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+--- Thread: Vocabulary - RTK Style? (/thread-10549.html)
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - ryankopf - 2013-03-03
Has anyone come out with a book yet that helps you learn vocabulary "RTK Style"? Kanji-compounds and just the words and phrases themselves?
Ikimasu.
*I* need a *key* so that I can -go- do *mas* things. (Mas = more in Spanish).
You may be skeptical, but you were probably skeptical of RTK first too then. I would love love love something like this. Anyone find anything like it?
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - Zgarbas - 2013-03-03
I doubt it, and you'll find that it is usually wasted effort. Most vocab terms will stick to you eventually, much quicker than a mostly nonsensical and phonetical-based story will. A combination of kanjis would work for compounds, but that's about it.
Also, Ikimasu is not Ikimasu, it's Iku conjugated in the -masu version. That story would be learning 12 words for a random phonetical hint which only serves for a certain conjugation, and it would be very hard to separate き From きい since they both sound like key, etc.
While I do use certain hints for certain vocab terms, using it as a general learning method would be... superfluous.
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - Aspiring - 2013-03-03
With Japanese words, mnemonics are more efficient with kanji than with phonemes.
e.g. 絵画
picture + picture = picture
^Your best bet is learning the 1500+ words with straightforward kanji. This way you get a feeling for how all the kanji and pronounciations work together.
Some other examples
戦争(competition/argue=war)
商品(make a deal/goods=merchandise)
黒板(black/board=blackboard)
上級(upper/class=upperclass)
There is a deck for these "synonymous pairs", but you would most likely learn these words in core6k.
Edit: Use kanji keywords to learn words
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - ryankopf - 2013-03-03
Actually after posting I found this:
http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/japanese/
Which seems very helpful (and free).
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - Katsuo - 2013-03-03
In the final chapter of RTK2 Heisig describes a mnemonic method for learning kun-readings and their associated vocabulary. (I imagine it could also be used for kana-only words.)
Simply put, each sound in the Japanese language is assigned a meaning, e.g. mosquito is か, hand is て, etc. and those are combined into stories/images in a similar way to RTK1.
He does say, however, that this is intended for those words you are have difficulty with rather than a general method for learning all vocabulary.
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - mmhorii - 2013-03-03
Here's a small sampling of different mnemonic approaches applied to learning Japanese.
Remembering via jokes and puns:
http://www.webspawner.com/users/japanesejokes/index.html
Remembering via similar sounds and icons:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8X8i4flVVuQC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=cone+bun+wah&source=bl&ots=NRPwzjMFtR&sig=QlLbxx-pMMRZPflyL6i226z3sR4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P48zUaiTI4LqiQL9zIHIBw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBA
Remembering via "absurdity":
http://easyjapanesey.blogspot.com/
It surprises me that some people complete RTK using mnemonics, but don't apply those same powerful techniques post-RTK to continue learning more Japanese.
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - uisukii - 2013-03-04
mmhorii Wrote:It surprises me that some people complete RTK using mnemonics, but don't apply those same powerful techniques post-RTK to continue learning more Japanese.After you begin to acquire a bit of vocabulary, you should come to notice a lot of associations in respect to 漢字、読み、etc., and it becomes easier to understand/accurately guess different readings and contexts in respect to vocabulary. It is more effective to slowly adapt vocabulary to concepts; thinking in Japanese in relation to Japanese.
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - etherealdust - 2013-03-04
For me, I do pretty well with mnemonics so I made up a person-action system where each syllable in a word represents an image of a person doing an action. I based it on the Dominic System which is popular in the mnemonic community for memorizing a sequence of numbers. So here's an example of how I use it practice using ikimasu as an example.
These are images I associate with each syllable.
i: Inuyasha performing a wind scar attack
ki: Kiki riding a broomstick
ma: masa swinging a shinai
su: Vanellope driving her car made out of candy
When I chain the syllables together, here is the image I get: Inuyasha riding a broomstick and telling it to "go! go! go!" because he's in a race with Masa who's driving a car made out of candy.
Choosing images to correspond with the syllables only took me a few hours and has been very useful for me so far. Also, as a side note, for certain syllables, like su and ru, I actually have more than one set of person-action associated with them. Since they often appear in words, it allows me to create more variety in my images.
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - Stansfield123 - 2013-03-04
I'm gonna assume that ikimasu was just an unfortunate choice of an example, and you're not actually suggesting that someone try and memorize it as a separate word.
Still, I don't think there's any need to try and memorize vocab. Immersion takes care of that. But, if you set out to memorize words, then sure, using various tricks would be better than just brute forcing it.
However, the same does not apply to the writing of words. Both the reading of a word and its meaning are already big hints to what Kanji are used to write it. To make up a story, on top of that, would be entirely useless. The exceptions (where neither the reading nor the meaning are useful hints) are so rare that they're not worth bothering with. Those exceptions can easily be learned through using the language, there's no need to try and memorize them.
Also, in RtK Dr. Heisig gives a convincing argument against trying to use visual memory to learn Kanji. If you read it, you'll find that the same argument does not apply to a lot of words with multiple Kanji. With these, visual memory is in fact very useful in recognizing them even without paying attention to the individual Kanji. That's a third reason why there's no need for any further effort towards learning vocab.
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - uisukii - 2013-03-04
Stansfield123 Wrote:With these, visual memory is in fact very useful in recognizing them even without paying attention to the individual Kanji.うん、after a while individual kanji fade into familiar shaped "blocks", just as in after long enough, one comes to recognize English words initially by their overall shape association, with conscious "reading" more or less depending on how familiar one is with the written language.
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - RawToast - 2013-03-04
mmhorii Wrote:Here's a small sampling of different mnemonic approaches applied to learning Japanese.These two make me think it may be effective to learn using oyagi gags. I may be wrong here -- my only knowledge of these is from Zorori -- but don't they usually have two words that sound similar?
Remembering via jokes and puns:
http://www.webspawner.com/users/japanesejokes/index.html
Remembering via similar sounds and icons:
http://books.google.com/books?id=8X8i4flVVuQC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=cone+bun+wah&source=bl&ots=NRPwzjMFtR&sig=QlLbxx-pMMRZPflyL6i226z3sR4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=P48zUaiTI4LqiQL9zIHIBw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBA
So you could learn two vocab per card (and a very basic sentence).
e.g.
スキーがだい好き
Vocabulary - RTK Style? - mmhorii - 2013-03-04
RawToast Wrote:These two make me think it may be effective to learn using oyagi gags. I may be wrong here -- my only knowledge of these is from Zorori -- but don't they usually have two words that sound similar?Yeah, old dad jokes and だじゃれ can be used for learning Japanese. Like this:
So you could learn two vocab per card (and a very basic sentence).
e.g.
スキーがだい好き
ニューヨークで入浴 Taking a bath in New York.