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+--- Thread: A bit of confusion on lesson 2 (/thread-10447.html)
A bit of confusion on lesson 2 - Enies - 2013-01-28
In the introduction to lesson 2 James mentions the student should learn both the key word and the primitive meaning of a new Kanji as they are shown. What are the best methods for remembering primitives as I encounter them?
I have done lesson 3 without making any effort to remember the primitives but I don't want to continue the book until I know exactly what I am supposed to be doing and how I am supposed to do it. Any help would be appreciated.
A bit of confusion on lesson 2 - AlgoRhythmic - 2013-01-28
I simply wrote each primitive like once or twice and moved on. Heisig also writes I believe that you will learn all primitives automatically as you go on by simply using them in other kanjis, and this turned out to work fine for me. I failed some kanjis due to forgotten primitives 2-3 times in Anki first (extra rare primitives), but you quickly learn them automatically.
A bit of confusion on lesson 2 - Enies - 2013-01-28
Thanks for clearing that up, I was a bit anxious to continue the course because of the uncertainty.
A bit of confusion on lesson 2 - muteki99 - 2013-01-29
A lot of the primitives are pictographs, and as such are easy to remember. The rest show up so often that they are drilled into your head pretty much after a few reviews.
A bit of confusion on lesson 2 - ryanjmack - 2013-01-30
It's funny because I'm pretty new with RTK and I did not fully understand the whole primitive thing.
Until I got to about 130 kanji I was forgetting the abstract meanings of primitive (for example I only knew the kanji #13 month by moon or month, not flesh or part of the body). I ended up writing down all the primitives in order with their meanings. Occasionally I glance over the primitives to refresh my mind of the primitives and their meanings.
A bit of confusion on lesson 2 - Inny Jan - 2013-01-30
The concept of primitive is quite fundamental to Heisig's approach. They are the basic building blocks that you use to construct mnemonics for all the kanji.
To Heisig, a primitive is a character (and that doesn't necessary mean a kanji character) that is not composed from other characters (like "drop of", "umbrela", "mosaic"). There are some kanji that act as primitives, like 日 (sun, day), 月 (month, moon, flesh), 金 (gold, metal), 十 (ten, needle) but as with non-kanji primitives, they don't contain any other primitives and need to be remembered by heart.
When you learn a specific kanji you need to know the composing primitives first. Like in 早 (early/sunflower = sun + needle), or 朝 (morning = needle + sunflower/early + moon), for example.
Once you know the primitives, you can develop a story that glues those primitives together, so you have a consistent mnemonic for a kanji in question.