Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - Printable Version

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Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - aldebrn - 2014-08-03

I was told about the movie method for learning the jouyou kanji and their Heisig's keywords and primary/secondary onyomi. (Here is Nukemarine's convenient movie method spreadsheet.) It's a topic that's been discussed a few times on these forums, perhaps most recently-detailedly in 2013.

In brief, it involves:

1. Memorizing RTK's 200-odd primitives (not the real kangxi radicals, but Heisig's more hierarchical primitives) up front.
2. For the 300-odd onyomi (Chinese-derived pronunciations for kanji used by themselves or with compound words) that are shared by the 2200 jouyou kanji, assign a movie (dorama, anime, whatever) to each onyomi. Then learn all kanji that share that onyomi by assigning each kanji to a scene from the movie.
3. Rejoice upon completion because you've learned RTK volumes 1 and 2.

I had some quantitative questions about this method that the people employing it weren't answering in their blogs so I thought I'd share a bit of data analysis using Nukemarine's RTK Spreadsheet RTK 1 and 3 spreadsheets (in this post). Specifically, I was curious about how many kanji might a single onyomi "contain", how were those kanji distributed on a commonness basis, and how to order the onyomi readings when you go to learn them.

(Large plots follow. If they're too big for your screen please view them, with an abbreviated discussion, at http://imgur.com/a/v2ybH)

First, Nukemarine's kanji spreadsheet contained both (newspaper?) frequency as well as the Kanji Kentei (kanken) levels for many kanji, including most of the jouyou. A preliminary question was how far could kanji's kanken levels be used as a proxy for commonness. One of the complaints against RTK that I'm sensitive to is that the ordering sacrifices usability: common kanji are potentially learned late in the sequence. Since the movie method necessarily throws away the overall RTK ordering (building on primitives), we might as well learn the onyomi ordered by commonness.

I see that while the relationship between a kanji's kanken level and frequency is complicatedly interesting, the answer is yes, kanken levels are a reasonable discretization of the frequency range:

[Image: ZvvHlPO.png]

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Next, grabbing the first reading in the "Kana" column of Nukemarine's spreadsheet (that column contained multiple readings, and I assumed that the first reading was the primary one; this also results in kanji without onyomi being assigned a kunyomi) and sorting the resulting onyomi by the number of kanji it contained shows a nice decay in the size of onyomi groups:

[Image: t4mU0s6.png]

The top plot shows the number of kanji in each onyomi group. The bottom plot shows how they cumulatively add up to the 2200 jouyou kanji.

I see that there are 290 primary onyomi. 290! The total number of films, doramas, anime, books, walks, and buildings I remember clearly is probably <30! (And half of those are the individual Firefly episodes... Tongue

)

Here are the top five onyomi:
コウ (74 kanji)
ショウ (58 kanji)
シ (55 kanji)
カン (49 kanji)
キ (40 kanji)

But the last 150 onyomi have four or less kanji in them. 60 onyomi have a single jouyou kanji in them (e.g., く.う, イク, ネイ, にお.う, とち; what does a dot in the middle of a kunyomi reading mean?)

So any weaponization of the movie method faces the twin problems of requiring at least 150 cultural items to serve as memory palaces which will contain between 5 and 74 kanji, and of then somehow chunking another 150 onyomi with fewer kanji associated with them.

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Finally, I needed some way to decide which onyomi group to learn first. There's a lot of different visualizations that help but here's a simple one that I like: for each onyomi group, sum up the kanken levels of all kanji in it. The more kanji an onyomi group contains, the higher you expect the sum to be; so the higher the average kanken level for an onyomi reading, the more elementary kanji it contains. The plot below shows, for each onyomi reading, its kanji's sum of kanken levels (horizontal axis) as well as, on the vertical axis, the median kanken level (dot) and 25- and 75-percentile kanken levels (vertical lines).

