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Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - kameden - 2014-07-03
I can read decently and can recognize over 2500 kanji, however I can write very few. I'm wondering if it would be worth it to use mnemonics like RTK, or should I just do it by wrote memorization because they are so familiar to me already?
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Linval - 2014-07-03
That's a good question. I'm not sure you have to bother with the mnemonics though. You could just go through rtk's kanji in the order of the book (which was designed specifically for that purpose) to get a good feel on the stroke order. It will become an automatism after enough practice, and you won't even need to think about it ; you'll know what stroke comes first.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - john555 - 2014-07-03
kameden Wrote:I can read decently and can recognize over 2500 kanji, however I can write very few. I'm wondering if it would be worth it to use mnemonics like RTK, or should I just do it by wrote memorization because they are so familiar to me already?How is that possible given that a lot of kanji are different by only one tiny stroke (e.g., "marquis" vs. "climate", using Heisig keywords). If you can't remember them well enough to write them how could you remember all the hundreds of tiny one-stroke differences?
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Roketzu - 2014-07-03
john555 Wrote:He most likely means reading them in context, not just identifying single kanji out of context--which one can still very much do even without the ability to actually recall them when it comes to writing. I'm in the same boat, can probably identify and read well over 2500 kanji and can only write about 400 of them from memory simply because I haven't spent time much practicing that.kameden Wrote:I can read decently and can recognize over 2500 kanji, however I can write very few. I'm wondering if it would be worth it to use mnemonics like RTK, or should I just do it by wrote memorization because they are so familiar to me already?How is that possible given that a lot of kanji are different by only one tiny stroke (e.g., "marquis" vs. "climate", using Heisig keywords). If you can't remember them well enough to write them how could you remember all the hundreds of tiny one-stroke differences?
After a certain point you don't really see kanji as their strokes, so the minor differences between certain kanji rarely cause any issues unless your taking some kind of test. It's more the general shape and context (前後関係) that allows for fast and accurate reading of them.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Kuzunoha13 - 2014-07-03
There's definitely not "hundreds" of kanji with one stroke differences.
The only ones that gave me tons trouble were 網 and 綱 - I didn't realize the difference until they showed up on the same day.
Plus, there are other ways to identify kanji...like actually knowing the words they're used in, as well as the context, which is much more valuable than knowing each detail.
For example, take 隠す versus 穏やか. Even if you forget the differences between them, if you know the actual meanings, you can tell one is a verb, while the other is a noun/adj. And they're used in the appropriate positions/contexts. If you're reading a detective novel, and they're discussing where the killer ??? the body...it's probably not where he "calmed" it.
Also, I've never ever seen 穏す or 隠やか. If it did show up, I'd still pronounce it mentally as かくす for the first and おだやか for the second.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - kameden - 2014-07-03
Linval Wrote:That's a good question. I'm not sure you have to bother with the mnemonics though. You could just go through rtk's kanji in the order of the book (which was designed specifically for that purpose) to get a good feel on the stroke order. It will become an automatism after enough practice, and you won't even need to think about it ; you'll know what stroke comes first.I know stroke order, I just don't know the radicals of the kanji. That's what I need to memorize, not so much stroke order.
john555 Wrote:How is that possible given that a lot of kanji are different by only one tiny stroke (e.g., "marquis" vs. "climate", using Heisig keywords). If you can't remember them well enough to write them how could you remember all the hundreds of tiny one-stroke differences?How can you read words in English that you don't know how to spell? How can you distinguish between characters of the Simpsons even though they are all so similar and you can't draw them from memory? Recognition is a different skill. If you tried to pay attention to each radical it would actually slow down your reading, kind of like if you paid attention to each letter while reading English. You don't, you just read the whole words instead.
Roketzu Wrote:He most likely means reading them in context, not just identifying single kanji out of contextActually I can recognize them outside of context for the most part, aside from words like 駱駝 and 牡蠣 which are always seen together as a pair.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Vempele - 2014-07-03
john555 Wrote:How is that possible given that a lot of kanji are different by only one tiny stroke (e.g., "marquis" vs. "climate", using Heisig keywords). If you can't remember them well enough to write them how could you remember all the hundreds of tiny one-stroke differences?Because you don't need to know the exact details of most multi-stroke differences (indeed, at small font sizes, some of those details don't even exist!) in order to distinguish them visually.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Stansfield123 - 2014-07-03
kameden Wrote:I can read decently and can recognize over 2500 kanji, however I can write very few. I'm wondering if it would be worth it to use mnemonics like RTK, or should I just do it by wrote memorization because they are so familiar to me already?Rtk is useless for that. Fluent writing is the result of muscle memory, and muscle memory comes with repetition. So, with or without mnemonics, you'll still have to practice the same amount.
