benlehman: (Default)
benlehman ([personal profile] benlehman) wrote2008-07-10 08:15 pm

A mnemonic

So I'm learning Japanese.

Today, I came up with a great mnemonic for how to write the object marker を (o). If you look closely at it, you'll see it's made of of three strokes: a horizontal stroke, a wiggly vertical one, and a half-oval.

Okay, so, the first two strokes (when hand-written) are nearly identical to the first two strokes of the Chinese character 女 (nü3 in Mandarin, onna and probably a bunch of other sounds in Japanese), which means "woman" or "female." That's the start of the mnemonic. But the last stroke is like a backwards つ rather than a ノ.

So it goes like this: "Women are tired of being objectified (get it, object marker?) so they put their foot (the footprint like shape) down."

I figure that someone on my friends list will actually find this funny, rather than just confusing.

[identity profile] jake-richmond.livejournal.com 2008-07-11 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
It's not ha-ha funny

[identity profile] benlehman.livejournal.com 2008-07-11 06:06 am (UTC)(link)
I think it's ha-ha funny.

But it may be a "you had to be sleep deprived in the same lecture I was" sort of ha-ha.

[identity profile] l-the-fangirl.livejournal.com 2008-07-12 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
On www.toothywiki.net, they have a name for that sort of joke.

It is a joke made at Silly O' Clock.

Not saying that it's not funny, just saying that yeah, it was probably the lack of sleep that made it funnier.