[Image: I0OYc27.png]

This confirms the expectation that a single onyomi may be used for kanji with widely-varying commonness. I could start at the top-right of the plot, and sweep down towards the lower-left to order the onyomi into a learning order. The angle of the sweep trades off number of kanji in an onyomi group and how elementary the kanji are therein.

Someone preferring to learn common kanji earlier can pick up the high-kanken level onyomi with fewer kanji in them (smaller sum of kanken levels) before onyomi with a larger stable of kanji but which are in general lower kanken.

Someone more spartan could start from the right and work left, sorting the onyomi only in terms of total kanji in them.

The spreadsheet purportedly made available by Alex Elkholy, the first proponent of the movie method, organized the onyomi alphabetically and dispensing with the number of kanji associated with it. That might be a way to learn too.

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I am interested in this because (1) I'd like to incorporate the method of loci into my kanji system and (2) learn the onyomi along with the kanji, instead of waiting for the post-RTK sentences/immersion phase.

However, I cannot see an easy way to surmount the two obstacles mentioned above: how to come up with hundreds of movies/doramas/etc. if one doesn't spend much time indulging these or in general has a poor memory for things like that, and how to systematically deal with onyomi that have just one or two kanji associated with them. Perhaps instead of associating onyomi with movies and individual kanji with scenes, one could associate onyomi with scenes/tropes/memories and the individual kanji with stories involving them. Like シ = my best friend whose name was Shi, and about whom I could probably think of 55 stories to tie to the 55 kanji with that onyomi.

Or I could spend less time on kanji and more time watching movies for a few weeks...

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(Edit: of the 290 onyomi I cite above, eight are provisionally kunyomi (kanji whose "Kana" column in NukeMarine's database were in hiragana). With RTK volumes 1 (sixth edition) and 3 kanji, we get 315 primary onyomi/kunyomi, with 26 kunyomi. So adding RTK3 adds seven more onyomi to learn, though I suspect the name readings of those extra kanji are far more numerous and important.)

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - comeauch - 2014-08-03

Your research is interesting from a linguistic perspective, but I can't help feeling it won't be very efficient for learning Japanese. Are you familiar with the arguments against learning the onyomi readings?

Just this morning, I discovered and played this game for a bit: http://playable.electrolit.net/kanjipuzzle/ I think you'll find it interesting. Anyway, I never specifically learned readings in isolation, but I'm doing quite good at it. For example I've learned 思考 and 不思議, so I know 思 can be read し and I know it's an on-yomi reading, just because it's used in many compounds. I think RTK2 on the whole can be skipped because your brain will associate readings with kanji and context on its own. You can't help but notice recurring patterns, so why not start right away with meaningful and useful information?

I understand the need for a systematic approach and I agree that it's scary to just start learning Japanese words (there's no organization, no finite number of words, you need to learn what's a verb, what's a noun, what they mean, how they're read, ugh!), but you'll eventually need to get started and I really don't know how much of an advance you'd have by knowing onyomi readings. Probably not worth it is my opinion, but I'd like to hear counter-arguments ;P

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - Termy - 2014-08-03

For the small inyomi-groups, I created sort of "one" journey with several rooms where each room represented one inyomi, which I remembered through creating a subsystem with audio-mnemonics for the onyomi based on people/actors/etc.

For example, all the onyomi groups with 5 kanji each were placed in rooms in my house. Those were the kanji listed in the original excel spreadsheet by the maker of the system that is, but if you want to add more kanji after that in those groups then obviously they'll exceed 5 kanji each. The onyomi group ヨ is represented by the artist Yohio (pretty easy to see and remember for me), so every time I think about that group I see him in the room where I placed him, acting as a sort of host/introducing element for each kanji placed in various parts of that room. Eventually those mnemonics lost their purpose though, because I started just automatically associating the rooms with their designated onyomi anyway.

Using something like that, you can squeeze in a lot of onyomi groups in "one" space (your house, or whatever). I did that for onyomi groups with 8 kanji or less, but actually stopped using the method for groups wtih 2 or less kanji in them.

