep warm in a freezing wind blowing in from the Arctic “north“.
Beware not to confuse the left hand side with the Heisig “turtle” primitive, which features in kanji such as 兆 (portent). However, the stroke order is different and the look is slightly different – confusing I know!
Download a pdf of today’s kanji →
Remember that if these don’t work for you, think of another story that makes sense to you.
It’s no use forcing yourself to remember a story that just won’t stick. The idea is to make it work for you and your memory will take care of the rest.
The possibilities are endless.
