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I want to remember 咅 pǒu and all the dependent words on 咅. Could you please let me know what is the correct way/ think process? What technique are you using to remember the meaning forever?

This is my flash card entry.

咅 pǒu to spit out, pooh, pah 部 bù part, section, ministry, department 陪 péi accompany

3 Answers 3

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A good way to remember a character is to learn the compound words and phrases it is a part of. It is easier to find a building if you remember multiple landmarks around it instead of just remember how the building itself looks.

Example:

部: 部隊 (troops),部分(parts),部門(departments),部署(deployment)

陪: 陪伴 (accompany),陪審團 (jury)

賠: 賠償(compensation),賠率 (odds)

倍: 加倍 (double),倍增 (double)

剖: 解剖 (dissect),剖析 (analyze)

咅 is an obscure character, rarely used in day-to-day life.

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  • 咅 stand and mouth can derive to spit out ;;; 部 spit and city and spitting walls of city makes city (part or section of city makes dirty);;; 陪 abundant spits of a person made him accompanied with his spits alone;;; i think I have this way of remembering seems no other method works
    – user27485
    Apr 7, 2021 at 20:18
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    None of those characters have anything to do with "spit". 咅 is a sound component and doesn't add any meaning to the derived characters. The sound component doesn't always have any link to the character's definition.
    – Fishuman
    Apr 8, 2021 at 16:13
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As mentioned before, 咅 is an obsolete character. Its presence in all its derived components are just for the sound. 咅 itself doesn't have stand 立 if you refer to the older glyphs. It's actually a corrupted version of 不 where 不 is a sound component.

Most characters have a semantic component and a sound component which doesn't necessarily have any relevance to the combined components' meaning.

There is a recent question here which distinguishes the difference between these two similar radicals/semantic components. Radical 163 Vs 170

If the 阝"ear" appears on the left, then the character is usually related to cliffs, earth, and arrangements. If the 阝"ear" appears on the right, then the character is related to towns, cities, or can be city names.

部 has the "ear" on the right thus refers to parts or sections of a town.

陪 means to accompany or to assist. It's probably a borrowed meaning as neither accompany or assist seem to be related to cliffs or arrangements.

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I agree with Tang Ho, but for a beginner who is trying to learn these quite basic characters it's not really a practical suggestion to advise them to learn more advanced characters at the same time.

Fishuman's answer also has good information but I think I can give some practical advice, from the viewpoint of someone who quite recently learnt these characters starting from scratch as an adult.

Here is my advice.

Initial study:

Learn 部,陪,倍 all together. Each of these is of the form X+咅, or 咅+阝for 部. Learn what the components X, 阝 "are" (more or less: town, mountain, standing man - there is some information in Fishuman's answer, and plenty elsewhere in references/textbooks. I recommend the Outlier dictionary, Mini edition, as an add-on to Pleco. Pleco (the paid version) is also a very handy tool as it gives you a list of all the characters derived from 咅, ordered by frequency of use).

Learn the associated Pinyin; notice the similarities and differences between the pronunciations. Find your own way(s) to remember this information, at the level you need. It can be useful to lean that 咅 is made up - visually at least, in modern Chinese - of 立/standing and 口/mouth, but not vital to remember this information initially. (For example for me, I started out by concentrating on reading, not writing. So I just needed to recognize the combination of the meaning component with the sound component 咅 which for a long time for me was just a sort of squiggle that I hadn't paid much attention to.)

Use the method advised by Tang Ho (associated terms) by learning associated terms as long as they are not too complicated for your level. For instance, learning 部分,部门,加倍 will be helpful initially. 部队, 部署 will also be helpful, but later on.

Further steps: learn 赔,剖 and 培 and other related characters, and related terms like 赔偿,剖析,部队,部署 as you encounter them in your studies.

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