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getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - Printable Version

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getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - drivers99 - 2009-04-14

I only up to about 133 kanji so far but I want to stop this I'm having problem before it gets worse. I missed nitrate because when I thought of it, I remembered stone and sparks (aka candle/resemblence) but I reversed the two primitives. Another time I missed upright because I wasn't sure if the "bundle" went around the "shellfish" or just on top of it. (it was just on top). Now, I probably won't forget those because you make a note of it after you miss a few times, but I'd rather get it right in a way that I can use with any kanji that might get arranged incorrectly. I'm just wondering about how to make sure you know the arrangement of the primitives and not just the primitives themselves. A few examples that prevent the problem for me: For risk, I specifically remembered that the eye looks up at the sun. For bright, the sun makes the moon bright, although this is more in the phrase than in imagery. Rising sun I have a mental image. stomach also works because the brain (rice field) is at the top. For gall bladder I said the body part used "just before" nightbreak. olden times, looks like 18, another trick.

Some I just remember, which makes me think I'll get it backward at some point: Morning (i'm used to mist being on the left), texture (I'm used to wind being on the right), bullseye, riot, bribe, paragraph, shining... these I'm not at all sure I would always know the proper order of the primitives except for picturing the kanji itself in some cases

So I wonder if I will get it wrong for the many future kanji that are made up of seem like they could be reversed.

What do people do with these?

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - Tobberoth - 2009-04-14

Primitives are used in certain ways, find those patterns. The finger primitive is ALWAYS on the left side of a kanji, same with the army primitive. The roof/house primitive is always at the top. The technical explanation for the nitrate example is that stone is the radical and stone as a radical is never put on the right side of a kanji. This explanation might not be very helpful for you though since stone is used on the right side as a bushu, in 拓 for example where finger is the radical.

In situations where these rules aren't enough, you have to use various techniques. For example, you can include placement in the story such as "The nitrate was applied to the stone, shooting sparks TOWARDS THE RIGHT." Both having it in the story and imagining it in your head is good, that's how I stopped having problems with the kanji for rainbow.

You can also simply order the primitives in the story based on placement... such as "The SUN is brighter than the MOON." First a sun, then a moon... bright.

EDIT: Realized my stone example isn't really true, depending on your definition of primitive, so I removed it and added a technical explanation instead.

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - gyuujuice - 2009-04-14

I change the story to make it obvious that it's on a certain side.
Like with "display" I make an image of the king gobbling in the rain like a turkey. That's why "mouth" is above.

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - julz6453 - 2009-04-14

You're right, many of the kanji you will pick up over time - like how you remember that mist is always on the left of 朝. But for the others, do what Tobberoth and gyuujuice have said - either memorise where certain primitives are placed in kanji (for example, 頁 is always on the right) or create vivid stories where you will remember where the primitives are.

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - onafarm - 2009-04-14

Tobberoth Wrote:The finger primitive is ALWAYS on the left side of a kanji, same with the army primitive.
Like this 揮　？

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - Tobberoth - 2009-04-14

onafarm Wrote:
Tobberoth Wrote:The finger primitive is ALWAYS on the left side of a kanji, same with the army primitive.
Like this 揮　？
He he, mixing it up. I've always called 彳 army from a "column of soldiers". It works extremely well when making stories.

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - Nukemarine - 2009-04-15

Tobberoth Wrote:
onafarm Wrote:
Tobberoth Wrote:The finger primitive is ALWAYS on the left side of a kanji, same with the army primitive.
Like this 揮　？
He he, mixing it up. I've always called 彳 army from a "column of soldiers". It works extremely well when making stories.
Aye, I use Spartan's myself (Spartan Column)

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - Tzadeck - 2009-04-15

One thing that I find really helpful is that often one part of the kanji corresponds to pronunciation and the other to meaning, and it can make you life a lot easier. For example, when you have a kanji that has two parts, one on the left and one on the right, the one on the left corresponds to meaning, and the one on the right corresponds to pronunciation. The one on the left is usually a category, and the meaning of that specific kanji will fall into that category.

This is really obvious with the water and soil/ground primitives. For sea, wash, ocean, all that good stuff, the water appears on the left because that is the side that determines the category of meaning (海、洗、洋）. Whatever is on the right usually determines the Chinese-style pronunciation (音読み）, though this rule is a lot more wishy-washy because the pronunciations change a lot faster than the meaning.

