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+--- Thread: Please help me understand! (/thread-656.html)
Please help me understand! - Negima - 2007-07-09
I do not understand what Heisig wants me to do to memorize the kanji in RtK Volume 1. I read all of the introduction, but it is just not processing in my brain! Please help me!
Please help me understand! - synewave - 2007-07-09
Without wanting to offend, I'd suggest reading again then decide whether the idea of being able to remember/write 2000+ kanji characters appeals to you, remembering that Heisig's method doesn't teach you the readings as you learn how to remember.
Then just give it a try.
When I started I wasn't 100% sure what it was all about. But Heisig's introduction sold me on the idea that it was possible to remember a ton of kanji quickly. And it is.
Try the first part of the book and I'm sure you'll see what it's all about.
Please help me understand! - Negima - 2007-07-09
No offence taken. Your post just made me realize that I was not phrasing my question right. So: I come up with a story for remembering how to write the kanji, but not what the kanji actually means?
Please help me understand! - JimmySeal - 2007-07-09
The idea is to come up with a story that connects the writing of the kanji to its meaning (as provided in the book). If you go through part one of the book I think you will find that he guides you through the process for the first few hundred kanji.
Please help me understand! - synewave - 2007-07-09
Negima Wrote:No offence taken. Your post just made me realize that I was not phrasing my question right. So: I come up with a story for remembering how to write the kanji, but not what the kanji actually means?Do you have any examples?
Stories should be related to Heisig's keywords. In some cases, people may disagree that his choice of keyword represents a kanji's meaning.
However the keywords are like unique identifiers that relate to the/a meaning of each kanji. Don't worry about understanding everything about a character first time round. Rather familiarize yourself with the characters, the/a meaning (keyword) and remember them.
Once you're through 2042 kanji and start hitting vocab, reading, etc. you'll get more familiar with your kanji friends.
Please help me understand! - Megaqwerty - 2007-07-09
Go look at Lesson 1 and come back. Re-reading the Intro might be a good idea as well.
The crux of RtK is forming mnemonics that detail what primitives go into each kanji. Heisig starts you off with stories, drops down to mere plots, and later simply gives you the primitives.
This is markedly different from virtually any other method of learning kanji, but it's fairly easy to understand: it's keeping to it that's hard.
Please help me understand! - amthomas - 2007-07-09
You come up with a story that helps you to remember how to write the peices of the kanji (radicals, or otherwise), and then try to include in that a reference to the keyword that Heisig has chosen, which is a rough, general meaning of hte word *in English*.
SO, as you can see, you will not be learning how to "say aloud" any of hte kanji in Japanese. But, you will be able to see groupings of kanji on signs, in restaurants, or on meeting minutes and be able to guess a rough meaning (again, in English) from it. Then, when you learn the vocabulary in Japanese, you immediately know the written form for it (more or less), and therefore you take care of the nasty messy kanji bit first, thus helping your reading comprehension significantly, and then take care of learning how to *speak* later.
The example I always use is that of もう (mou):
First we learn that these three lines mean "deceased": 亡
and that these 5 lines mean "eye": 目
Then, you put "deceased" above "eye" and you get: 盲
What do you think that means, in English? That's right, "deceased eyes" == "blind". So, without knowing how to *say* either 亡, 目, or 盲 you know and understand what their meaning is, once you've made the stories and solidified the image in your mind.
I always find it really difficult to explain to Japanese people that I understand some kanji, as they are written on paper, and that I know what it means - BUT, at the same time I cannot say the word aloud. So, technically I am reading, in teh sense that I am getting meaning from the characters, but I cannot read in the sense that I cannot pronounce the word. I tried studying kanji through rote memorization in the beginning, but I found that after I hit about 2 or 300 kanji, everything started to blur together. With this story-building method, it is incredibly easy to remember the difference between kanji that look very very similar, because the stories will be completely different.
Take 雷 (thunder) 雪 (snow). The only difference is the bottom half of the character. Thunder is made with (雨) rain above (田)rice field, so you can remember a horrific thunderstorm pouring rain all over your rice fields. Snow, on the other hand, is (雨) rain above (彐) broom, so you can imagine that snow is a kind of rain that you can brush away with a broom. Despite (彐) and (田) looking very similar at first glance, especially with a small font size, once you make stories for each of them, thunder and snow become immediately recognizeable to you. Especially because the English words "rice field" and "broom" are not similar in any ways. Therefore, since Heisig has (usually) quite carefully chosen the English keywords, you will (usually) not have any problems remembering the differences between similar looking kanji.
Also, keep in mind that Heisig developed this method as he was trying to boost his Japanese enough to take University courses in Japanese. In a lecture-based setting, the priority will be on being able to read and understand the meaning, so whether you understand the meaning of the word using the English or Japanese vocabulary is irrelevant, so long as you come away with an understanding. Thus, Heisig stresses to understand meaning and form first, and then pronunciation later (that's volume II!).
I think the method is really solid, and if you follow RTK I with either Vol. II or, perhaps, some of the Japanese kanji study materials, you will find that your vocabulary can grow quite rapidly on top of your solid reading and writing base.
I hope that helps. People have told me that I always sound like a condescending jerk when I try to be informative, so hopefully this is sending positive, encouraging feelings, not "I'm a big huge smartass" feelings... I do genuinely mean to be helpful, here.
Anyway, best of luck with your RTK studies. The first 100 or so are the worst, but after that you'll never look at kanji the same way again!
-ang
Please help me understand! - Negima - 2007-07-09
Thank you to all that replied, especially amthomas.
@amthomas:
that was the explanation which really made everything click together. Thank you for spreading your wisdom.
Please help me understand! - Mighty_Matt - 2007-07-10
I agree with what amthomas said.
I also believe that even if you're not entirely sure what you're doing to start with, Heisig gives you appropriate stories for long enough to understand the method. I still find it amazing when I review and the keyword leads to a story and I write down the primatives. I look at what I've written and don't recognise it at all, think it must be wrong, check with the answer, and it's correct. I don't question that which seems to work!