For bigger onyomi groups I used movies or journeys, like places where I take walks, with clear and distinct points for placing kanji and then I'd place 3 kanji at each point (one to the left, right, and straight ahead).

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - aldebrn - 2014-08-03

Termy Wrote:For the small inyomi-groups, I created sort of "one" journey with several rooms where each room represented one inyomi, which I remembered through creating a subsystem with audio-mnemonics for the onyomi based on people/actors/etc.

For example, all the onyomi groups with 5 kanji each were placed in rooms in my house. Those were the kanji listed in the original excel spreadsheet by the maker of the system that is, but if you want to add more kanji after that in those groups then obviously they'll exceed 5 kanji each. The onyomi group ヨ is represented by the artist Yohio (pretty easy to see and remember for me), so every time I think about that group I see him in the room where I placed him, acting as a sort of host/introducing element for each kanji placed in various parts of that room. Eventually those mnemonics lost their purpose though, because I started just automatically associating the rooms with their designated onyomi anyway.

Using something like that, you can squeeze in a lot of onyomi groups in "one" space (your house, or whatever). I did that for onyomi groups with 8 kanji or less, but actually stopped using the method for groups wtih 2 or less kanji in them.

For bigger onyomi groups I used movies or journeys, like places where I take walks, with clear and distinct points for placing kanji and then I'd place 3 kanji at each point (one to the left, right, and straight ahead).

Thanks for posting your experience, empirical evidence like this is so valuable! A few questions:

- When you said, "3 kanji at each point (one to the left, right, and straight ahead)", I realized that you were encoding the journey per standard method of loci, i.e., encoding not just the contents of the list but also the ordering. Why was the ordering important? Just so you could review the journey in your head? I ask because isn't assigning order unnecessary for this application, where you just need to associate a kanji with a specific journey (onyomi), and since there's no natural ordering for them?

- Just to clarify: you had different journeys for each onyomi? So you still had >100 movies/walks? It sounds really hard for me to imagine using that many, was it hard for you? I think this is what I'm most unsure about.

- How did you choose which onyomi to tackle first? I guess in the end it doesn't really matter but I expect the sequence of onyomi could help keep motivation high.

- Within a single onyomi group, how did you sort the kanji within? I think using Heisig's ordering should work within the group, taking advantage of primitives?

- While you were using this method, were you aware that there were sets of kanji that had similar primitives and which Heisig introduces one-after-the-other making it easier to chain their stories together, i.e., 臭/嗅 and 環/還? With the movie method, kanji that are related like this (i.e., similar primitive elements) aren't going to be close to each other, and you're going to have to notice the relationship later when you come to the second one.

- And most importantly, did you do RTK first and then used the movie method to learn onyomi, or did you combine the two? (If the latter, then I will have more questions Tongue

)

Thanks again!

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - Vempele - 2014-08-03

aldebrn Wrote:With the movie method, kanji that are related like this (i.e., similar primitive elements) aren't going to be close to each other, and you're going to have to notice the relationship later when you come to the second one.

Actually, 環/還 share the on'yomi カン precisely because of the shared primitive - this phenomenon is the main premise behind RTK2. (But yes, there are a lot of imperfectly phonetic and non-phonetic primitives).

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - vosmiura - 2014-08-03

"I'll have a large order of onyomi with fries and a coke." The way to order the onyomi!

Ok, jokes aside you might want to look at the table of contents of this book for the N2 kanji ordered by onyomi. Then maybe I would just start with the biggest groups and work down.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4883193675?ie=UTF8&tag=3anetnihongo-22&linkCode=as2&camp=247&creative=1211&creativeASIN=4883193675

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - aldebrn - 2014-08-03

Vempele Wrote:Actually, 環/還 share the on'yomi カン precisely because of the shared primitive - this phenomenon is the main premise behind RTK2. (But yes, there are a lot of imperfectly phonetic and non-phonetic primitives).

That is really neat. I love Japanese more and more.

vosmiura Wrote:"I'll have a large order of onyomi with fries and a coke." The way to order the onyomi!

