(Blue Sky) First Tone (High and Level) – 天 (tiān) Sky/Air: The first tone is high and flat, like the unchanging expanse of the sky or air. Practical Application: For mā (妈) (mother, first tone): Imagine milk raining from a mother’s breasts made out of clouds.
Second Tone
(Green Forest) Second Tone (Rising) – 林 (lín) Trees/Forest 🌳
The second tone starts low and rises, just like trees stretching upwards toward the sun in a vast green forest. It mimics the way a young sapling grows taller over time, reaching higher and higher.
Practical Application: For má (麻) (hemp, second tone) → Imagine hemp plants sprouting and growing tall in a dense forest, their leaves reaching up toward the sky.
Third Tone
(Red fire) Third Tone (Low and Dipping then Rising) – 火 (huǒ) Fire/Hell: The third tone dips down and then rises, like descending into a fiery volcaneo and climbing back out.
Practical Application: For mǎ (马) (horse, third tone): Imagine a horse lit on fire.
Fourth Tone
(Brown Rock) Fourth Tone (Falling) – 地 (dì) Earth/Rock: The fourth tone drops sharply, like a rock falling or a cliffside collapsing.
Practical Application: For mà (骂) (scold, fourth tone): Imagine being scolded by a giant boulder for throwing little defenseless pebbles.
When you’re learning Mandarin, there’s one moment every learner dreads:
You know you’ve seen this word before… You think you remember it… But it just doesn’t stick.
That was me with the word 螃蟹 (pángxiè) — crab. I must have looked it up a dozen times. I recognized it when I saw it in subtitles or menus, but I could never recall it when I wanted to speak.
So I went searching for a better memory system — and that’s when I found Linkword.
🔗 The Linkword Method
Linkword is a mnemonic system created by Michael Gruneberg in the early 1980s. The idea is clever:
Use English words that sound like the foreign word, then build a vivid scene that links the sound and meaning.
Example:
Spanish for cow is vaca
You imagine a cow on vacation 🐄🏖️ → vacation = vaca
It’s surprisingly effective — if you’re learning languages like Spanish, French, or Italian that share phonetic overlap with English.
But I quickly realized that Linkword doesn’t work well for Chinese.
🤔 Linkword Doesn’t Translate Well to Chinese
Chinese presents a different kind of challenge because there aren’t many words that sound like English – it uses a different pronounciaion system.
So while I appreciated the logic of Linkword, I needed something that worked within Chinese itself — a system that didn’t rely on English phoentics.
🦀 The Crab That Started It All
The breakthrough came when I realized that pángxiè 螃蟹 (crab) sounded like two Chinese words I already knew:
胖 (pàng) = fat
些 (xiē) = some / a few
I didn’t need an English pun — I just needed to use those familiar words to build a sentence that sounded like “pángxiè.”
That’s when I created the phrase:
yì xiē pàng pángxiè
一些胖螃蟹 — a few fat crabs
It’s funny. It’s visual. And it uses words that were already solid in my memory.
That was the moment pángxiè 螃蟹 (crab) stuck — and the Echoword method was born.
🎧 What Are Echowords?
The benefit of using Echowords is that, if you exclude tones, Chinese has only about 409 unique sounds. Some people say this makes learning Chinese harder because so many words sound the same, but it can actually make it easier — you have more words you can link and anchor together. In many cases, different Chinese words sound exactly the same, so they echo one another.
Echowords are simply Chinese words that sound the same as another Chinese word you’re trying to learn (minus the tones).i.e. they are homophones, but we are using them with a specific purpose – to create an echo in our sentence.
It’s like Linkword — but instead of using English puns, you’re using Mandarin itself as the memory hook.
You don’t need perfect tone matching. You’re allowed to bend the tones a little for memory’s sake.
And when you put two echowords in a sentence, you create an echosentence. For example:
龙虾是海下的龙 (Lóngxiā shì hǎi xià de lóng) “The lobster is the dragon under the sea”
Here we echo Lóngxiā (lobster) with xià (under) and lóng (dragon).
