Why are some people in the Japanese self learning community so down on Heisig?

(2016-06-07, 3:39 am)Dudeist Wrote: I get the impression that a lot of the opposition is people expecting it to do more than it is supposed it.
It doesn't teach you to read or write the language nor be able to listen to or speak it.
All it does is allow one to attach an English keyword to a Kanji, to be able to recognize one vs the other, to write them [if you write as part of the review process] and to make able to make sense of new Kanji as opposed to them being completely random sciggles.

I think some people have the impression that breaking kanji down into their constituent elements and making mnemonic stories was Heisig-sensei's invention.

There is also an idea that Japanese people are completely unaware of radicals and remember by blind copying.

Actually Japanese people from an early age not only know radicals but know their formal names.

While most mnemonics are personal and informal (one makes them up as one goes along, rather as Heisig-sensei recommends later in the book) there are some traditional native mnemonics for difficult kanji, eg:

For 鬱,

リンカーンはアメリカンコーヒーを３杯飲んだ

リンカーン is for rin 林 and kan 缶, コーヒー for the parts that resemble コ and ヒ etc.

Heisig-sensei did not, and did not claim to, invent the technique of component-based kanji mnemonics, although he was probably the primary force in making Western learners aware of it and for that alone deserves our gratitude.

So for example, when I suggest learning kanji more organically, I am certainly not suggesting that we learn without mnemonics. In fact I have advocated using mnemonics more widely for aspects of Japanese other than kanji.

I really don't understand people who speak roughly and disrespectfully about Heisig-sensei himself or his method.

However there are those of us who do not feel that learning large amounts of kanji as abstract entities with English keywords before knowing any Japanese is necessarily the best way to begin learning the language.

At least not for everyone. Some people clearly thrive on it, but others equally clearly don't. And the implication that you have to start that way has been rather deadening to some people.

That, I think, is all it really boils down to. Any grumpiness that enters into the picture is just a distraction really! There seems to be a bad habit of getting grumpy unnecessarily about anything and everything these days!