Eminem2 Wrote:looking back on it now doing RTK1 the way Heisig recommends it (going key meaning --> Kanji) feels like a royal waste of time. A little like having bought a 16-ton truck that, as it turns out, you only get to use to carry some light grocery shopping you do now and then.
Heisig mentioned in his introduction that Chinese can learn Japanese well with only a year or two of study, much less than Westerners because of their familiarity with the kanji, and that part of his goal is to get someone not familiar with Chinese characters to somewhere near the level that Chinese have. Because of that analogy, RTK has always seemed to be a wheelbarrow rather than a truck: it's the price I pay for wanting to learn Japanese and not being born in the Sinographic world
ariariari Wrote:It looks like it will take me much longer than most people here to complete the course. It seems that many people here are students who are completing it on extended breaks. Alas, I have a full time (not Japanese language related!) job, as well as other requirements on my non-work time (including taking a Japanese course which emphasizes grammer, vocabulary, homework, speaking, etc).
It'll take me 3.5 years. I started when my child was four months old. I'll still beat him to bilingualism
