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3030 kanji? - Miyumera - 2012-08-03
I've been reading on threads that the number of kanji covered by heisig is 3030. RTK 1 and RTK3 brings me up to 3000 exactly and the supplement of newly approved general use kanji from Heisig says that there is only 23 new characters not included in Rtk1+3. So where are the extra 7 kanji from??
3030 kanji? - financialwar - 2012-08-03
3000 kanji? that's like 1000 more than you'd ever need, law of diminishing returns say "why would people even bother..."
3030 kanji? - financialwar - 2012-08-03
OMG, this forum is so confusing, the quote button should be on the bottom of the post, above the dividing line of the next post.
3030 kanji? - financialwar - 2012-08-03
I bet in covers the 人名用?
3030 kanji? - Miyumera - 2012-08-03
Well it covers kanji that you would need if you wanted to be able to read a novel apparently since that's the whole reason it was done when one student said she couldn't get through a simple mystery novel with just the basic 2000 kanji. i just want to learn it all so I don't have to worry about it later, it does make learning vocabulary words easier being able to recognize characters.
3030 kanji? - sartak - 2012-08-03
If you're using the RTK3 book, the missing 7 characters are near the end of the book after the RTK2-style section of teaching readings.
3030 kanji? - Necrojesta - 2012-08-03
You could stop at 2,024... but why not go for 3,030? It'll benefit you and it wouldn't take too long.
3030 kanji? - Thora - 2012-08-03
Miyumera Wrote:Well it covers kanji that you would need if you wanted to be able to read a novel apparently since that's the whole reason it was done when one student said she couldn't get through a simple mystery novel with just the basic 2000 kanji. i just want to learn it all so I don't have to worry about it later, it does make learning vocabulary words easier being able to recognize characters.I think a common view is that once you've learned as many as 2000 kanji, the kanji you'll encounter beyond that will depend on your interests and the type of things you're reading. Heisig's selection is not likely to be the same.
For eg, Kanji in Context makes that arbitrary "general interest" cut at about 1600 kanji (or so? I don't recall exactly) and groups the remainder by subject matter.
If you're enjoying the process/goal, keep going of course. I just thought you might be better off learning more vocabulary with the kanji you already know and collecting new kanji as you read.
3030 kanji? - imabi - 2012-08-03
Maybe 3030 might seem a lot at first, but you might as well get there if you finish learning all 常用漢字. You'd almost be there. If you read Japanese frequently, you will encounter more of those characters.
3030 kanji? - Thora - 2012-08-03
Well, 3000 is 50% more so it's not exactly like you're nearly there at 2000. :-) In any event, the idea is not to stop learning any more kanji, but to learn them as required.
Also, for learners who have not yet learned vocabulary for the first 2000, it strikes me as a better use of time (and more fun) to focus on vocab, grammar and reading. No point trying to keep all 3000 RTK keywords in memory while you spend the next several months learning Japanese words for only a small fraction of that.
It's a personal choice. The belief that this particular group of 1000 kanji will enable people to read novels might leave some disappointed, however, so I thought I'd offer a suggestion.
3030 kanji? - imabi - 2012-08-03
why can't they learn words concurrently? Even if it is just 1? I think that would be smarter.
3030 kanji? - Thora - 2012-08-03
Yes, you're absolutely right, imabi. That would be smarter.
3030 kanji? - imabi - 2012-08-03
Now, the biggest problem doing so would be remembering the words. Without Japanese knowledge to facilitate it, it's useless. But, considering how long it would take the average person to go through 3000 characters, truly understanding them--knowing the most important readings, stroke orders, etc.--they should enough time to build up their Japanese skills in general too.
3030 kanji? - kitakitsune - 2012-08-03
Doing RTK3 is like this graph. It's more work for very little benefit.
![[Image: Results-vs-Effort-e1337318296352.jpg]](http://theguycancook.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Results-vs-Effort-e1337318296352.jpg)
収穫逓減の法則
3030 kanji? - imabi - 2012-08-03
I think it would be more of a bell curve distribution.
