basssp15 Wrote:Hello, I've recently finished RTK1 about 5 days ago and I've started skimming through RTK2. As I've been reading through the first two chapters I've found it difficult to understand how this book works. In the first chapter I understand that knowing which Kana came from which Kanji is supposed to help you understand the readings, that was a simple chapter. But on chapter 2 things get a little confusing for me. I understand how signal primitives work completely. What I don't understand though is how knowing the signal primitive help remember the On reading itself.

EratiK Wrote:He then explains the exceptions and the content of every chapter. In chapter one he explains kana come from certain kanji, so by learning where they come from you learn how the kanji is pronounced, since they are pronounced like the kana.

EratiK Wrote:And since you've learned how to decipher kanji/primitives with RTK1, you should instantly associate those primitives with the given sound.

Vemepele Wrote:It's the shape, not the meaning. Knowing 中 is pronounced ちゅう helps you remember 仲 沖 忠 虫 are also pronounced ちゅう (the last one is apparently unrelated but since it looks similar enough...).

basssp15 Wrote:

Vemepele Wrote:It's the shape, not the meaning. Knowing 中 is pronounced ちゅう helps you remember 仲 沖 忠 虫 are also pronounced ちゅう (the last one is apparently unrelated but since it looks similar enough...).

Yes, I understand this but, how does this book expect me to remember that one of 中's readings is ちゅう to begin with. I mean even if know that 仲 沖 忠 虫 share the same reading that doesn't help me remember the reading itself. And I'm going through the pure groups chapter looking at the different sounds for each group we have せん for symbols like 泉、線、and 腺 and そう for 荘、壮、and 装. I don't understand how to associate these sounds with the symbols, there are so many in this chapter alone. I'm starting to think that there's something about kanji I'm supposed to know before opening this book or that I'm missing something from the book itself.

Thank you

john555 Wrote:THAT is the reader's problem. It's up to the reader to somehow remember that "中" is a signal primitive giving the sound "choo" (as in "choo choo train"?!).

The point is you have to use mnemonics again, in order to learn the sounds of the signal primitives.

john555 Wrote:decided to focus on studying the vocabulary (mostly compounds) in my reading passages, and I find that in learning compounds I'm naturally absorbing some of the readings of these signal primitives.

basssp15 Wrote:

john555 Wrote:THAT is the reader's problem. It's up to the reader to somehow remember that "中" is a signal primitive giving the sound "choo" (as in "choo choo train"?!).

The point is you have to use mnemonics again, in order to learn the sounds of the signal primitives.

Well when it comes to On readings Heisig doesn't breath a word about using mnemonics for the On readings only when it comes to Kun readings does he mention this. I've seen other people on here claim this is what we are supposed to do, but due to the fact he doesn't mention this I feel this is not what he intended.

john555 Wrote:decided to focus on studying the vocabulary (mostly compounds) in my reading passages, and I find that in learning compounds I'm naturally absorbing some of the readings of these signal primitives.

That is actually what I'm starting to think he wants us to do. I believe he wants us to learn the compounds in order to to absorb the readings. Which is why when he tells us to review to go from compound to reading and meaning. I guess this is why he tells us at the end that we should have learned 2000 words at this point. But what I don't understand now is how will this help me read. If I pick up a book how will know which reading to use for a particular character.

Thank you

john555 Wrote:You know what the problem with RTK2 is? Other than a few useful chapters (like "one time only readings") you can get pretty much everything by taking one of those books (e.g., Essential Kanji by O'Neill) that describe each of the jouyou kanji and looking in the phonetic index and you can see for yourself which kanji share the same ON reading.
So you look in index under "CHU" and you see a list of all the jouyou kanji pronounced "CHU".
You could actually also get the "one time only readings" by skimming the index.
On a scale of one to ten, if RTK1 is a 10, RTK2 is probably 1.0.

EratiK Wrote:Maybe this past thread can help you.
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10613

bertoni Wrote:I found that I could remember the signal on-yomi fairly easily through rote memorization along with a bit of reading practice. An Anki should be fine, in my opinion. More practice, especially with interesting texts, makes for better recall. I think you should give it a try, and see how it goes. If it's not working for you, try something else. You also might want to research some other methods now, if RTK2 doesn't sound like something you'd tolerate well.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Heisig does basically ask you to just brute force memorize a huge amount of out of context information, just using the signal primitives to help you out sometimes.

TurtleBear Wrote:Personally, I did. It can be difficult to remember the reading of the kanji not containing the signal primitive in question, but memorizing it will pay off when you encounter the kanji again in its own frame. Challenging yourself in this way will also prepare you for the mixed groups and chapters not containing signal primitives.

ktcgx Wrote:What I ended up doing for RTK2 was to find the RTK2 deck on anki, and go through that to learn the onyomis. I cleaned it up a bit and changed the clour scheme to suit myself though.