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+--- Thread: To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? (/thread-1594.html)
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To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - stshores24 - 2008-06-25
OK, I am still working through RTK1, but I am thinking about what step to take next...sentences or RTK2? I haven't purchased RTK2 yet, but from what I've read in here, it sounds terribly confusing. Has anyone compared the sentence approach (ala AJATT) versus RTK2, and if so, is there any benefit to doing RTK2 first?
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - Zarxrax - 2008-06-25
I've looked over RTK2 but haven't put any serious effort into it. I think learning in context through sentences is a better way to go. RTK2 basically gives you the readings to the kanji and you have to memorize them. It doesn't give you any mnemonics tricks like the stories of RTK1. It organizes them in a manner that makes it a little more efficient, and I think it gives you a few vocabulary words for each one (I cant remember for sure though), but in the end you are basically just memorizing readings for kanji and some words out of context.
I personally think that is *incredibly boring*. I kept on plodding through RTK1 because the stories at least make it sort of fun and enjoyable. You don't get that aspect with RTK2. So as I see it, learning kanji through sentences is a much more enjoyable way to go, and you learn grammar and useful phrases at the same time!
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - yukamina - 2008-06-25
You memorize the example words, not just isolated readings.
For example
侵入 しんにゅう invasion
浸水 しんすい flooding
寝室 しんしつ bedroom
The kanji featured all have the reading しん from the phonetic marker you can see on the left side of 浸. There is of course a benefit to using RTK2, but it's up to you and whether you like the method.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - stshores24 - 2008-06-29
yukamina Wrote:There is of course a benefit to using RTK2, but it's up to you and whether you like the method.I'm not sure if I like the method yet. I might buy it and look through it, but I think I will hop directly on to sentences. Thanks.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - Nukemarine - 2008-06-29
There's definite merit to Heisig's method here. One thread took it even farther by showing that the radical's position can help you determine the reading. Getting it drilled in your head how to pronounce these Kanji quickly will help learning reading which in turn can speed up listening and writing.
Again, this can help with the 1000 or so kanji with somewhat coherant On-Yumi pronunciation patterns. For Kun-Yumi, I put the sentence method or even substituting Japanese keywords for RTK reviews above Heisig's tacked on mnemonic method.
Ok, my mind in cranking. Maybe RTK2 can be used with Anki or even an annex to RevTK.
Kanji: 中国
Kana: ちゅうごく
Translation: China (center, country)
Group: pure 中
Heisig RTK2 Number: 57
Kanji: 忠告
Kana: ちゅうこく
Translation: admonition, warning (loyalty, revelation)
Group: pure 中
RTK2/3 Number: 58
Kanji: 沖天
Kana: ちゅうてん
Translation: ascendancy (open water, heavens)
Group: pure 中
RTK2/3 Number: 59
Kanji: 仲介
Kana: ちゅうかい
Translation: agency (go between, crammed in)
Group: pure 中
RTK2/3 Number: 60
As Heisig notes, here we're going only from Kanji to pronunciation and concept. So with these cards I guess you recreate the Kanji to Concept I've been advocating, but getting additional benefits out of it.
Yes, I'm ignoring his starting portion of Kana originals.
In addition, Kun-yumi can get similar treatment via the Japanese keyword thread. However, there, concentrate on replacing keywords ONLY for those with Kun-yomi words.
Now, for kanji that have multiple kun and on readings? Well, that's the sentence method. That's the trinity.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - stehr - 2008-06-29
Here's my current take on RTK2: I created a new Anki deck which only drills the immediate recognition of the signal primitives. It was designed for a quick review of both the signal primitives and RTK1 keywords from "Kanji-Keyword".
Here's a couple of example cards:
1.
Question:
中沖忠仲
Answer:
ちゅう
in, open-sea, loyalty, go-between
39-138-602-956
2.
Question:
包胞砲泡抱飽庖
Answer:
ほう
wrap, placenta, cannon, bubbles, embrace, sated, cleaver
530-531-532-533-645-1480-2234
It takes a while to make the cards, so this is currently a work in progress. Right now I have 20 of these cards in my deck. Again this is simply a "quick-review" which is supplemented with my ongoing sentence studies. As you can see, this deck also includes the RTK3 "old pure-grps" and "new pure-grps" sections. I'm hoping that this will help me to learn readings and new words a bit faster.. only time will tell.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - radical_tyro - 2008-06-29
I just made a list of all the pure group kanji and their reading. I uploaded it to the RTK yahoo group, called "RTK2 pure groups.txt" (Edit: gone for now.). Here's a sample:
中忠沖仲 チュウ
舗補浦捕 ホ
長張帳張 チョウ
付府符附腐 フ
義議儀犠 ギ
青精清晴静請情 セイ
五吾悟語 ゴ
白泊迫拍舶伯 ハク
包砲泡抱胞飽 ホウ
...
