I read a post on Victory Manual today that talks about the use of mnemonics for remembering words. Alex brings up the words 衛星 and 衛生 which mean satellite and hygiene respectively. Both words are pronounced エイセイ. Coincidentally I learned the word for satelite just yesterday.
Here's the mnemonic I used.
Word: 衛星
Kanji Meaning: defense + star
Mnemonic: Death Star
When I saw that the Kanji for defense and star were used the image of the Death Star from the movie Star Wars popped into my head immediately. There's no getting rid of it now. The cool thing about mnemonics is that they work so well sometimes that you don't even get a choice in their design. It's automatic.
At the time I didn't know that there was a homophone for エイセイ that meant hygiene. As soon as I read this I updated my mnemonic to include Darth Vader washing his hands. Lexicon +1.
While I was typing the word エイセイ into this post I realized that there are actually three other homophones. Here they are.
永世 eternity; perpetuity; immortality; permanence
永生 eternal life; immortality
永逝 death; dying
Death Star. It was purely coincidental but now I can add the meanings immortality and death to my mnemonic. Every now and then it's nice to learn 5 words for the price of 1!
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