Hi, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the option to write your own mnemonics.
I’m not sure if this was added in a recent update or if I somehow just never noticed it before, but I’m really glad it’s there. I’ve always had trouble with some of the default mnemonics because certain sentences or associations just don’t come naturally to me. Sometimes even the suggested names for components are harder for me to remember than the character itself.
My favorite example is “zhu” being represented by George Costanza. Growing up in Europe, Seinfeld was never really part of my cultural background, so that association does basically nothing for me. I replaced him with General Zhukov, and suddenly it became much easier to remember. Being able to rewrite the mnemonic around associations that actually mean something to me makes a huge difference.
Quite often I also know that a mnemonic isn’t working for me, but I can’t immediately figure out a better one. ChatGPT has actually been really useful for this. I can explain why a particular association doesn’t stick, and after going back and forth a bit we can usually come up with something much more tailored to how my brain works.
And that’s not even mentioning a trick I learned from Mandarin Segments: making mnemonics a bit naughty or inappropriate can make them much more memorable, because apparently our brains are funny like that.
If there is one thing I would still wish for, it would be the ability to edit a mnemonic directly while learning a new word. As far as I can tell, right now you can only edit them from the curriculum menu. It would be really convenient to tweak a mnemonic on the spot when you realize during a lesson that the existing one just isn’t sticking.
So yeah, just a little appreciation post for giving us the ability to customize these things. It has made the whole mnemonic system work much better for me.