The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - Printable Version

+- kanji koohii FORUM (http://forum.koohii.com)
+-- Forum: Learning Japanese (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: Remembering the Kanji (http://forum.koohii.com/forum-7.html)
+--- Thread: The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters (/thread-78.html)

Pages: 1 2

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - laner36 - 2007-12-27

In the trinity update, are the mnemonics something we could share similar to how we shared stories for RTK 1?

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - ファブリス - 2007-12-27

Hmm I'm not sure yet.

There's the onyomi mnemonic, only one per onyomi group. Then there's the story.

Sharing the short onyomi mnemonics seems overkill, even though it's difficult to come with a good list.

As for the story for the kanji chain, it is not saved in the current version but it's likely I'll add it in , even though I personally feel that this would be a waste of time, as building the map/chain should be the main focus and with enough attention, writing down a story is redundant.

The kanji chains could be shared as simple URLs, but without the accompanying story. This could be very useful to discuss ideas in the forum, show examples in the documentation, etc.

I want to improve the interface but otherwise I will keep things simple and sharing kanji chains will be something to consider if there is enough interest, and also seeing feedback and how well it works for those who want to give it a good try.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - Nukemarine - 2007-12-27

I could look up the KanjiCan onyomi mnemonics that he put together. Obviously not the stories themselves, just the words he used to indicate the onyomi pronunciation.

Though there'd be little reason to share Onyomi Mnemonics, it may be worthwhile to list 2 or 3 variants if there's good samples supplied. Then the Chain story could have more options to be developed.

PS: For the mnemonics and keywords, I assume that the Katakana will be displayed alongside the English mnemonic for that sound? Shi and She, Charlie Sheen and Shin, etc?

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - Transtic - 2007-12-29

I have a doubt about Kanjichain, what happens with kanji that have several readings?

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - vosmiura - 2007-12-29

As an initial impression, I thought that sharing kanji chain stories could work great, pretty much the same as the shared stories for kanji.

I know many like to make their own stories for the kanji, but personally I adopted a lot of shared ones and they worked great.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - leosmith - 2007-12-30

Transtic Wrote:I have a doubt about Kanjichain, what happens with kanji that have several readings?

The kanji keyword appears in each reading's story. For example, let's say a kanji has readings jou and sei. The keyword will appear in the jou story, and it will also appear in the sei story.

I'm not as turned off on this as I was before. If a group of people have already created a complete set of memorable stories, it may be worth the time to become familiar with them. Good luck you guys!

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - ファブリス - 2007-12-30

Transtic Wrote:I have a doubt about Kanjichain, what happens with kanji that have several readings?

My intention is still to use one selected reading per character, which I call the 'main reading'. I didn't check recently, and I'm at a internet cafe right now, but I think it was at least half, if not 3/4 of the kanji with an onyomi, have only one reading. The main concern probably is for those very frequent characters which have 2 frequent readings. As for Trinity, the goal is to provide a strong base like RtK1, I have no doubts learners can add the additional readings on their own later, plus, for those characters which are very frequent, it won't be difficult to remember the alternate readings.

This is not set in stone, and it's always possible to add secondary readings into the system later.

Using one reading per character makes it easier also to track the user's progress. The main Trinity page can then tell you : for Onyomi, you can read xxx/yyy total kanji (from a pool of kanji which have at least one chinese reading). So there can be a concrete goal, over time, as you add compounds through snetence, vocab and exemplary compounds (kanji page), your onyomi-can-read count will increase towards 100% completion.

Today I did some more planning on this and I can also arrange each group to contain only characters for which the related chinese reading is actually used in a compound that has a certain amount of frequency. If you take the basic list, it's exhaustive, why would you want to learn a group of 30 kanji for one reading, when you could chain just 20, when 10 are used in rare compounds ? (by EDICT's standards a character outside of ichi1/ichi2/ etc will be outside of the top 20000 most frequent compounds so that gives you an idea).

vosmiura Wrote:I know many like to make their own stories for the kanji, but personally I adopted a lot of shared ones and they worked great.