I would imagine that amount is quite a lot, btw., for thousands of characters. Personally, I haven't used a pen to write, in any language, for years. Most people haven't. Is there a specific reason why you need to write Japanese?
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - jimeux - 2014-07-03
I did RTK years ago. I mainly "wrote" the kanji in my head when reviewing, and I've never wrote any actual Japanese by hand. Recently, I've been wanting to learn to write at least basic words, and avoid completely losing my ability to distinguish similar characters.
I don't think going through RTK (again) will help either of us. Associating kanji with 熟語 makes more sense than English approximations at this point. I started going through this deck. I'm sure there are better options available, but the stroke order font is definitely useful, and I'm with Stansfield on the muscle memory point.
You should also consider his point about the usefulness of learning to write. Remember that natives use short forms, and can write much quicker than learners penning every individual stroke. So, even if you learn to write every word you know as seen in the dictionary, it's still strangely foreign and even impractical to write like that. It really depends on what you want to do with your writing skills, I guess.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - TsugiAshi - 2014-07-03
From my own research and study, I've learned that for me mnemonics help with trying to recall the proper stroke order of something, particularly if I'm trying to recall a certain character from memory.
Say I have to write a word out and I'm sorting through a series of characters in my mind in order to write that word down from memory. If I suffered from writers block or some type of brain hiccup at that moment and how to write the character in the proper stroke order escaped me, if I paused and remembered the key word of that character through mnemonics, I could 95% write that character out properly. RTK would be helpful for that.
However, if you aren't interested in RTK, then there's also basically just learning the kanji radicals and reviewing the rules for the proper way to write out kanji characters in general. That coupled with an app that lets your practice writing out the stroke order of individual kanji would probably help as well.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - riogray - 2014-07-04
Stansfield123 Wrote:I would imagine that amount is quite a lot, btw., for thousands of characters. Personally, I haven't used a pen to write, in any language, for years. Most people haven't.Wut. Don't you ever take notes? If you don't write things down by pen, that is something most people don't, not the other way around...
I think it is rather useful to be able to write. I really don't know how you guys learn, but for me it is nice to write the answers into Genki. It shows you how you have to pay atention to detail (I will miss a Kanji by a few strokes or forget a tenten etc). After having done most of RtK (I somehow can't make myself do the last 200) and writing them down rather often while reviewing (mostly just on my palm with my finger) I am rather fast in writing Kanji. So it will help you to learn to write, if you go through RtK and practice writing while reviewing. However, I am not sure it will be the most efficient, if you can already read that much.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Linval - 2014-07-04
riogray Wrote:I haven't used a pen in ages as well... except when I was going through RTK actually. But I don't write kanji anymore when I do my reps now. Even in college I never took notes... I realized I never used them anyways, so I just decided to stop and concentrate on absorbing what was said.Stansfield123 Wrote:I would imagine that amount is quite a lot, btw., for thousands of characters. Personally, I haven't used a pen to write, in any language, for years. Most people haven't.Wut. Don't you ever take notes? If you don't write things down by pen, that is something most people don't, not the other way around...
I found writing on the palm of your hand as you review kanji to be very efficient though. It didn't help me read better, but it does help in making sense of kanji in general, and it's always a nice feeling y'know ?
But yeah, muscle memory is the key here. And repetition is what you need.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - john555 - 2014-07-04
riogray Wrote:I write by hand at work all the time. You have to, when you go to meetings and take notes. I work for a large corporation and at big meetings everyone has their paper notebook with them (usually hardcover) and they busily take notes by hand. Nobody takes notes on their laptop. That's just not practical for most people.Stansfield123 Wrote:I would imagine that amount is quite a lot, btw., for thousands of characters. Personally, I haven't used a pen to write, in any language, for years. Most people haven't.Wut. Don't you ever take notes? If you don't write things down by pen, that is something most people don't, not the other way around...
