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Question about Heisig's Keywords - Printable Version

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Question about Heisig's Keywords - animedirtbag - 2009-06-14

I've seen a lot of stories on here mentioning that Heisig's keywords were completely wrong on some of the kanji, and at the very least he picked a strange meaning to associate the kanji with.

Is it still a good idea to make it through the rest of it if they're off?

Question about Heisig's Keywords - crayonmaster - 2009-06-14

No matter how you study the kanji, if you use English definitions, the meanings are always going to be slightly off. RTK is only a foundation anyway, you need to build readings and meanings on top of it.

Question about Heisig's Keywords - blackmacros - 2009-06-14

animedirtbag Wrote:I've seen a lot of stories on here mentioning that Heisig's keywords were completely wrong on some of the kanji, and at the very least he picked a strange meaning to associate the kanji with.

Is it still a good idea to make it through the rest of it if they're off?
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater ;-)

RtK is an immensely useful tool. The keywords are meant as guides to the general meaning of the kanji. Once you start learning actual Japanese its pretty easy to replace this broad understanding with a more nuance, and accurate, understanding of the kanji.

So no, don't worry about it- keep going :-)

PS: I don't think the keywords are ever completely wrong. Sometimes he fails to clarify them so you might accidentally use the wrong meaning of the word he presents, but I don't think any are downright incorrect. Just ambiguous. If you're really worried you can look up each kanji in the dictionary and see which words they are commonly used in to make sure you've got the correct meaning.

Question about Heisig's Keywords - Katsuo - 2009-06-14

I don't think there are any keywords in RTK1 that are completely wrong. There are a few occasions where the most common meaning was not selected, and a small number that may be ambiguous.

I made this document to help out. It compares RTK keywords with words given by other sources.

Question about Heisig's Keywords - animedirtbag - 2009-06-14

Thanks guys ^_^

I was just worried after I hit about 140-ish, I started seeing stories talking about how some words would be better fits and things like that, I was just worried.

And thanks Katsuo, I'm definately gonna use the document you linked to. It looks useful