I agree, and it could work great for small chains: for example I did 'DO' the other day and it was fun and easy because I chose 'Homer Simpson saying DOh!' for the group mnemonic, and even drew a DOnut on the kanji chain grid, place the 5 corresponding characters in it and that was it. I have a short story for this, you can easily fit GUY and an ANGRY Marge in there I'm sure Wink

Short stories like this could work great for sharing.

But I wonder about how effective it would be to share stories for long chains (20 to 60 characters)... Often I use images from the kanji mnemonic itself in a chain, and that will vary depending on what the person chose for the kanji mnemonics themselves.

leosmith Wrote:If a group of people have already created a complete set of memorable stories

I don't thjink there will be such a list anytime soon, if ever. A list of LINKWORD-type mnemonics to attach to each possible chinese reading though will be important, I'm trying to complete one.

As I see it, the kanji chain feature will be there to provide a method to deal systematically with the readings, but with more flexibility than RtK2. Combined with tracking the completed ON groups and total 'readable' kanji (each one must have an exemplary compound added from the kanji page or through sentence/vocab), this makes for a clear goal to attain in the manner of RtK1.

I dont expect this to seduce the majority of Japanese learners using the site. It is aimed at users like me, who don't like to review and memorize by rote, after RtK1 answering 'No' multiple times until the reading sticks feels frustrating.

Instead, the user spends more time initially to create a mnemonic device and then gets the good feeling of answering YES for 90% of the exemplary compounds during first review. Further reviews and the kanji that drop out, serve to go back and do some corrections to the story, or strengthen the links in the chain where it was weak, similarly to the kanji mnemonics.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - ファブリス - 2008-01-28

I did ~50 yesterday and added a bunch of example compounds, trying to push myself to see how workable this is.

This is my exeprience so far , you can relate to it if you experiment with simple squared paper and start drawing some kanji "mind maps" as on the screenshots I posted about Trinity.

- 1st thing, you need the linkword type mnemonic. If you can use the Japanese reading for one character in the group, that's great, but not essential. (good example of mine was the group えき which naturally started with a 駅 train station.

- 2nd thing : up until now it seems those who have tried and reported on the forum, have been using primarily the "story" approach, it works, but you need to take care of the process otherwise you'll draw a blank and possibly get frustrated.

The reason why it is difficult is that you'll be most likely in "left brain" mode : your mind is looking at a list of words and will want to fit them logically together. Not good.

Here's the process I'd recommend :

- get the linkword association with the ON reading first, no matter what

- start by arranging kanji together, REGARDLESS of how they could fit in a story, if two kanji share a primitive, they go together (they are like semi-"pure groups" to take Heisig's term in RtK2). This is good because by doing this you make the link component -> sound.

- make rooms of 3x3 boxes, or 4x4 or 5x5, 3x3 and 5x5 etc is best because you can fit always a kanji at the center if need be.

- use symmetry : place one kanji on each side, or one in each corner, for 3 or 4, add one in the center for 5.

- make sub groups like these and connect them together

- make it into a "Company whatever" floor plan

- only NOW make mini plots/stories to link the characters in each room together,

- last step is not even necessary, after being frustrated at trying to create a story, I just make them into objects, and this is a nearly 100% memory palace method :

For example in my KAI map, the entrance is "times", the mini -plot is "please come back times and times again". Then comes the first room, one character in each corner, clockwise : "open", "reformation", "suspicious", "cheerful" (example words I added were 開始、改札 / 改札口, 怪物、快適).

No stories, instead I have like a statue for each, it's really easy to imagine a statue right? A lot easier to do than to try to come up with a plot between these, just try it and you'll see how easy it is for our mind to imagine and remember "places". If you can close your eyes and see yourself walking in there and say which kanji is on which side, you've got the technique. You don't even need to close yes for this, it's just a process of moving the kanji around, grouping them by similarity, and where they seem random (no shared primitive), then go ahead and try to fit them logically, but use LOGIC last! That's the trick.

I have stories for smaller groups, up to 10 characters, it's easier to fit the characters.

Most interesting for me was that I found that those which I built in the "chain" method I forgot, so I changed them into "memory palaces".