I think it is rather useful to be able to write. I really don't know how you guys learn, but for me it is nice to write the answers into Genki. It shows you how you have to pay atention to detail (I will miss a Kanji by a few strokes or forget a tenten etc). After having done most of RtK (I somehow can't make myself do the last 200) and writing them down rather often while reviewing (mostly just on my palm with my finger) I am rather fast in writing Kanji. So it will help you to learn to write, if you go through RtK and practice writing while reviewing. However, I am not sure it will be the most efficient, if you can already read that much.
90% of my RTK1 practice was to look at the keyword and write the kanji by hand. Writing them by hand certainly helps to be able to recognize them.
If you [think you] can recognize kanji when you see them, but you cannot write them, then the question is, do you really know them after all? Maybe that's a question for the philosophers. What do you do if you attend a business meeting in Japan and have to take notes by hand? Do you just write everything phonetically and then pay someone to transcribe it into kanji later? I think anyone who can sort of tell what kanji mean when seen in context but can't write them would be fired pretty quickly if they were hired in Japan.
I guess it comes down to what your goals are in learning Japanese.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - howtwosavealif3 - 2014-07-04
Even if you do rtk or whatever else to Learn the radicals etc you still have to do kakitori
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - vosmiura - 2014-07-04
I would maybe still do RTK, but not necessarily in the book order. Do the first ~250 in book order to learn the method and common primitives, and then add the rest in the order you need them - like if there's certain compounds you would like to write then add those kanji and then practice writing the compounds.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Stansfield123 - 2014-07-04
riogray Wrote:Now that you mention it, I do take notes from time to time. But for taking notes, knowing Kana and a few common Kanji is plenty.Stansfield123 Wrote:I would imagine that amount is quite a lot, btw., for thousands of characters. Personally, I haven't used a pen to write, in any language, for years. Most people haven't.Wut. Don't you ever take notes? If you don't write things down by pen, that is something most people don't, not the other way around...
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - vix86 - 2014-07-05
I got to about N2 level without ever doing RTK. That said I don't know how to write words from memory even though I can usually get a foggy image of what the kanji is for the word.
People like us are in weird positions. RTK might help you learn to write the kanji but it'll probably be slow going work because you have a good feel for what kanji mean and the keywords on each kanji might conflict. I've never taken writing seriously because I prioritized my learning on things and writing always fell dead last.
There are a couple of ways you might consider tackling the problem. First, you could do RTK, and its probably the most organized way to do it.
Second, you could probably pick and choose with RTK. It's likely you know how to already write about 500 kanji without much effort. So you would just ignore the ones you already know well enough and focus on those you don't.
Third, you could get a book like Kanji in Context which is heavily Japanese but provides a lot of context sentences for words and the kanji. You could focus on writing words which might help the kanji stick a bit better.
Regardless of which method you use, I think you need to devise a mnemonic system to help you unless you want to do it brute force.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - kameden - 2014-07-05
I have already started going through it. I've done about 100 so far, probably just do 50 a day because I want to focus on actually progressing with the language. This is more of just a side thing. I've replaced some keywords which are pretty horrible and deleted a couple useless kanji along the way. I feel bad for people who are memorizing a lot of these useless keywords though. For example:
卓 | eminent > table
旦 | nightbreak > for a moment
肌 | texture > skin
召 | seduce > summon
丁 | street > polite
頂 | place on the head > peak
貞 | upright > chastity
昭 | shining > shouwa
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - vosmiura - 2014-07-05
It's fine to change some keywords, although if you can use shared stories for existing primitives it saves a lot of work.
> 旦 | nightbreak > for a moment
What does "for a moment" give you? It's not as good for use in stories.
> 丁 | street > polite
Street is better for stories
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Ash_S - 2014-07-05
kameden Wrote:I have already started going through it. I've done about 100 so far, probably just do 50 a day because I want to focus on actually progressing with the language. This is more of just a side thing. I've replaced some keywords which are pretty horrible and deleted a couple useless kanji along the way. I feel bad for people who are memorizing a lot of these useless keywords though. For example:I don't love RTK's keywords either, but "horrible" and "useless" is going too far for most of those you mentioned. And you say it with such conviction as well...
