Mnemonics for remembering the color of the tones

This is a example of a story that could help you remember the color of the tones for the considered standard system. If you use this system you see the colors so much and they are so few that I feel that they ever will be needed, but is always good to help your memory. As always, if there is a story that works better for you, use it and not mine, this is just a example how you should construct such mnemonics; for example the Chinese associate yellow with earth and black with water, green and blue are sometimes the same color, etc.

First, high tone, red as the color of a high-tempered person.

Second, rising tone, orange that grows (rises) on trees.

Third, falling raising tone, green as the low fields of grass (low pitch).

Fourth, falling tone, blue as the falling rain.

Fifth, neutral tone, black, the color that absorbs all other colors, making no distinction, neutral.

martial arts versus guns

There’s an old discussion about guns and martial arts, which would be the better, and of course the gun is the obvious answer that comes to mind. Imagine two people discussing about it and the a person with gun says “I would kill you in a blink with my weapon” and the martial artist punch him in the face, take out two teeth of the opponent, punch him in the stomach and while he is curved kick his face; now the person with gun would be on the floor subdued. And now the person with gun says its not fair (fights seldom are fair) and demands that both after a count down attack it other, so he can be prepared. Then, after the countdown, the martial artist punch in the face with one hand and simply blocks with the other hand the arm holding the gun, and continue with a flurry of moves winning again. And then again the person with gun wants a rematch but get the gun ready first and take some distance, maybe taking a few seconds, and now maybe the winner is the person with gun; but give me a few seconds and I disable someone with equally effectiveness. Of course there’s that exact same history told by the other side: the strong and quick martial artist shows a series of fantastic moves, jumps, sequence of incredible kicks (you would see in my book about the martial arts and the art of war that this is simply not a good way to start a fight) and the other guy get his gun and simply shoots him; this sequence appears in one of the Indiana Jones moves if I remember.

Martial arts or guns, which is the better? They’re different, one are better than the other in different contexts; one is better in close range, other in long, you can’t bring the weapon everywhere and it will possibly not bring always it with you. A weapon is intimidating and will give you advantage if you are not taken by surprise. The gun have severe disadvantages, like accident with kids and youngsters, you maybe lack the control and in a sudden attack of anger or after drinking alcoholic beverage and may do something you will regret.

Martial arts or guns, which is better? None is the best, they are part of the same art, the art of war: martial arts: martial comes from to Mars, the Roman name of the Greek god of war Aries, literary the art of war. Martial arts have a long tradition of weaponry, in Chinese styles, various use some kind of weapon in its training, and long range weapons were also used, for example the Japanese Kyujutsu, and bows were mentioned in the art of war text. We probably not see so many styles and arts developed by ranged weapons because they’re more simple to use and don’t arise the complexity of close combat that, because of that, have so many styles. But should; managing a weapon should involve different point of views and different techniques, and in the diversity the best style should arise.The most adapted and modern martial arts include training against guns, an example that all martial arts should follow. I have a lot of Ideas about fighting against guns and with guns that maybe I will show in my next videos. Don’t forget that the most perfect martial weapon are the humans; without them we would not have anyone to operate guns or any weapons. A subdued person can’t launch a nuclear nuke against his opponent.

Learn Chinese characters pronunciations with others characters pronunciations

Because my studies of Chinese include only reading Chinese texts, I don’t have a good knowledge of the pronunciation and tones of the words. I have seen methods of learning the Chinese characters, learn the tones, but not the pronunciation. I started recently to use a method created by me: learn a character’s pronunciation making an association with another of the same pronunciation. Of course this is nothing really new since it is a known method of forming the characters, but for the ones that have not such an indication, or the phonetic component only resemble the pronunciation (which leads to even more confusion), this method could be useful. This method seems to work better if you already have a good level of Chinese, but I have successfully applied to characters that I didn’t know another with the same pronunciation, and learn in the process two characters pronunciations! If you don’t have already a method for remembering the tones, you could only use associations with characters that use the same tone (which seems to be complicated sometimes). Here are some examples of associations that I use:

贫pin poor, have no品 pin goods

解jie explain, everything 皆jie can be explained

宽kuan wide, if you have 款 kuan founds you have a wide range of options

委wei entrust, designate, committee, you entrust tasks to powerful 威wei people

败(敗)bai defeat, when you are defeated you show a white 白bai flag

负(負)fu defeat, lose, when you are defeat or lose everything you have to turn back and go home 复fu return.

Of course this should be more effective if you use the characters that you already know well the pronunciation and not mine, and the ones that the story makes more sense to you. You are free to share interesting ones if you wish to help.