🧠 Why This Works So Well in Mandarin
Mandarin has only about 409 unique syllables (excluding tones)
This means many words share share pronunciations
You’re constantly hearing homophones and near-matches anyway
So it’s natural — and powerful — to echo new words off old ones.
While the Linkword method relies on English puns, Echowords instead use the natural echoes within Mandarin itself—making them a more intuitive tool for learners.
🛠 How to Build an Echoword
Here’s the four-step method I follow:
✅ Step 1: Start with a word you want to learn Choose a Chinese word that you keep forgetting (e.g., 螃蟹 pángxiè = crab).
✅ Step 2: Match the pinyin with words you already know Break the target word into syllables and connect them to familiar Chinese words (e.g., 胖 pàng = fat, 些 xiē = a few). Don’t worry about tones — near matches work fine.
✅ Step 3: Make a simple sentence or phrase Combine the echoes into something easy to picture (e.g., yì xiē pàng pángxiè, 胖螃蟹 = “a few fat crabs”).
✅ Step 4: Visualize and reinforce See it in your mind, exaggerate it, or even sketch it. The more vivid and emotional, the better it will stick.
🧪 Other Echowords and Echosentences I’ve Made
👮♂️ 经理请警察喝茶。
jīnglǐ qǐng jǐngchá hē chá. → “The manager invites the police officer for tea.”
This sentence helps reinforce:
经理 (jīnglǐ) = manager
警察 (jǐngchá) = police
请喝茶 (qǐng hē chá) = qǐng rhymes with jīng/ jǐng and gives the sentence a nice “rythm”; and chá (tea) echoes the last part of jǐngchá (police).
You can get fancy and stack multiple echowords in one echosentence.
“When your 目 mù look at 木 mù, you like their 相 xiāng, and that’s the only thing you 想 xiǎng to look at.”
🔗 Why this works:
Echowords: 木 (mù = tree) and 目 (mù = eye) sound the same.
Character building: 木 + 目 combine to make 相 (xiāng), meaning “appearance” or “each other.”
Phonetic echo: 相 (xiāng) is the phonetic component of 想 (xiǎng, think/want).
Memory hook: If you put “trees” and “eyes” together, you imagine (想) something — appearance becomes thought.
Diglot Weave: In the sentence,
“When your 目 mù look at 木 mù, you like their 相 xiāng, and that’s the only thing you 想 xiǎng to look at.”
We not only use Echowords to form an Echosentence but also the Diglot Weave method, which is the practice of blending your target language (in this case Chinese) naturally into your native lanauge (in this case English). Instead of memorising isolated vocabulary, you encounter the words in a flowing story where the meaning is clear from context. Notice how I did not write 目 mù (eyes) in the sentence, I just wrote 目 mù (without the english meaning). This creates a bridge between what you already know (English) and what you are learning (Chinese), so your brain gets used to seeing and hearing the new words in a natural way, and it translates late it via the context of the sentence. Over time, as more Chinese words replace English ones, the sentence transforms until it becomes fully Chinese without ever feeling overwhelming.
🧠 Why This System Is So Effective
Many years ago I founded Memorise Medicine, which started as a flash card system to help students learn medicines faster. Fast forward to the present, now when I’m conducting workshops or seminars I teach pharmacy students there is a faster way to learn medicines without relying on flashcards: anchor new knowledge to something you already know. Echowords use the exact same principle for Mandarin.
Plus, the system brings all these other benefits:
It uses Chinese homophones — no need to rely on English ones.
It similar to how some Chinese characters have a phoentic compoenent but now you are using another word (that you already know ) as the phoentic component.
It mirrors how Chinese people themselves often pun — through sound echoes and near matches.
You get to learn sound, meaning, and grammar together.
And because Mandarin only has ~409 base syllables, the system is scalable — you’ll start noticing your own echo patterns everywhere.
🎯 Final Thought
Linkword showed us that language learning could be playful and image-driven.
