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+--- Thread: What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? (/thread-4670.html)
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - Khengi - 2009-12-21
Hi, been using the site for a while but first time poster.
I've been self teaching myself Japanese for about a year and a half now and （finally)comprehend the 常用 Kanji, as well as a very nice amount of readings for them all, if in case I would need to type them out (as well as being able to write them out from memory).
In an attempt to see how to teach some of the younger kids I teach Kanji, I decided to use the RTK method, as children work better with pictures for memory.
In buying this book and flipping through it, I've encountered a few elements that I honestly can not understand how it got through the editing process.
況して is the only time I know that 況 can act even SIMILARLY to 'but of course', and why is 里 given the meaning 'Ri' instead of 'home village', and have 'Ri' learned at a later date?
I trust this book and love the work that was put into it, but why are these Kanji that are given such an odd treatment? (my use of the word 'howlers' alludes to Jim Breen calling some of the Tanaka Corpus' example sentences 'howlers')
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - wildweathel - 2009-12-21
Simply put, they're not supposed to be translations of the Japanese but hooks on which to hang the stroke order, so you have something to put on the front of your cards. Great if they happen to match up nicely in meaning, but some are quite a bit off the mark.
For 里 I think the motivation was that 村、町、郷 are already dangerously easy to confuse, and you don't need a fourth character with essentially the same meaning. "Ri, measure of distance" is sufficiently far off to avoid confusion, while still being a legitimate meaning. (海里, for example)
況 is a case of Author Screwed Up. There's no way to defend it.
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - Khengi - 2009-12-21
I see... so this book is more for being able to write the Kanji with a secondary purpose for remembering their meaning?
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - Jarvik7 - 2009-12-21
Heisig didn't know Japanese yet when he made the material which was later compiled into a book. He just chose meanings at random from a dictionary (or English synonyms of what was written in a dictionary, which are not necessarily synonyms in Japanese) without knowing if they were representative.
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - Khengi - 2009-12-21
That's interesting to say the least. It's made me a bit nervous to teach from this book. However, it has a large following (the entire site to say the least), so do the precautions necessary for learning from this book outweigh the ability to linearly learn from it?
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - JimmySeal - 2009-12-21
Khengi Wrote:I see... so this book is more for being able to write the Kanji with a secondary purpose for remembering their meaning?It's for being able to write them from memory, which is a big deal and it's quite good at that. It's also for being able to tell all the kanji apart, so you have separate locations in your brain for 緑, 縁, 録, and 禄. The characters' meanings are a bonus on top of this, and not a primary focus of the book.
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - Nukemarine - 2009-12-21
To be honest, it's because of the internet and this site that that book has had a resurrection of sorts (can't prove it, but it feels true). This site and others removed many of the weaknesses of the actual book.
Problem - Solution
Bad Keyword - Keyword replacement
Bad Meaning - Katsuo's list(s) offers multiple meanings
Vague Meaning - Keyword replacement, Katsuo's lists
English Keyword - Japanese/Foreign keyword lists
No stories - This site's main feature
Bad Stories - This site's main feature
Limited Kanji - Katsuo's Kanken list
Too many Kanji up front - RTK Lite
No pronunciation - Memory Palace / Movie Method
No vocabulary - Many sources such as 2001 KO
Now, people have used this site and it's benefits for so long that they forget the weaknesses that the book by itself presents. On the other hand, it's disingenuous to berate the book about these weaknesses if one is aware of sites such as this that helps fix those weaknesses.
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - Khengi - 2009-12-21
I see, thank you everyone. It seems the book itself is not the best tool to use by itself if one wants to retain the meaning as well, but as it was previously said, it does a great job of remembering the Kanji's stroke order.
Unfortunately, some of the stories he provides truly strays away from the meaning even he provides. In the end, though, it's very useful and has even allowed me to see the primitives of some Kanji that I just learned through rote.
What of the 'howlers' in the RTK? - Codexus - 2009-12-22
I don't know if it's that good for stroke order, Heisig makes a lot of stroke order mistakes. Also the diagrams show only the order of strokes and not the starting points. So one should really check the stroke orders with another reference.
RtK is not a perfect book, some choice of keywords are doubtful and a few are clearly mistakes but the method really works and once you get the benefit of being able to identify and write all the kanji in the book it doesn't really matter if you learned a few weird keywords in the process.