Ok, jokes aside you might want to look at the table of contents of this book for the N2 kanji ordered by onyomi. Then maybe I would just start with the biggest groups and work down.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4883193675?ie=UTF8&tag=3anetnihongo-22&linkCode=as2&camp=247&creative=1211&creativeASIN=4883193675

Server: "You want to super-size that? ¥2200 more." Me: "Yes please, 2200 sounds right."

N2 kanji ordered by onyomi: great idea.

comeauch Wrote:I think RTK2 on the whole can be skipped because your brain will associate readings with kanji and context on its own. You can't help but notice recurring patterns, so why not start right away with meaningful and useful information?

This is certainly a method with lots of appeal, and is indeed my current plan: RTK, then effectively memorize as much of the もやしもん and バクマン manga via Anki clozed sentences as necessary/possible. Partly my interest in the movie method is to see if there are ways to improve the RTK experience (recall speed, accuracy, etc.) by the method of loci, and partly also to make RTK stage more fun by adding onyomi thereby enabling me to catch more of spoken Japanese (like it's already lots of fun to spot kanji I know).

I'm not wedded to shoehorning the method of loci into kanji learning, since RTK isn't about memorizing speeches and random decks of cards (the ancient and modern uses of ars memoriae)---the closest direct application would be to treat the RTK keywords as a random word list to memorize, then adding on information on kanji production, and even later, adding on information about onyomi. Both are goals/hobbies of mine, Japanese and the arts of memory, and I recognize that others may be unwilling to experiment with the latter and just stick to a certain method for the former.

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - vosmiura - 2014-08-03

Really the shortcut to learning readings is to get your ear used to Japanese words.

E.g., why learn a reading of 生 is せい in isolation by pure memorization, when you probably already know, or would soon be familiar with words like 先生 (せんせい) or 学生（がくせい)? Isn't that a quicker way to remember a reading of 生 is せい? Also all the kanji with 生 in them commonly read せい.

On the other hand the other argument against spending extra time on learning the onyomi, is that a single onyomi is too limited to be able to read. The same example 生 can be read as しょう in some compounds, or any number of kun readings like なま, い in いきる, う in うまれる, は in はえる, な in なる, etc.

I think you want multi-modal input, and to use your visual/sensory memory learn 生 is なま while drinking a 生ビール, eating some 生魚 and watching some 生中継 sports with your 生意気 cousin ;-).

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - Termy - 2014-08-04

aldebrn Wrote:- When you said, "3 kanji at each point (one to the left, right, and straight ahead)", I realized that you were encoding the journey per standard method of loci, i.e., encoding not just the contents of the list but also the ordering. Why was the ordering important? Just so you could review the journey in your head? I ask because isn't assigning order unnecessary for this application, where you just need to associate a kanji with a specific journey (onyomi), and since there's no natural ordering for them?

I used the ordering listed in the spreadsheet by the creator of the method, so I didn't have to spend time on that. It's ordered so that kanji that build on each other appear after each other, for example 召, 昭, 照, 招, 紹, 沼, 詔 (ショウ onyomis), and as stated before here, most of the times the shared primitives share the same onyomi as well (but not always).

I used 3 kanji for each loci just to save space, so a journey like ショウ wouldn't need 65+ loci-locations but only a third of that, but for that one as well as コウ and シ (the thtree possibly biggest groups) I used journeys where I often walk (to and from work, etc) and placed the loci along the way. For the smaller groups where I used rooms, then I'd place all the onyomi in the various rooms/locations, whether it was a 5-group or 8-group onyomi, etc.

aldebrn Wrote:- Just to clarify: you had different journeys for each onyomi? So you still had >100 movies/walks? It sounds really hard for me to imagine using that many, was it hard for you? I think this is what I'm most unsure about.

