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Don't learn kanji - montecristo73 - 2010-10-26
Don't learn kanji - hereticalrants - 2010-10-26
I do think that he's right about studying the readings out of context being stupid.
Learn words. You know, those things that you put together to make sentences. Yeah.
Don't learn kanji - JimmySeal - 2010-10-26
Completely agree with his advice about not drilling the readings out of context.
Learning the meanings in English out of context isn't good either unless it's in a method like RTK, which isn't exactly the same as learning the meanings either.
Don't learn kanji - bombpersons - 2010-10-26
I kinda agree with him, and it's sort of half what I ended up doing. I didn't completely finish RTK, I had about 500 to go, but I just starting sentences anyway. Since I knew a load of primitives anyway, I could actually learn a lot of the kanji in context.
So you probably could do this, if you made up primitives as you saw them and made stories for the kanji as you saw them. Then you could associate it with an actual Japanese word rather than an English keyword. It would be like doing RTK out of sequence, so it might be a bit awkward, but it could work.
If you didn't use some sort of mnemonic method to learn the kanji (eg splitting up into primitives and using a story, etc) and didn't use an SRS, then yeah this method be a huge pain in the ass.
Don't learn kanji - harhol - 2010-10-26
He might seem to be stating the obvious but I don't think all of us who are privy to Heisig, Anki, Rikaichan, EPWING and so on appreciate just how terrible Japanese instruction and study tends to be. I recall a YouTube series by an American girl studying Japanese at Harvard (anyone else seen it?) in which she learns by going through a kanji dictionary page by page, drilling one character at a time for hours on end in an attempt to memorize the stroke order, various potential meanings and various readings. Learning X amount of kanji per day (as opposed to words) is a very common study method.
Don't learn kanji - Raschaverak - 2010-10-26
harhol Wrote:He might seem to be stating the obvious but I don't think all of us who are privy to Heisig, Anki, Rikaichan, EPWING and so on appreciate just how terrible Japanese instruction and study tends to be. I recall a YouTube series by an American girl studying Japanese at Harvard (anyone else seen it?) in which she learns by going through a kanji dictionary page by page, drilling one character at a time for hours on end in an attempt to memorize the stroke order, various potential meanings and various readings. Learning X amount of kanji per day (as opposed to words) is a very common study method.Harvard is one of the most prestigious universities in the world, with an average IQ of 130 for it's students. Probably you only saw a part of the whole video, and she knows something we don't, about learning kanji..
I't Harvard for Pete's sake. They cannot be wrong.... can they?
Don't learn kanji - Asriel - 2010-10-26
Yeah, I'm not sure people like us, ie. People who use things like core2k, ko2000, or KIC to learn the readings, are his target audience. Naturally, he wasn't talking about anything but how to read the kanji, not necessarily bow to remember or how to write them. Even so, if you learn words 'for' then kanji and then just apply whatever method that works for you to remember how to recall, write, and differentiate 2000 characters, then excellent, you don't need rtk. Me? I like to have system that put it all in place (and in order) for me...
But seriously though, he's right. Learning the kanji readings or English meanings (rtk keywords == mental index =/= meanigs) isn't going to be efficient and probably will confuse you down the line somewhere.
Don't learn kanji - nadiatims - 2010-10-26
The dude has been in Japan for 13 years, and his Japanese isn't great judging by his other videos. His accent's terrible and he habitually and obviously accidentally keeps using English words. Nevertheless he demonstrates passable communicative ability on topics he has knowledge in (teaching) and I trust he can probably read 'pretty good'. So his advice is the advice of someone who has spent 13 years acquiring passable Japanese. I wouldn't take his advice (about kanji) too seriously if I were you. In one of his other videos, he mentions that he practiced kanji by writing them out hundreds of times, so it's not like he didn't study them anyway. Also the popular advice floating around this forum to not to study readings at all is really bad in my opinion because it ignores the fact that something like 90% of kanji words (the majority of words in the language) can be read phonetically after learning just one onyomi. One onyomi can be learned while doing RTK for almost no extra work. Taking 3 months to learn to write 2000 kanji, read 90% of the words in the language and take guesses (with varying degrees of accuracy) at their meanings isn't wasted time imo.
