I have spent countless months unable to keep 월요일 (weolyoil "Monday") and 화요일 (hwayoil "Tuesday") straight.
Ignore that last part of the word—the 요일, found in all names of the days of the week—and you're left with 월 (weol) and 화 (hwa). The shapes of the vowels can help, maybe (just like in Korean Mnemonics 1)? In the word for Monday, the vowel ㅓ points backward, as though toward the weekend that just ended. In the word for Tuesday, the vowel ㅏ points ahead toward the next weekend.
I think I'm going crazy.
I admit it: this is totally strained, and remembering this could end up being as hard as just remembering which word is which. But I need this! I have looked up Monday and Tuesday so many times. Never again!
Isn't it funny how the arbitrariness of words—the essentially random connection between word and referent—seems to vanish when it's your own language? Of course the English words Monday and Tuesday are easy to keep straight: Monday could only mean, you know, Monday, and Tuesday just sounds so... Tuesday. But when you're staring down the barrel of a foreign lexicon, everything seems like a slippery mishmash with nothing to grab hold of. So I'm reaching for anything that floats, even if it's some cockamamie story about vowels pointing to weekends.
Bonus for English language learners: I just thought of something. If you're having trouble with Monday and Tuesday, all you have to do is remember that Monday is the one-day, and Tuesday is the two-day.
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