I got some inspiration from the original spreadsheet but mostly chose my own movies, and mostly it's based on some phonetic association with the onyomi or with a specific character in the movie where I'd use only scenes with that character in (ハン onyomi = Han Solo scenes). There you can be as creative as you want to as long as you can clearly remember the association.

Choosing films and scenes is really what took the most time. Once that framework is completed, playing out the stories/scenes IRL or in the movies and reinforcing the memories was/is the fun part.

aldebrn Wrote:- How did you choose which onyomi to tackle first? I guess in the end it doesn't really matter but I expect the sequence of onyomi could help keep motivation high.

I started with the biggest group and worked my way down (the way it was structured in the spreadsheet).

aldebrn Wrote:- Within a single onyomi group, how did you sort the kanji within? I think using Heisig's ordering should work within the group, taking advantage of primitives?

As stated above, I used the order that was already in the spreadsheet. Either way I think it's good to group similar kanji next to each other, so the stories/visual scenes can build on each other a bit.

aldebrn Wrote:- While you were using this method, were you aware that there were sets of kanji that had similar primitives and which Heisig introduces one-after-the-other making it easier to chain their stories together, i.e., 臭/嗅 and 環/還? With the movie method, kanji that are related like this (i.e., similar primitive elements) aren't going to be close to each other, and you're going to have to notice the relationship later when you come to the second one.

The spreadsheet did that job already for me, so no extra time spent there.

aldebrn Wrote:- And most importantly, did you do RTK first and then used the movie method to learn onyomi, or did you combine the two? (If the latter, then I will have more questions )

I did the RTK first (one of the first things I started with when I started studying Japanese), before knowing much about onyomi/kunyomi and before hearing of the movie method. I would have saved time doing the movie method to begin with. For the real-life locations that I used for the movie method, I used the visual stories I made up in RTK and placed them in their respective physical locations.

The methods are basically the same anyway, except that the movie/loci/journey methods takes it one step further by using a scene, place or whatever as a backdrop for categorizing the kanji.

If you're doing the movie method I think the first step is to list all the primitives and figure out which visual representations make the most sense for you and that you can remember and visualize most vividly and clearly. I felt like using living, breathing creatures worked the best for a lot of primitives. If 言 means "say" or "word", which person has the most memorable voice for you? Use that person as a part of all the kanji containing that primitive and have him say/speak something.

The real-life locations are the ones I remember the best and actually the biggest groups because I started with those and spent the most time reinforcing those memories. I can still remember exactly where I placed all of those kanji. Conversely, for some where I used movies I didn't know that well and didn't really spend that much time memorizing, it's not quite that effective....

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - DrJones - 2014-08-04

Vempele Wrote:
aldebrn Wrote:With the movie method, kanji that are related like this (i.e., similar primitive elements) aren't going to be close to each other, and you're going to have to notice the relationship later when you come to the second one.
Actually, 環/還 share the on'yomi カン precisely because of the shared primitive - this phenomenon is the main premise behind RTK2. (But yes, there are a lot of imperfectly phonetic and non-phonetic primitives).

Not only that, but that 目 + 一 part (the "supervisor") becomes a 皿 on 監, also with the カン reading and supervisor meaning (which is why I think of it as a 'flying saucer').

By the way, now that we are talking about カン readings, I read a bit about simplified chinese and discovered that 干 (to dry) is just the simplified form of 龺(the left side of 乾), also with the 'dry' meaning. That makes remembering the ONYOMI of those kanji much easier.

Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - CharleyGarrett - 2014-08-04

I didn't see anybody address your question about the dot in kunyomi, and since that's one that I can comment on, I shall!

That marks the spot in the japanese word where it would switch from kanji to hiragana.

RE: Revisiting the movie method: how to order the onyomi - alyks - 2016-02-12

(2014-08-03, 2:20 am)aldebrn Wrote: The spreadsheet purportedly made available by Alex Elkholy, the first proponent of the movie method, organized the onyomi alphabetically and dispensing with the number of kanji associated with it. That might be a way to learn too.

This is possibly the most surreal thing I've ever read.