Don't learn kanji - Asriel - 2010-10-26
Nadiatims -- a very good point. I agree that readings can be easily added to rtk, and that would be beneficial. And yes, a very large number of kanji are use with only one, occasionally 2 readings. Heck, nukemarine put together a spreadsheet just to show those common readings.
What i advocate is learning the readings through he vocab. Instead of learning a reading, you could add a word and get twice the benefits. What I did is put Japanese words into my rtk deck to reinforce the readings.
That way, if someone is explaining the kanji for a certain word, I can go "特徴の特か、得意の得？" and the like. So I'm all for learning the readings, but learning just the readings for the sake of "because they're the readings" doesn't seem to mal sense to me. I suppose that's why a lot of dictionaries give examples of words that the kanji is used in as well.
Don't learn kanji - yudantaiteki - 2010-10-26
harhol Wrote:He might seem to be stating the obvious but I don't think all of us who are privy to Heisig, Anki, Rikaichan, EPWING and so on appreciate just how terrible Japanese instruction and study tends to be. I recall a YouTube series by an American girl studying Japanese at Harvard (anyone else seen it?) in which she learns by going through a kanji dictionary page by page, drilling one character at a time for hours on end in an attempt to memorize the stroke order, various potential meanings and various readings. Learning X amount of kanji per day (as opposed to words) is a very common study method.I know someone who teaches at Harvard; that's definitely not part of the class, it's just something she's doing on her own.
I pretty much agree with the idea of not trying to learn out-of-context readings or meanings; I never did that much and it worked out fine for me. I never thought that there was much problem with the "sea of kanji"; that idea comes from trying to study things out of context.
Don't learn kanji - robnonstop - 2010-10-26
The out of context problem is solved as soon as you learn the actual etymological reasoning for the chosen radicals. A Kanji by itself then has a meaning like a compound and is much easier to remember than just by itself (unless it's an already easy to learn 1-radical Kanji like 人).
It also often connects several seemingly unrelated meanings. Every single Kanji, that I have checked a maximum of two times in The Key To Kanji, has stayed in my memory, unlike all other methods I have tried so far, because those all go by the modern, unified shapes of the radicals (moon=body, spoon=person, mouth=box) and therefore don't make sense, which is why you need the silly stories to connect them.
When I started with RTK (even before) I was quite convinced of the silly-story-principle, that they are easier to remember. A good etymological mnemonic, I am convinced now, is better for recognizing a Kanji plus remembering and understanding the meanings. But, and this is where RTK is still uncontested, it doesn't regard the shapes used, so it's worse for remembering how to write a Kanji. The exact same ancient symbol for foot can turn out as at least three very different shapes in today's Kanji, but without knowing that they all mean foot, none of them make any sense and are hard to remember.
Etymology + RTK is the way to go. I might revoke that at a later point in time but I can defenitely say that learning two or more mnemonics for one Kanji does not have any downside at all, besides taking more time.
Don't learn kanji - harhol - 2010-10-26
yudantaiteki Wrote:Perhaps it's not part of the taught course, but she was still doing it as a student of that particular university. I'm not having a go at Harvard or its teaching, I'm just saying that if these kinds of terrible self-study methods are typical of intelligent high-level students, then it speaks volumes of Japanese self-study in general.harhol Wrote:I recall a YouTube series by an American girl studying Japanese at Harvard (anyone else seen it?) in which she learns by going through a kanji dictionary page by page, drilling one character at a time for hours on end in an attempt to memorize the stroke order, various potential meanings and various readings. Learning X amount of kanji per day (as opposed to words) is a very common study method.I know someone who teaches at Harvard; that's definitely not part of the class, it's just something she's doing on her own.
Is there a more given-up-on second language?
Don't learn kanji - nadiatims - 2010-10-26
Asriel, what you say makes a lot of sense. I could see your method being just as effective in the long run. I take it you added one onyomi word per kanji specifically with the aim of learning the common readings? Learning through vocab means you get the some extra vocab which is great but learning isolated onyomi is also good because it can be easily merged with RTK (and the readings can be recalled via mnemonics if necessary). Either way, the main point I think is to learn the common readings early in the Japanese learning game because of the large immediate level-up it provides. If there were an effective way to do the same for common kunyomi readings that would probably be great too, but I never tried it. RTK2's kunyomi methodology seems clunky.