If anyone finds mistakes please let me know.
@stehr: You could generate your cards from this file with a little script. It doesn't have any RTK3 kanji though. Is there a list somewhere?
I'm planning on using this data in an Anki plugin to show any pure group kanji in your cards along with the other kanji in its group and reading. This way one gradually learns the pure groups from one's own vocab without making extra time to study them specifically.
Is there data already floating around for the "one-time chinese readings" or semi-pure groups? Those could be a useful addition to the plugin.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - woelpad - 2008-06-29
This kind of free data sharing, as altruistic as it may seem, again makes me chill. You're extracting data from a (series of) copyrighted book(s) and make it available to anyone on the planet without much of an afterthought. Please check with the author before publishing anything other than a sample.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - stehr - 2008-06-29
believe me, I'm not a very altruistic person; I just want the plugin.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - leosmith - 2008-06-29
In RTK2, Heisig suggests drilling from compound to pronunciation (reading). Not character to pronunciation. It takes some digging, but it's there. He also suggests, for those who wish to continue writing, to drill from kana to compound.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - leosmith - 2008-06-29
stshores24 Wrote:OK, I am still working through RTK1, but I am thinking about what step to take next...sentences or RTK2?If you have any, learn to read your vocabulary before anything else. It's the easiest, hence the best, step to take next.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - Nukemarine - 2008-06-29
leosmith Wrote:In RTK2, Heisig suggests drilling from compound to pronunciation (reading). Not character to pronunciation. It takes some digging, but it's there. He also suggests, for those who wish to continue writing, to drill from kana to compound.Yes, he recommends knowing the word's pronunciation, not just that one kanji. Go from kanji word to pronunciation (and meaning). I'd personally recommend this AT LEAST for the 500 or so "pure" and 500 "semi-pure" kanji.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - GoodSirJava - 2008-06-29
Zarxrax Wrote:I've looked over RTK2 but haven't put any serious effort into it. I think learning in context through sentences is a better way to go. RTK2 basically gives you the readings to the kanji and you have to memorize them. It doesn't give you any mnemonics tricks like the stories of RTK1. It organizes them in a manner that makes it a little more efficient, and I think it gives you a few vocabulary words for each one (I cant remember for sure though), but in the end you are basically just memorizing readings for kanji and some words out of context.Saved me some typing. The heart and soul of RTK1 is the technique of imaginative memory; this is completely lacking in RTK2, as is the more modern understanding of how memory works: RTK2 entails brutal, inefficient rote memorization.
I personally think that is *incredibly boring*. I kept on plodding through RTK1 because the stories at least make it sort of fun and enjoyable. You don't get that aspect with RTK2. So as I see it, learning kanji through sentences is a much more enjoyable way to go, and you learn grammar and useful phrases at the same time!
I don't think many people would independently come up with this idea that "I need to memorize kanji readings" if they weren't inculcated in that way of thinking by Japanese teachers. There isn't really much sense in doing this, because vocabulary is what you actually want to know, and vocabulary is best learned in context (full sentences or at least phrases, as in AJATT and Antimoon).
I also think that mnemonic techniques can be applied to the problem of fixing pronunciations in memory. (Barry Farber talks about it in his book, although he just got it from Harry Lorayne, and most of his other advice is obsolete in one sense or another, e.g. using flash cards instead of an SRS.) Some people have apparently applied this to the problem of readings by augmenting their RTK1 stories, which is at least more entertaining.
As for signal primitives, their main use is for native speakers and others who have a comprehensive knowledge of the spoken language. They can essentially sound the word out approximately and then say, "Hey! I know that word," just the way English-speaking kids learning how to read and write do. Explicitly memorizing Kanji readings as a foreigner is like someone who speaks minimal English learning in excruciating copious detail the pronunciation rules of English orthography (which as anyone will tell you is packed with exceptions, irregularities, and ambiguities), because even a comprehensive knowledge of individual Kanji readings only affords a foreign learner of Japanese an improved ability to guess at the pronunciation of Kanji compounds, similar to how an RTK1 graduate can guess at what that compound means.
The best way to learn Kanji readings is indirectly, similarly to how English speakers can sound out unfamiliar words (or nonsense words, or onomatopoeic words, or "pseudo-English" pronunciations of foreign words and names) by (unconscious) analogy to other words they already know, without having to consciously resort to some tremendous list of unreliable rules. (Obviously young children do learn some basic rules like this when learning to read, but not nearly enough to be able to correctly pronounce all words without a comprehensive knowledge of the spoken language.)