The soil primitive can occur on the left or right, but here we see it on the left in ground or pit (地、坑). If the meaning of the kanji itself has something to do with ground, earth, or landscape, you can pretty much assume it will be on the left. So, if you get a word like pit or cape (the landscape term), and you are wondering if it's on the right or left, you know it's on the left because the big category it's part of is earth words.

Enclosures do this too. I remembering reading an article linked from here that suggested asking a Japanese person for the kanji for hemorrhoid, a relatively rare kanji. First you would see them write the enclosure because they know that it means illness, and then they would have to think for a bit about what to put inside of it (to get the right pronunciation). 病、癌、痔　are sickness, cancer, and hemorrhoid respectively. The enclosure from left to top means sickness, so we see it with all these sickness words. Incidentally, hemorrhoid is pronounced 'Ji,' so we get the kanji for Buddhist Temple inside of it, which has the very same Chinese pronunciation. (For example the golden pavilion in Kyoto, called Kin-kaku-ji, is written 金閣寺)

I've never actually read about this fully, so I've looked for the patterns myself, and it hasn't been that hard. I was only told of it a few months ago by one of the people working in my school office.

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - Tobberoth - 2009-04-15

Here's some more information about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_%28Chinese_character%29

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - drivers99 - 2009-04-15

Thank you. That helps a lot. Heisig hadn't mentioned that (yet?) and his method has you try to make both halves equally part of the meaning. I think if I keep in mind the radial, being on the left, as the category I'll have something to associate the left side with the keyword. Also, I'll try to use more mnemonics to remember which comes first, when needed. どうもありがとう。

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - Tobberoth - 2009-04-15

drivers99 Wrote:Thank you. That helps a lot. Heisig hadn't mentioned that (yet?) and his method has you try to make both halves equally part of the meaning. I think if I keep in mind the radial, being on the left, as the category I'll have something to associate the left side with the keyword. Also, I'll try to use more mnemonics to remember which comes first, when needed. どうもありがとう。
But the radical isn't always on the left. It can be on the right, at the top, at the bottom, around the kanji... The thing is, Heisig doesn't care about radicals. He just tells us to take a kanji, split it into parts and remember the parts. If you actually want to learn about radicals, you have to learn about the parts, specifically.

The thing is, Heisig calls the part "stone" in both 拓 and 研, but it isn't the same thing. In The first one, it's just the kanji for stone with the radical for hand on the left (Yeah, that's actually hand. Hand is called "tehen" when it's on the left side of a kanji, heisig calls this "finger".) In the second one, it's the radical ishihen (what stone is called when it's a radical on the left).

If you're interested in stuff like this, it's worth learning but it's very different from heisigs approach. Basically every part of a kanji has a name. The left is called "hen", the right is called "tsukuri", the top is called "kanmuri", bottom is called "ashi"... etc.

Here's some more information about it:
http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa070101a.htm

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - vosmiura - 2009-04-15

I wouldn't worry about it so much. I remember at the early stage I was making that kind of mistake too, but as I progressed through the book those became few and far between. The conventions sink in. By about frame 1000 onwards I don't remember having any problems about primitive placement.

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - drivers99 - 2009-04-15

The day after I posted this question, I came to the part where Heisig talks about it, on page 79 of the sample pdf. Also, I read something on ajatt that makes me realize it's ok to make mistakes on the way.

getting the primitives backwards within a kanji - sethg - 2009-04-15

Wonderful observation. It's perfectly normal to make mistakes along the way Smile Don't stress out over getting it perfect the first time. The beauty of the SRS is that you will learn it pretty much whether you want to or not... okay, well, you have to at least want to a little, but you will learn it fairly effortlessly (compared to what you're used to).

As for parts in the wrong order, I'm pretty sure my first post on this site was about that very thing. Eventually, to solve my problems, I'd just start trying to build my stories with radicals appearing in the order that they're written, but eventually, yeah, you'll find that certain parts are on certain sides and you'll get used to irregularities.

Don't stress, have fun, enjoy the beauty of kanji, enjoy the beauty of Japanese! 頑張ってね！