掲示板 Forums - Memorising onomatopoeia

Japanese is chocka-block full of onomatopoeic words. And not just word-sounds, but all those doubled nonsensical* adverbs. Going through some N4 practice tests, I'm faced with some options. I don't recognise most of these things! How does one go about memorising such adverbs when there are so many; or at least learning to guess what they could refer to? *Nonsensical, as in not having literal meanings or always making sense / providing meaning if you split them into their two parts; not nonsense, as in stupid or pointless - which they aren't. I find them interesting, and I'm sure they are very useful to Japanese speakers.

It's a pain in the ass, there's really no easy way except to abuse the hell out of them until they become second nature. The most annoying thing is that there are sometimes multiple onomatopoeia for the same sound, or two extremely similar sounds. Then you've got the ones that seem like onomatopoeia but they describe a state rather than a sound, like わくわく - I guess that's the ones you are referring to as nonsensical. One piece of advice I can give you is: don't try to make a list on a piece of paper of a bunch of these words and their meanings written out, you'll never remember which is which. You need to associate some images, sounds, or something tangible to these things. Here's an example. I forget the name right now but you know those tiny dried minnows that you can buy at the スーパー (they also sell them mixed with like Chex mix stuff)? Well, they are dried and obviously they are crunchy when you eat them. Like, it's an audible sound when someone is eating these things, they are really crunchy. Anyways, after eating these things and being around people that eat them I kept hearing the word かりかり used to describe them, and now I have a permanent association in my mind with these little dried fish and かりかり. You need to make a concrete link like that for every one of these type of words that you are trying to remember. Trust me, it works.

Nooo! Silly! パリパリ is the crispy sound, カリカリ the crunchy sound, can't you hear it? ;) Edit: And for わくわく I get this image of someone flapping their arms in excitement :) And yes, they are officially in the JLPT. Just last week I had to do a practice exam for N1 where half the questions for one of the 問題 were to choose between similar onomatopoeic words :/

Well, that's easy; bread is always ふわふわ！ Fluffy, soft... And so are pillows....or are they ふかふか? :o :( ??? :-[ :-\ :( Yeah, it's tough but I agree with valymer; just associate them with something. Perhaps both an item, and some sort of action. ふわふわ sounds fluffy and round and soft, like a cloud, associate it with bread and bam! 1 down 2344 to go. Piece of cake ;D

[quote author=Natsu link=topic_id=5358&post_id=26289#rmsg_26289 date=1340751543]Mnemonics helps to memorise vocabulary and kanji. Just need to find the right image to go with them xD[/quote] I tried that with kanji but starting confusing all the images once I gathered too many. Now I just accept that if I encounter a word in a unique enough way, and often enough, it will stick. All I have to do is come back to it a while later to check that it's still there. And yeah, I get this image of light, puffy, fluffy clouds and feathery goodness with ふわふわ. Mostly due to having heard my wife use it a million times. Repetition is sometimes painless.