原
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meadow
On-Yomi: ゲン — Kun-Yomi: はら
Elements:
meadow, cliff, spring, white, dove, small, little
Heisig story:
Though the kanji is broad enough to embrace both meanings, the meadow you should imagine here is not a flatland plain but a mountain meadow in the Austrian Alps. (Perhaps the opening scene of "The Sound of Music" will help.) Simply think of little springs bubbling up across the meadow to form a sort of path that leads you right to the brink of a precipitous cliff. Now if you can see Schwester Maria skipping along merrily, dodging in and out of the springs, and then falling headlong over the cliff, you have a ridiculous story that should help fix this kanji in memory.
Koohii stories:
1) [brian44] 28-8-2007(148): Follow the springs down the cliff and you will find a nice meadow.
2) [LeoOra] 7-2-2008(73): Sorry about this, but Heisig was stupid calling this kanji meadow, used in composite words the most common meaning is ORIGIN… To remember just think that life may have begun in pounds or springs in a land with many cliffs … Just to answer correctly the review lessons think of meadow as the origin of a huge forest.
3) [Pangolin] 16-4-2009(62): Forget about "spring" because the water primitive is abbreviated to "little". This is easy to forget by the time you've finished RTK1. Instead, imagine standing on an exceedingly high cliff. Not overlooking the sea, but overlooking meadows. And what on earth are those white little things? Wow, they're sheep! This cliff must be really high!
4) [findus] 22-10-2007(57): When in a meadow, the japanese girls who are white and small search for the shadow of a cliff to avoid taning.
5) [mazel] 29-8-2007(26): [L2]. Under a CLIFF is a meadow with WHITE SMALL flowers.