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.
目 (mù = eyes), 木 (mù = trees)，
相 (xiāng = appearance)，想 (xiǎng = want/think about)
“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.
Leave a Reply