A last example : I kept forgetting characters in my group SOKU. I changed the chain into a "map" : now instead of a tentative story I simply have a 5x5 square room and I placed 3 characters top, left and right, they are grouped first viusally, and then logically : "breathe, leg, stimulate" - "instant, quick, bundle" (similar ideas) "rule, sides, fathom" (shared primitive).

Looks a bit like this :

Code:

　　則　側　測

速　　　　　　　　足

束　　　　　　　　促

即　　　　　　　　息

Why would memory palace work better ?

- on a grid, you can make spatial relationships, not so with a story. Here the group of 9 is made even easier by further splitting them in 3 sub groups, of 3 each

- you can group visually kanji that have similar primitives, this is much more obvious when you look at a kanji "map", for example on one side of this "SOKU" room I have : 則側測 , this is almost effortless to remember

- you are not limited by a sequence : a kanji chain is a sequence, there's before and after, instead on a grid you can use crossroads, you can also use a center , as on "mind maps"

So basically the principles that make mindmaps easier to remember apply : subdivide large groups in smaller ones, organize information by making "rooms", and connect them to create associations.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - ファブリス - 2008-01-28

Also a reason why I am motivated to do this systematically is that afterwards I can play all those DS kanji games to review. The problem with those games is that they are not at all suited for non-Japanese because they give you the lessons in seemingly complete random orders. Take Kakitorikun, it gives you not only kun yomi and onyomi together, it also often introduces you to several different on and kun readings for one character, and that's with just the first grade! Which basically means you can't really enjoy any of those games until you can read all the characters :/ If you know at least one on and kun reading for each, at least you can probably start remembering the rest by repetition and with those games alone, but without any previsouly known reading, it's just too much pain to realistically learn anything from KanKen, Kakitori Kun, Nazotte Oboeru & Co. and remember than for more than a week.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - synewave - 2008-01-28

I've made a few chains but they've all been story based. While I can recall the majority of the characters, one or two sometimes get lost when I try to recall the story.

ファブリス Wrote:No stories, instead I have like a statue for each, it's really easy to imagine a statue right? A lot easier to do than to try to come up with a plot between these, just try it and you'll see how easy it is for our mind to imagine and remember "places". If you can close your eyes and see yourself walking in there and say which kanji is on which side, you've got the technique.

I read your post with interest but I'm confused by what you are actually visualising. What sort of statue? Kanji; keyword; RTK1 story; or something else?

The "instant, quick, bundle" part of the ソク group makes me think of a instant ramen. Do you think a "statue" containing all 3 words would work or is keeping them as seperate "statues" important?

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - Wakela - 2008-02-18

OK, I'm trying the memory palace thing, but I have to admit I'm skeptical. There doesn't seem to be any connection between my keyword and the statues. Here's an example:
-エイ
-keyword: Fonzie (do the non-Americans under 35 know who he is? He was famous. He said Aaaayyy a lot.)
-So I have a little stone room like in a castle. But it's new. Like at a Disney castle.
-Fonzie is standing in the middle with his leather jacket in his trademark pose.
directly in front of me is Socrates performing a recitation. He is standing in a kiddie pool and is wearing goggles and a swimmer's cap. The cover on his book has the symbol of eternity on it. 詠，泳,　永
-Behind me to one side of the door is a Union Jack. It's reflected in a mirror on the other side. 英,　映
-To the right of me is a statue of Donald Rumsfeld. He's pointing a sharpened finger at a solider in Iraq. 衛,鋭,営
-To the left of me is a statue of The Shadow and he's standing it a flowery, ballet pose. 影,栄

We'll see how well these stick. I like the idea of making stories with smaller set of kanjis, but I worry about losing whole chunks, and being unable to keep the yomis straight. I'm very interested in hearing about how you guys progress with this.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - ファブリス - 2008-02-19

The status were just an example, in the memory palace technique, you can place anything in the "rooms". So your union jack and mirror are a good example of that. Earth can become a simple globe, any kind of scene can appear within a poster or on the cover of a magazine, a giant can become a figurine, etc. So anything is possible, regardless of size or dimensions it can all fit within rooms in a virtual memory palace.