3030 kanji? - Miyumera - 2012-08-03
cool. I found the 7 missing kanji at the back of the book. Thanks Sartak.
Yeah. After i finished RTK2 it felt so weird not to be doing my 'kanji crunch'. It takes me 25-26 days to cover 1000 kanji, so I figured I could spare another month of my life to Heisig. Plus I'm already near the end. I kind of missed the grind after a day lol. but i'm definitely taking a break from heisig stuff after this and focusing on vocab. I'm doing core and going through understanding basic japanese grammar which has a ton of sentences at the same time.
I get what you're saying thora about learning kanji in an individual's area of interest cuz that's what matters more than every kanji in the sky. Makes sense.
3030 kanji? - nadiatims - 2012-08-03
learning kanji upfront is all about getting to that critical mass where kanji are no longer an impenetrable barrier to comprehension. You don't need to learn them all, you just need to learn enough. Rare kanji will take longer to learn, because you encounter them less often, and for that reason are also less necessary to know (right at the start anyway). I think the critical mass for kanji knowledge could well be as low as 1000, provided that gives you decent coverage of all the component parts. After that, the biggest barriers to comprehension will be in vocabulary, readings and grammar, so you'll get a higher return focusing on getting those up to a critical mass too. Studying how to write characters you might only encounter once a month before even learning how to read common words like go, ask, farm, request really makes no sense. That's one of the problems with the divide and conquer approach to language learning; it's easy to lose sight of the relative value of different parts in a quest to systematically memorize all the kanji, all the grammar, all the words before having any understanding of their actual value in using the language as a whole. Everything is a trade-off.
I did RTK3 early on, but japanese text was still mostly impenetrable for me due to low vocabulary.
It doesn't really matter at the beginning whether you memorized a kanji like 鞍 because you'll need to look it up anyway to learn how to read it, and as long as you can recognize the parts you'll be able to do that.
3030 kanji? - yudantaiteki - 2012-08-03
Miyumera Wrote:Well it covers kanji that you would need if you wanted to be able to read a novel apparently since that's the whole reason it was done when one student said she couldn't get through a simple mystery novel with just the basic 2000 kanji.I remember reading that and I think it was bullshit. Her problem was likely vocab and grammar, not kanji.
3030 kanji? - financialwar - 2012-08-03
imabi Wrote:I think it would be more of a bell curve distribution.No, the graph was on the law of diminishing return. The second cup of coffee in the morning will give you less utility then the first while it costs the same. The second car you own will not give much extra satisfaction over owning one car etc. This law applies to almost every thing in life. That's most people only have one car, one house, one wife, one phone, speaks one language, one kitchen etc etc.
For every extra kanji learnt, it was provide less benefit than the previous kanji learnt.
This is especially true for if you are learning kanji in order of it's frequency. Learning the first 500 most used kanji is give the most benefit at minimum cost, because it will provide highest coverage say amount 80% of all the kanji used in Japanese, the cost of maintaining these 500 kanji is very low because these are frequent kanji, you don't need to spend time reviewing them because you see them in real life all the time. The second 500 kanji will give say 10% coverage, much less benefit then first 500, the cost of learning is still the same, and the cost of maintenance is much higher. When you're with the 2136 joyo kanji, your coverage would be 99.9% or something close to that, and the cost of maintenance is already very high at this level, because a lot of the kanji is rarely used. Learning another 800 kanji on top for a mere a tenth of a percentage at a cost greater than maintaining your whole vocabulary bank is uneconomical. Since OP already admitted he is learning them because he miss grinding not because the usefulness they can or can't provide, I can now dismiss OP illogical person.
3030 kanji? - financialwar - 2012-08-03
hell even learning Japanese is an act of stupidity, what am I doing here?