Another perspective on the learning readings thing comes from my experience with my Japanese students (Junior high school). Sometimes I'm shocked that my students cannot read or even attempt to read simple English words, sometimes even kids who have learned for 3 years. Instead, they rely on memorizing the teachers pronunciation of the words. Perhaps this is good for their pronunciation, but it means they can't read anything on their own. They often have never been properly taught to sound out words based on their spelling, sometimes even failing to memorize the consonant sounds. English spelling is of course full of exceptions, but there are also a lot of underlying patterns that can be and should be taught. People will eventually pick up grammar without instruction, but children who haven't been taught to read tend to become illiterate. I don't think anyone advocates learning the kana via vocabulary instead of just learning it in one go and then enjoying the ability to use it from the outset.
Don't learn kanji - Asriel - 2010-10-26
nadiatims Wrote:I take it you added one onyomi word per kanji specifically with the aim of learning the common readings? Learning through vocab means you get the some extra vocab which is great butYep. It didn't come until I had been done with RTK for a while, but it was all like "WTF is this keyword? wtf? OOOOhhhh ffffuuu--- That's the kanji in [random word]" So it started out mainly so I didn't have to worry about weird keywords, but I've found that more than that, its helping me remember the readings for the individual kanji. Really nothing but a nice side effect, to be honest.
nadiatims Wrote:learning isolated onyomi is also good because it can be easily merged with RTK (and the readings can be recalled via mnemonics if necessary).Yes!! I wish I would have added a reading mnemonic in my stories, but it did NOT even cross my mind when I went through. It probably would have gotten me through writing and reading together quicker, if I had been more innovative back in the day :/
nadiatims Wrote:I don't think anyone advocates learning the kana via vocabulary instead of just learning it in one go and then enjoying the ability to use it from the outset.The difference is that the kana only have one reading that never changes. Kanji is a little different in this aspect. While yes, there are the main readings, even they can have variations.
Don't learn kanji - JimmySeal - 2010-10-26
nadiatims Wrote:Another perspective on the learning readings thing comes from my experience with my Japanese students (Junior high school). Sometimes I'm shocked that my students cannot read or even attempt to read simple English words, sometimes even kids who have learned for 3 years.Your students' problem is that they've been taught for 7-9 years not to think for themselves, not that the "learn as you go" approach is inherently bad. Anyone with a slight bit of self-motivation will be able to apply knowledge from kanji vocabulary to unknown words, even if they haven't learned the readings in isolation.
And you're comparing apples to oranges by analogizing learning 2000 kanji readings out of context to learning kana or English phonics.
Don't learn kanji - harhol - 2010-10-26
I'm surprised that the IPA isn't taught as standard to Japanese students learning English, not only because of the proven benefits for reading & pronounciation, but also because of the obvious parallel with particular letters having a number of "readings" depending on which words they're part of. Perhaps people are hostile to it for the same reasons that people are hostile to RTK, i.e. because it isn't "real" language learning.
Don't learn kanji - nest0r - 2010-10-26
http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/10/21/japanese-comedians-interview-tom-cruise-cameron-diaz/
Don't learn kanji - Asriel - 2010-10-26
"I am now massaging the earth!"
....wat? I'm sorry, but that was definitely the best part
Don't learn kanji - yudantaiteki - 2010-10-26
harhol Wrote:Perhaps it's not part of the taught course, but she was still doing it as a student of that particular university. I'm not having a go at Harvard or its teaching, I'm just saying that if these kinds of terrible self-study methods are typical of intelligent high-level students, then it speaks volumes of Japanese self-study in general.Yeah, in general I think that Japanese self-studiers don't use very good techniques. Kanji are a particularly dangerous target; people get to thinking that learning Japanese is the same thing as learning 1945 kanji (and "learning 1945 kanji" means memorizing their english meanings and readings). This idea is reinforced by bad books that pass themselves off as kanji learning resources (like H&S's "Kanji and Kana" or "Essential Kanji"), when they're really just extremely crippled dictionaries. Trying to learn the kanji from K&K is like trying to learn vocabulary by opening up the dictionary to page 1 and starting from there. I tried it myself; luckily I was able to find other ways to do it eventually.
The other problem is that even the worst study methods often produce decent results at the beginning, since almost anyone can learn 100-200 kanji no matter what method they use. It's after that that people start stumbling and give up because "kanji are too hard".