My statue example is to address the problem of turning an abstract keyword into an object. I think all RtK learners have experimented with this while creating kanji stories with some of the more difficult keywords.

You have clearly defined the spatial relationships (in front, behind, left, right..), which is one of the main elements.

Where there might be a weakness is when you combine various kanji into one place. When you try to recall, and things get fuzzy after a while, it may be easier to identify each character by making sure it is completely separate from the other's, so in the case of 衛,鋭,営 ("defense" , "pointed" and "occupation") I would place a related object or scene in a distinct place for each. You can set them up as details within one place, if you can follow them in sequence, I think that works well.

Separating each character into a distinct location is something I do to help with recalling the groups from memory. That recall in itself is not necessary for the readings but if you can do it it's a good sign that you "built" the memory palace correctly.

In the "衛,鋭,営" group, do you have a clear spot within the memory palace where you can see "occupation"? Or did you associate "Donald Rumsfeld" with the word "occupation"?

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - leosmith - 2008-02-19

Wakela Wrote:OK, I'm trying the memory palace thing, but I have to admit I'm skeptical. There doesn't seem to be any connection between my keyword and the statues. Here's an example:
-エイ
-keyword: Fonzie

First, I think this is an exceptional choice of keywords - I grew up with Fonzie Smile

Second, this brings up aspects that always bugged me about using a memory palace for kanji. This is not criticism of Wakela, just questioning the method that many, including myself, have tried.

The memory palace was designed to meomrize things in order. In a real (say ancient Greek) memory palace, you would have a group of items linked to one another. If any link gets broken, you have a problem of course. But that makes sense with something that needs to be learned in order. The order is critical.

With kanji, the order is not critical. All you really need to be able to do is link each kanji to the room. You don't have to link them to eachother; the order, or position doesn't matter. Ok, positions may help you remember better. But why waste all the effort of trying to remember where they are with respect to eachother, when all you really need to do is remember which room they are in?

Here is my recommendation for this example. Have Fonzie's room, have all the "ei" kanji in it, but merely link each kanji to the Fonz. This way, each character stands on it's own. You can still imagine all the characters together, but it's not critical. Also, if you're having a hard time linking a kanji to the Fonz, link it to another "ei" character that has a strong link to the Fonz. QED

IMO, this will be a more robust and flexible memory tool than a full palace.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - Wakela - 2008-02-19

Leosmith, that's a great criticism. You could say the same thing about using stories for pronunciation.

My story for シャク seems to be what you recommend. Let's see if I remember it.

Shaquille O'neil is bar tending. He is wearing a uniform he borrowed from the Red Baron. He uses a stone ladle to pour the drinks into little shakus. And whenever anyone asks for an explanation of why he is doing this, he starts with, "well, once upon a time..."

Shaquille or "Shaq" is the keyword. The kanjis are bar tending, borrow, red, baron, stone, ladle, shaku, explanation, once upon a time.

I suppose this isn't strictly a story, since one thing does not lead to another. I could forget who he borrowed the uniform from and not lose the rest of it. I find the stories that center around people are more vivid.

fabrice Wrote:In the "衛,鋭,営" group, do you have a clear spot within the memory palace where you can see "occupation"? Or did you associate "Donald Rumsfeld" with the word "occupation"?

Actually, I was using Rumsfeld as "defence" since he was the Secretary of Defence, and the soldier as "occupation." I tried to come up with an image that corresponds with the actual meaning of occupation (job), but it was too abstract.

Rumsfeld and the soldier are distinct statues. For "pointed" I tried with a pointy cone covered with sharp points, but it seemed more natural to have someone pointing. But I agree that this would be an easy one to forget. If I only remember Rumsfeld and a soldier, I may not even be aware that there was one I was forgetting.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - phauna - 2008-02-19

I feel like I'm jumping into the middle of this discussion, but I thought a more effective way to build a palace was to use your own house, or better yet, your childhood home. Linking to a real place is much easier than investing the time required to build your own. Also, your house is full of old memories already, the only limitation is perhaps the size of a real house in your mind. My childhood home is more familiar to me than perhaps any other building I've ever been in, I can think of lots of places there, the yard, kitchen, carport, front garden, etc. Associations could be made with memorable objects in the room, people or you could then turn to imaginary objects.