3030 kanji? - Miyumera - 2012-08-03
@nadiatims
i completely agree with you and that logic has crossed my mind too. Language learning is a complicated process and a vast one... like where do you start? you can start here or here, or there or over there. lol.. it's like food.. in the end it all goes in the stomach. I think that learning kanji early on will be implanted into the conscious and then subconscious, so that even a rare kanji that comes up a year from now will be only be brought from the subconscious to the forefront and cemented further much faster and easier. Plus recall will probably be at a higher rate than if you were seeing it for the first time and then waiting to see it again another year later. All in all, I think that learning the characters upfront now will just make things faster and more efficient in the long run.
3030 kanji? - imabi - 2012-08-03
financialwar Wrote:hell even learning Japanese is an act of stupidity, what am I doing here?何だと? Japanese is awesome. If it's kicking your ass, then you need to rethink you're strategy. Studying Japanese has many benefits.
3030 kanji? - erlog - 2012-08-03
Most Japanese people know around 3000 kanji. The 2000 number is just something they made up as a guideline for the school system at a time when they had zero actual data. That's a minimum that only really applies until the 12th grade. Anyone who's gone to college in Japan will end up learning a bunch more there, and people who haven't gone to college will pick up more simply by existing in Japan.
The split into domain-specific kanji doesn't really happen until around 2800-3000.
I disagree with a bunch of Heisig's choices for RTK3, and so I don't necessarily endorse doing it that way. I think people should probably just make new RTK-style cards on their own using Japanese keywords to learn the new kanji as they encounter them in native material.
I mean Heisig is how I systematically teach myself new kanji, and learn to differentiate them. Learning to write it is more about building a relationship with the kanji than actually knowing how to write it.
yudantaiteki Wrote:It's not BS, but it depends on what you want to read. If you're just reading light novels or stuff aimed at children then you probably won't run into it. If you're reading novels aimed at literate Japanese adults that enjoy reading then you definitely will.Miyumera Wrote:Well it covers kanji that you would need if you wanted to be able to read a novel apparently since that's the whole reason it was done when one student said she couldn't get through a simple mystery novel with just the basic 2000 kanji.I remember reading that and I think it was bullshit. Her problem was likely vocab and grammar, not kanji.
It's not a vocabulary issue because it comes down to mostly common vocabulary being represented by kanji for stylistic reasons in literature. A basic example of this is 綺麗. Most students learn きれい quite early, but they'd still have to look up that compound if they came upon it. There's other more obscure ones like 如何, but that one doesn't involve a new kanji. Others do.
There's also a lot of "rare" kanji that show up frequently in novels. 覗, 睨, 尖, 頷, 頬, 鬱 etc. A few of these are actual vocabulary issues, but I only ever learned the vocabulary associated with them because I bothered to look up the kanji. There's also old versions of kanji like 摑 that frequently appear.
This stuff is "high level" when compared with what foreigners usually understand, but every single adult I showed my reading material to was able to understand it fine.
3030 kanji? - kitakitsune - 2012-08-03
erlog Wrote:Most Japanese people know around 3000 kanji.Recognition and a little decoding based on prior knowledge - yes
Production - not by a long shot
3030 kanji? - yudantaiteki - 2012-08-03
erlog Wrote:The split into domain-specific kanji doesn't really happen until around 2800-3000.I put it around 1400-1500 -- maybe not "domain specific" but that's around the point when I think it's better to learn kanji from what you're reading rather than an arbitrary list.
(I doubt I know 3000 kanji but I read domain-specific stuff every day.)
I guess there's no point having this discussion again, but you really think that people without a college education know 3000 kanji?
Quote:It's not BS, but it depends on what you want to read. If you're just reading light novels or stuff aimed at children then you probably won't run into it. If you're reading novels aimed at literate Japanese adults that enjoy reading then you definitely will.To clarify, what I think is BS is the idea that she knew 2000+ kanji, and kanji were the greatest barrier to her reading a mystery novel -- so great that she had to abandon the project and use arbitrary lists of kanji. I read Akutagawa short stories when I was only around 1500 -- of course I didn't know every kanji in the stories but kanji were not an insuperable barrier to using them as study material.
I really just want to break the mental block so many people seem to have where they think that if a novel has 1800 kanji, that means they must have learned 1800 kanji before they crack the cover of the book.