Don't learn kanji - Thora - 2010-10-26
Just to be clear: Beginners should understand that knowledge of all common On-readings will not enable them "to read 90% of words in the language". Not even 90% of compound words. They would still have to look up *every* word to confirm the pronunciation. And if they do look up every kanji compound word, they'll find they guessed incorrectly far more often than 10% of the time.
@Nadiatims, you keep repeating this 90% estimate. I'm curious to know what you're basing it on. You seem to be underestimating the frequency of other readings: On, Kun, On variations, irregular. (btw, you noted that multiple readings occur with more frequent kanji. I wonder if this is the case with variations and irregular readings too.)
If this is just some kind of gut feel, please keep in mind that it's not uncommon to categorize readings incorrectly depending on their form and/or meaning. For eg, people think of 肉 and 菊 as Kun, 値段 and 試合 as On-On. (Here's something that surprised me a bit, of the few Joyo kanji with only Kun readings, almost half of them appear in kanji compounds.)
Don't learn kanji - yudantaiteki - 2010-10-26
Professor Unger, in one of his books, made an interesting list of different ways that kanji compounds (or individual kanji) can trip you up as far as readings, or make them harder to learn:
1. On-kun (e.g. 利幅)
2. Kun-on (e.g. 更地)
3. On readings used unexpectedly (e.g. 頭が高い)
4. Kun readings used unexpectedly (e.g. 真に受ける)
5. Jukujikun (e.g. 玄人, 昨日)
6. Kanbun-derived readings (所謂, 為替)
7. Lack of rendaku where expected (間髪に容れず)
8. Rare alternate on-yomi (殺生, 行灯, 出納, 蛇行, 疾病)
9. False clues from phonetic elements (弛緩, 進捗)
10. Recent Chinese/Korean loanwords (飲茶)
11. Historical sound changes resulting in unpredictable readings (反古, 所為, 雪隠)
12. Unexpected sokuon (気風, 素気)
13. Unexpectedly dropped syllable from normal reading (読経, 音頭)
14. Unvoiced on-yomi that is normally voiced (読本)
15. Voiced on-yomi that is normally unvoiced (精進, 上戸)
16. Multiple kanji for one word (早い・速い, etc.)
17. Western loan words written in kanji (頁)
18. Same kanji compound read multiple ways depending on context (物心, 一見)
19. Compound that changes when embedded (文書 -> 古文書, 眼鏡 -> 天眼鏡)
20. Compounds that when flipped, result in a different set of readings (多数 vs. 数多, 隙間 vs. 間隙)
21. Kanji with multiple kunyomi that have the same representation (i.e. 暇 = いとま or ひま, 汚す = よごす or けがす)
On the one hand, depending on how much you buy into the "kanji are ideograms" idea, you may not think it matters so much as long as you know what the word means. But I don't think anyone can disagree that it's much faster to look up a word if you know the reading (assuming you're not reading a computerized text), and in some cases it can be extremely difficult to do so.
Don't learn kanji - masaman - 2010-10-26
He has a point. The advice can help some learners I believe. I'm not good at making my points like that in a video so I admire him for that. Though, if he pronounced 禁止 with the proper stress and mora, not like "Keen-she", it would have been more persuading.
Don't learn kanji - Nukemarine - 2010-10-27
The 90% refers not to the amount of total words, but to the percentage of time that they (Kanji, Vocabulary, Common Onyomi) are utilized. That distinct difference should be drilled into the heads of those with the "gotta learn everything" mentality.
Don't learn kanji - harhol - 2010-10-27
This 90% figure seems wildly speculative. Are there any valid sources which confirm it?
I don't think that learning the most common reading of a kanji by incorporating it into your story while doing RTK1 would ever be detrimental. However, it's the kind of thing that you only really think about after you've finished RTK1. If someone had suggested I incorporate onyomi readings when I first did RTK1, I'd have demanded to know what a yomi was and why I needed to be on it.
Don't learn kanji - Thora - 2010-10-27
I'm afraid I don't follow you, Nukemarine. Are you saying that somebody analyzed the total number of [kanji? kanji in compound words?] in some texts (i.e not unique kanji) and found that 90% of them were common On reading? That still doesn't sound right.