It seems I am not the only one who often confuses the meaning of pairs of words. Japanese, and especially jukugo words, seem to be prone to those things.
An example in my case would be 幸運 and 幸福. The second kanji of both mean "Luck" (according to Wanikani), and I confuse them every time.
Do you have a specific method to tackle this problem, other than just repeating reviews until the words stick?
I am thinking of adding a special Anki note type to my collection that would have the following 5 fields:
- Word A, e.g. "幸運"
- Meaning A, e.g. "Good Luck"
- Word B, e.g. "幸福"
- Meaning B, e.g. "Happiness"
- Mnemonic, e.g. "幸運 has a car in the second kanji, and you need good luck to drive a car. 幸福 has the spirit radical, imagine a happy spirit"
I'd then create two cards from this note:
Card 1:
- Front: Word A
- Example: 幸運
- Back: Meaning A and Word B, Meaning B, Mnemonic
- Example: "Good Luck". Don't confuse with "幸福": "Happiness". Mnemonic: "幸運 has a car in the second kanji, and you need good luck to drive a car. 幸福 has the spirit radical, imagine a happy spirit"
Card 2:
- Front: Word B
- Back: Meaning B and Word A, Meaning A, Mnemonic
Does anyone have other ways of dealing with those kinds of mix-ups? I'm curious about whether there's a better way.
by goddammitbutters