In short, RTK2 is aiming at the wrong target. Heisig先生 revolutionized how people learn Kanji, but apparently stuck to old assumptions about how people should learn the Japanese language.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - radical_tyro - 2008-06-30
stehr Wrote:believe me, I'm not a very altruistic person; I just want the plugin.An initial version of the plugin is ready, but I'm not sure what to do in light of woelpad's comments. For now i'll take the file off the yahoo group until I get Heisig's permission to distribute the list with the plugin. Without the data though, the plugin is useless and it's too much to ask each user to type in all the data themselves :-p. Oh well, this gives me more time to refine the plugin. Honestly I have not found it very useful in my reviews today since the pure groups are such a small subset of the kanji, and I'm finding many words in my deck don't use the onyomi for those characters that are pure. I can see it being much more useful with the "one-time onyomi", semi-pure, and maybe mixed groups.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - woelpad - 2008-06-30
stehr Wrote:believe me, I'm not a very altruistic person; I just want the plugin.I feel your pain. Stehr, Radical_Tyro, thanks for your consideration. I'm glad it didn't turn into another copyright bashing battle.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - ファブリス - 2008-06-30
woelpad Wrote:This kind of free data sharing, as altruistic as it may seem, again makes me chill. You're extracting data from a (series of) copyrighted book(s) and make it available to anyone on the planet without much of an afterthought. Please check with the author before publishing anything other than a sample.Woelpad I understand your point of view, but aren't we looking at kanji grouped by chinese readings or selected on other simple criteria here ?
There's got to be a limit to what can be copyrighted. Anybody can draw a list of so called "pure groups" by filtering a list of kanji on some criteria such as the chinese reading, japanese reading and so on.
As for learning characters grouped by chinese reading, that's nothing new and certainly not a new idea that came with Remembering the Kanji.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - Nukemarine - 2008-06-30
Heisig DEFINITELY has intellectual property rights on the "Keyword" list, and the stories. That's equivalent of having copyright on translated and critical works of public domain documents (correct me if I'm wrong, CMIIW).
RTK2 seems to have standard translations for its word choices. Nothing copyright there. Now, his text describing his choices and method for Kun-yumi (which I doubt many use) are copyright.
As for "freely" sharing, I hope a majority of us have bought Heisig's book (or will buy it). Sharing an electronic database of something we purchased as a hard copy is not violating copyright.
PS: Is there a database/spreadsheet out there for RTK2? I have the book, but I'd like to input it into Trinity. Now that I see RTK2 being useful, it seems appropriate to use RevTK as the medium (worked so well for RTK1).
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - ファブリス - 2008-06-30
No questions on his authorship of keywords, or primitive names, or hand-picked groups and "exceptions", or the "pout pourri" of readings etc. Those are selections authored by James Heisig.
To clarify my last comment, I was looking at radical_tyro 's sample :
Quote:中忠沖仲 チュウJust kanji and readings.
舗補浦捕 ホ
長張帳張 チョウ
付府符附腐 フ
義議儀犠 ギ
青精清晴静請情 セイ
五吾悟語 ゴ
白泊迫拍舶伯 ハク
包砲泡抱胞飽 ホウ
To be fair you'd need a little more than KANJIDIC to build the "pure groups" list for all kanji (not just RtK1 kanji) : RADKFILE to decompose the characters, and then a list of the known "phonetic components" and matching radicals. Then use the later to filter out kanji in the list that has the same Chinese reading but doesn't use the same components (kanji chains would skip that step, but RtK2's "pure groups" are matched by visual components).
My point is if you are really motivated you can output a big spreadsheet with a Perl script.
As it stands, I reckon the "pure groups" list are RtK 2 material.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - Nukemarine - 2008-06-30
Eh, it really is pushing it seeing that a database can create it. Pretty sure courts rule against guys claiming copyright on such things. Ah crud, yeah, it's turning into a legal discussion and not about the merits of RTK2.
Yeah, I think RTK2 can work great with Trinity. Mayhaps Mr. Heisig will agree to the use his word choices (and pure groups I guess) for a preset list available to all there? I assume this site has done wonders for the sale of his first book, so something that gets use from his second can't be sneezed at.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - radical_tyro - 2008-06-30
ファブリス Wrote:To be fair you'd need a little more than KANJIDIC to build the "pure groups" list for all kanji (not just RtK1 kanji) : RADKFILE to decompose the characters, and then a list of the known "phonetic components" and matching radicals.Do you know of such a list? If it exists and is fair game to use, I should be able to whip this up without much trouble. Otherwise I'll have to do some matching of readings from kanjidic which makes it a bit trickier.