卓 | eminent > table
旦 | nightbreak > for a moment
肌 | texture > skin
召 | seduce > summon
丁 | street > polite
頂 | place on the head > peak
貞 | upright > chastity
昭 | shining > shouwa
卓 | eminent > table
卓越、卓絶、卓抜 etc, perhaps not as commonly seen as the table meanings but still an important meaning.
旦 | nightbreak > for a moment
旦夕、元旦、月旦 etc. With "for a moment" you're probably thinking of 一旦, but even the 旦 in that comes from the "morning" meaning lol. Also bad for stories as mentioned above.
肌 | texture > skin
agree. possibly there was a clash with 皮 though (I don't remember). Clashes are a reason for lots of the strange keywords in RTK...
召 | seduce > summon
agree
丁 | street > polite
丁 has a whole load of meanings. The street one is good for stories though, I don't mind it.
頂 | place on the head > peak
i guess.
貞 | upright > chastity
maybe "chaste", in the original sense of the word? Maybe "virtuous"? I don't mind "upright" though.
昭 | shining > shouwa
Why should the keyword of a kanji be the romaji of a japanese era which uses it, rather than something related to the meaning of the kanji? 昭然、昭代 etc.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - john555 - 2014-07-05
kameden Wrote:As someone who finished RTK1 I would advise you to stick with Heisig's keywords even if you think you have better ones. The keywords were chosen in order to avoid confusion.vix86 Wrote:I have already started going through it. I've done about 100 so far, probably just do 50 a day because I want to focus on actually progressing with the language. This is more of just a side thing. I've replaced some keywords which are pretty horrible and deleted a couple useless kanji along the way. I feel bad for people who are memorizing a lot of these useless keywords though. For example:
卓 | eminent > table
旦 | nightbreak > for a moment
肌 | texture > skin
召 | seduce > summon
丁 | street > polite
頂 | place on the head > peak
貞 | upright > chastity
昭 | shining > shouwa
For instance, consider this set of three kanji with their Heisig keywords. It might be tempting to say "they all mean 'help' so I'll assign the keyword 'help' to all three" but the advantage of having three distinct keywords for three kanji with the same basic meaning is that you can keep them all differentiated in your mind, and you have a tagging device with which to refer to specific kanji later on.
aid: 扶
abet: 援
help: 助
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Vempele - 2014-07-05
That's a problem Heisig creates rather than solves. The solution is to go kanji-to-keyword and only worry about writing once you can read*. If you can read Japanese, you're never going to get confused between 扶, 援 and 助 on account of their readings being completely different.
*And add hints in Japanese. Say, ふ助, えん助 and 援じょ.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - tashippy - 2014-07-05
Skritter might be useful to you as well, whether or not you decide to use RTK.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - Stansfield123 - 2014-07-05
kameden Wrote:I have already started going through it. I've done about 100 so far, probably just do 50 a day because I want to focus on actually progressing with the language. This is more of just a side thing. I've replaced some keywords which are pretty horrible and deleted a couple useless kanji along the way. I feel bad for people who are memorizing a lot of these useless keywords though. For example:I feel bad for you when you figure out that you have two or more Kanji with the same keyword now.
卓 | eminent > table
旦 | nightbreak > for a moment
肌 | texture > skin
召 | seduce > summon
丁 | street > polite
頂 | place on the head > peak
貞 | upright > chastity
昭 | shining > shouwa
The keywords need to be unique and easy to use in stories. That means that, sometimes, Heisig had to sacrifice accuracy to ensure that they are. It makes no significant difference, they still serve their purpose of helping newcomers familiarize themselves with the Kanji. RtK isn't meant to teach vocabulary.
Is it recommended to do RTK1 after you're fluent? - vix86 - 2014-07-05
kameden Wrote:*replacing keywords*As has already been pointed out, you'll run into some conflicts when changing keywords. Be sure to use this site's RTK study feature to search for the keyword you are reassigning to and make sure you keep note of what you are going to reassign.
Also, Vempele's suggestion is a good one
Vempele Wrote:*And add hints in Japanese. Say, ふ助, えん助 and 援じょ.Since you'll know a lot of words and you can probably more easily pull out the kanji from a context in a word than from a keyword.