Teeth, Yáchǐ (sounds like: YA-tse)
By our best guess, our little piranha is working on her eighth razor sharp tooth — or YA-tse, a word I remember because it sounds a little like the game Yahtzee, and so I think about little white dice. Which, especially when there were just the two, they looked enough like for the idea to stick.
By the sixth tooth I bought her a squat, rubber-handled Eeyore toothbrush, which she promptly ripped a good dozen bristles out of, clamping down with those terrifying YA-tse. (Plural and singular are the same word. Three cheers for Mandarin!)
Thinking about another word — preferably a dirty word — is supposed to aid the memory, and I’m embarrassed to admit here I’ve done this. Not intentionally, really — my brain just reached out for an association and grabbed what it could. Banana is Xiāngjiāo, which sounds like shawn jow, which sort of sounds like Sean John. My brain makes the coarse leap from basically “man” to “banana,” and it’s a word I never forget.
Again: totally crude. Truly mortifying to admit. But just guess if I can remember how to say “peach.”