But with Chinese, we need something different — something built from the inside out.
That’s what Echowords and Echosentences are.
So next time a Chinese word just won’t stick, don’t force it. Instead, ask yourself:
What words do I already know that sounds like this? Can I turn it into a phrase or sentence that‘s easy to remember?
You’ll be amazed how long those echoes stay with you.
Welcome to the first post in this series where I’ll be documenting my journey into language learning from scratch. I’m not a polyglot (yet), so I’m testing and refining what actually works in real life. This post lays out the core strategies I’m currently using and building into my daily routine.
Step 1: Getting Pronunciation Right from the Start
I’m starting with what most people skip: pronunciation. If I learn a word but pronounce it incorrectly, that error sticks. Worse—when I read, I start hearing it wrong in my head.
So I’m using tools like Fluent Forever to train my ear and mouth. Their flashcards are really good for distinguishing new sounds and getting the muscle memory for speaking right.
The goal here isn’t perfection—it’s building an internal voice that sounds natural from the start.
Step 2: Reading and Writing with Sound in Mind
I do read and write early on, but only once I’m confident that I know how to pronounce what I’m seeing.
Silent reading can be misleading. When we read, we “hear” the words in our head—so I make sure my pronunciation is solid first, then reinforce it by reading out loud.
I also make sure that anything I write, I can say, and anything I say, I can hear and recognize in real speech.
Step 3: Learning the Right Words (and Actually Remembering Them)
Rather than random vocabulary lists, I’m starting with a frequency list—the most commonly used words in the language.
But I don’t just memorize them. I’m combining:
Mnemonics to make words stick
Spaced repetition flashcards (SRS) to review them long-term
Short sentences to see the words in context
And here’s the cool part: I’m actually building this flashcard system into the Memorise Everything website you’re reading right now.
The goal is to offer personalised, SRS-powered flashcards that adapt to your interests—so you can learn words that matter to you, not just generic vocabulary. Stay tuned for updates as the project grows!
Step 4: Mastering Core Grammar with “Golden Sentences”
To get a feel for how the language works, I’m using a set of simple sentences by Tim Ferriss.
They’re short, easy to tweak, and surprisingly powerful for understanding structure. For example:
The apple is red. I give John the apple. She gives it to him. I want to give it to her. I will know tomorrow.
I use these as templates and swap out parts to build confidence in forming real sentences—without memorizing abstract grammar rules.
Step 5: Building My Survival Kit for Conversations
Even as a beginner, I want to be able to stay in the target language during conversations.
So I’ve built a small toolkit of ultra-useful phrases like:
“How do you say ___?”
“Can you repeat that?”
“What does ___ mean?”
“Please say it more slowly.”
They help me keep the conversation going, even when I don’t understand everything. It feels like unlocking a little superpower.
Step 6: Gentle Review Before Sleep
Right before bed, I do some easy review—nothing stressful, just familiar flashcards or audio I’ve already gone over earlier in the day.
It’s quick (just 5–10 minutes), but it makes a real difference. Nighttime review is known to improve memory consolidation, and keeping it light ensures it doesn’t interfere with sleep.
Step 7: Making Input Comprehensible (Using Pokémon!)
I’m experimenting with using native media (like Pokémon episodes) as a learning tool.
Here’s what I do:
I grab a transcript or subtitle file for an episode.
I identify the most frequent or useful words.
I add those words to my flashcard system with mnemonics.
Then I watch the episode.
It makes the experience way more comprehensible and rewarding. I’m planning to apply the same process to beginner podcasts and YouTube content as I level up.
What’s Next?
I’m still early in the journey, but already seeing big improvements in comprehension and confidence. Most importantly—I’m having fun with it.
Over time, I’ll be sharing more insights, tools, and real progress here. And as the SRS flashcard system on Memorise Everything evolves, I’ll keep you posted on how you can use it too.
If you’re starting a language or curious about how to go from zero to conversational, follow along—and feel free to share your own tips or stories.
