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+--- Thread: Snake and Self (/thread-10444.html)
Snake and Self - Rsun1 - 2013-01-29
hi everyone,
i've just reached the kanji for self, and Heisig's says it is a pictography of a snake. However 6 kanjis before, we have snake 蛇。Wouldn't it be confusing?
I saw someone here using it as a pictography of an inverted "s" and i'm doing the same but I see that in the next cards many of you are using it as snake too. So how do you avoid confusing the two of them?
Snake and Self - Stian - 2013-01-29
蛇 only shows up once, 己 shows up quite often.
It's probably because it resembles 巳, which is often replaced with 己 as a primitive, for instance: 砲 vs 鞄 (on this site, they're the same [at least on my browser], but copy them into word or something, and you see that the "snake" primitive is different.)
Snake and Self - Katsuo - 2013-01-29
蛇 is never part of another kanji, so if you see "snake" as a primitive it's sure to be 己 (己 is only called "snake" when it's used as part of another character).
There are some other cases where a kanji keyword and primitive name are the same, but it's usually easy to keep them separate in your mind.
Snake and Self - Rsun1 - 2013-01-29
Thank you guys!!
I didn't pay attention to the frequency of each one. Much better now.
Snake and Self - Zgarbas - 2013-01-29
Maybe think of 蛇 as snake and 己 as sssnake (to reinforce the difference, the S-ness of sssnake, and to give it a more memorable story because sillyness enhances story value for some)?