Of course I could just ask Mr. Heisig, but if I can make my own list I might as well. Plus it could include non RTK1 kanji, since some of us wonder just how 'pure' these groups really are when one doesn't limit the scope to RTK1. I wonder if Fabrice has hopes of using RTK2 data in Trinity.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - radical_tyro - 2008-07-01
(Apologies for my unplanned hijacking of this thread.)
Ok, I've now written a fair amount of code and have bashed my head against the desk a few times. I'm starting to believe it may not be possible to mine a list even close to the quality of RTK2. The main problem is that RADKFILE/KRADFILE breaks things down too far and in strange ways. For example, it seems there's no way for me to mine the set 中忠沖仲 : チュウ. Looking at the radical file,
中 : ｜ 口
忠 : ｜ 口 心
沖 : ｜ 汁 口
仲 : ｜ 化 口
This fine-grained deconstruction is a problem, since we need to be able to match all kanji with 中 in order to test to see those form a group (pure/semi/mixed). The best we can do is match any kanji with both｜and 口:
亜悪渦艶沖患貴叫串研遣碁崎埼嗣師帥整疎喪束速中仲忠勅追唐豊味免頼 (limited to RTK1)
But many of those don't have the 中 primitive, and their readings are all over the place. There seems to be no way to weed out the false positives. For example:
亜 : ｜ 一 口
帥 : ｜ 巾 口
嗣 : ｜ 一 口 亅 冂
喪 : ｜ 衣 一 口
Things get really nasty when we include non RTK1 kanji:
亜唖悪渦艶沖嘩患貴叫串研遣碁崎埼碕咋嗣師獅帥菅整疎喪束速唾中仲忠勅槌追鎚壷兎菟唐塘橡嚢埠豊味免鑓頼侶婁豫冲剌吽呷呻咄哄喘喇嗽嘸嘯壤嫩嬋嬾孃彈悚憚懶戰敕數樓溂溏狆瑾痞瘻瞶禪禮穰窶竦簍簣籟籥綰縋縷耜菫薛藪藾螻蠹褸諫譴讓赧跚踈踵蹇蹕軆辣迚遐鄲醴釀鏤鑰靺鞣饋髏體鰕鰊鰤鶫
So, what is needed is a file that breaks down the kanji into their Heisig primitives. This could probably be partially compiled from this site and then fixed up by hand. Such a list has been talked about before. Hmm...
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - woelpad - 2008-07-01
ファブリス Wrote:Woelpad I understand your point of view, but aren't we looking at kanji grouped by chinese readings or selected on other simple criteria here ?As radical_tyro just demonstrated, it's more difficult than it looks. The choice of signal primitives, the categorizing into pure, semi-pure and mixed, the selection of compounds, even the selection of meanings (one or two per compound), all that takes a substantial effort. Suppose you'd be given only the method and the set of kanji to operate on, there'd be little chance that you would make the same choices and create the same work.
There's got to be a limit to what can be copyrighted. Anybody can draw a list of so called "pure groups" by filtering a list of kanji on some criteria such as the chinese reading, japanese reading and so on.
But my criterion, for what it's worth, is actually simpler. If your primary (or even sole) reference consists of these books (and its spin-offs, see KanjiGym), then surely you cannot simply ignore the copyrights involved. Have no fear, ask the man. There's nothing to be ashamed of.
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - furrykef - 2008-07-01
Nukemarine - I just thought I should tell you, it's "yomi", not "yumi". "Yumi" is 弓, as well as a name and probably a bunch of other stuff.
(And while I'm correcting people, I should probably tell woelpad that "criterium" is not a word; it's "criterion".
)
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - woelpad - 2008-07-01
furrykef Wrote:(And while I'm correcting people, I should probably tell woelpad that "criterium" is not a word; it's "criterion".It is a word, even an english one, though the meaning differs. But indeed an odd case where english foregoes its latin roots in favor of greek, while dutch goes with the latin version. Seems I could have used the plural instead, but that's even weirder.
Added to internal deck...
To RTK 2 or not to RTK2? - Nukemarine - 2008-07-01
furrykef Wrote:Nukemarine - I just thought I should tell you, it's "yomi", not "yumi". "Yumi" is 弓, as well as a name and probably a bunch of other stuff.Eh, at least you're not correcting the Romaji spelling of katakana used for foreign words (habaaga, no, hamubagaa, no, haabaagaa, no, ahhhhhhhh).
(And while I'm correcting people, I should probably tell woelpad that "criterium" is not a word; it's "criterion".