Of course then the problem is finding a number of familiar locations. Your home, childhood home, school, mother-in-law's house, gym, etc. If it's a place your frequent fairly often it would mean you could review kanji instead of listening to your mother-in-law ramble on about nothing

With the chaining in a story method, where order matters, the Greeks used a route that they walked a lot, like your walk to school or work, and presumably they used the time walking to refresh their memory further each day. You can probably remember many landmarks on your way to work, a post box, cake shop, police station etc.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - leosmith - 2008-02-20

Wakela Wrote:I suppose this isn't strictly a story, since one thing does not lead to another. I could forget who he borrowed the uniform from and not lose the rest of it. I find the stories that center around people are more vivid.

I think it is sort of a story; a story in which order doesn't matter. Maybe it's more of a "scene". If you have to remember the whole thing, it may be easier to remember a story where things happen in order. But I don't think it's necessary to remember the whole thing. By that, I mean you'll probably never need to say "let's see; shaku; what are all the kanji that have the onyomi shaku? What's everything that's happening in the Shaq story?"

But you will need to be able to go "let's see; the red baron; didn't he lend a uniform to the Shaq?"

phauna Wrote:I feel like I'm jumping into the middle of this discussion, but I thought a more effective way to build a palace was to use your own house, or better yet, your childhood home.

Totally agree for a typical memory palace. But in this specific situation, the names of the rooms would have to be the onyomi. Even with a lot of imagination, I doubt if you'd be able to name the rooms of your childhood after all the onyomi; perhapse the biggest problem is there won't be enough rooms.

phauna Wrote:With the chaining in a story method, where order matters, the Greeks used a route that they walked a lot, like your walk to school or work, and presumably they used the time walking to refresh their memory further each day. You can probably remember many landmarks on your way to work, a post box, cake shop, police station etc.

I agree, where order matters, this is a good mnemonic. But I believe order doesn't matter in the case of kanji onyomi.

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - ファブリス - 2008-02-20

@phauna : to be nitpicky it's been my experience that the memory palace can have crossroads, alleyways, etc. it doesn't have to tie into a sequence. You are right about the sequence though, I guess that's the most known technique called "journey". But the memory palace can also work as a simple ring for example, you can start from any point and recollect by "walking around".

Leosmith : I agree... there is this ability in memory palace to remember the list from memory, to list kanji back and forth.. but that's a fun trick that's not actually necessary to remember the readings.

What you are explaining though is similar to adding a new signal into each story to indicate the sound. But instead of doing this for stories haphazardly, we can learn the characters in groups, which is more effective.

I'm going to have to experiment with linking all characters to one "center" signal for the sound. They're all separate stories with a new signal for the sound, but the signal is common for all kanji in the same group. So perhaps there is still the possibility there to use the "kanji chain editor" idea I was working on. Perhaps it could show links and display more like the typical mindmap..

Or maybe I can remove the grid and let users place kanji however they like, the simple task of grouping character by common primitives/radicals is quite helpful to sort out characters and I think does help a bit with memorization. If we don't build a kind of "floor plan" then the trick is to make sure the learner tied each individual kanji story into the common sound signal..

The Chain Method of Studying Japanese Characters - leosmith - 2008-02-20

ファブリス Wrote:What you are explaining though is similar to adding a new signal into each story to indicate the sound. But instead of doing this for stories haphazardly, we can learn the characters in groups, which is more effective.

I think you already know this, but just to make sure, people probably shouldn't try to modify pre-existing stories. If one has already finished their RTK1 stories, they could build a seperate set of stories linking the keyword to the onyomi.

If one hasn't built RTK1 stories yet, they have the option of including the onyomi. Heisig recommends against this option, but many people have used Heisig-like stories, but included pronunciation and tone, for Mandarin. So, it's possible.