So, what is the first story you encountered by someone else that was so handy that you can easily recite it, and that particular kanji seems to be forever memorized? There are a number of good stories that I really like, but the one that stands out for me is from Applesuki, the story for {89}, vice-. I'll never, ever forget that kanji now.

"Vice-president Cheney is a wealthy saber rattler." So simple, yet so effective

For me it was Radical_tyro's "formerly":
"The artist formerly known as "prince" has horns protruding from his brain while he wags his tongue in mouth during a concert to increase sales.

Somehow it just stuck and help me remember.

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There are some real gems out there.

I remember on the RTK Yahoo Group someone came up with the idea of "horny Miss Piggy" (the Muppet Show) for the horns + sow combination of primitives. I wish I had thought of that, all the Miss Piggy stories I could have made !

But back to the subject, the first one I came accross that helped me was for "perfect". Mine was just too abstract. I liked zantan's story :

Quote:My idea of perfect is just the two of us (human legs) under one roof (house). Like how it was originally, in the beginning of our relationship.

Yeah, one of my favorites was for the consummate keyword, from cjon256, also involving Miss Piggy.

cjon256 Wrote:Paul McCartney singing "Why don't we do it in the road?" to Ms. Piggy (a horny sow) and her wanting to "consummate their relationship".

i have to say that the Socrates personification of this particle "言" really helped me a lot.

i would have to say that i really like Scottamus' personification of a lot of the particles, but in particular that one.

hats off to Mr. Scott!

I have to say that scottamus's "socrates" and "bender" were extremely useful for turning the original vague primites into vivid, distinct images. It's great to be able to pick up these insights from this site!

I was struggling with 'faint' and thinking how on earth I was going to get two cocoons into my story. Then I read greenapple's.

"Frodo and Sam fainted in the mountains and the spider wrapped them in cocoons."

Brilliant. I don't know how people feel about film and book references (and I've posted a few) but personally, if I'm familiar with the work in question, I'm all for it.

Thank you. Fab got me onto the idea of using personification with his shrek finger stories and I just ran with it. Socrates was an expirement because I added him long after I made stories for kanji's with word primitives. I made a log of all the kanji I had problems with and one's with 'word' and 'craft' were some of the most troublesome. I rewrote them all with socrates and now they are a breeze.

I like Fab's "Ring" and "Send Back" Tolkein stories.

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Whoah, nice one scottamus. This will go well along with my Tolkien stories then ;p

One thing I consider when makig stories is that I want to keep as close as possible to the original meaning. In this case there is room for interpretation, but you can adapt scottamus's story in the way you picture it to get closer to the use of the kanji that Heisig went for (likely) :

幽か 【かすか】 (adj-na,n) faint, dim, weak, indistinct, hazy, poor, wretched

For example, you may imagine that Frodo and Sam became very weak, and actually became hazy as some kind of magical effect of the spider's poison. Then when you recall the image you have directly the right concept in mind.

The kanji also means "deep and remote, secluded", hence the mountain radical. So you can make a story closer to the meaning, or closer to the primitives that the kanji contains (the origin of the character, if it's an old one). The best is to try and get the meaning as well as the primitives in the story in the way that makes a little sense and also carries the concept.

There are cases where the story gets too far away from the meaning of the keyword (as used in kanji compounds), which I prefer to avoid. You get a feel for it when you start reading (or just "sight reading" the kanji), and you notice you have to take that extra 1/10th of a second step to go from the image and the wrong interpretation to the correct interpretation of the keyword as used in the kanji compound.

ファブリス Wrote:Whoah, nice one scottamus. This will go well along with my Tolkien stories then ;p

scottamus => greenapple?

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Ah yes sorry, nice one greenapple!

scottamus Wrote:I like Fab's "Ring" and "Send Back" Tolkein stories.

yea, they are pure genius.

i just leanrt this kanji 希 and love the wolverine story. i think it will be impossible to forget!

ファブリス Wrote:One thing I consider when makig stories is that I want to keep as close as possible to the original meaning.

I certainly can't argue with this but I believe that there's a balance to be had with keeping the story memorable and trying to get as close as possible to the actual meaning of the kanji. Personally, I view the keywords as labels for the kanji and not much more. Therefore, I don't mind at all if the story uses a meaning of the keyword that doesn't correspond very closely with the meaning of the kanji.

As an example, take 後. Heisig gave this the keyword 'behind', which would relate to the word 後ろ　（うしろ）. This can be used in a sentence like 「バスは車の後ろにあります。」 meaning that the bus is behind the car. However, I used a story that involved leaving something behind, which is a different meaning. If you wanted to say that you left something behind in Japanese then you wouldn't use 後 (I don't think). I use this story because it's more memorable and for me that is the number 1 priority.

For me, Heisig's method is all about learning how to write the characters and has very little to do with the learning the meaning. Learning the true meaning of the characters (as they're used in Japanese) only comes after you've seen them in context in lots of situations and you're able to use them yourself.

Of course, if you're story can be both memorable and very close to the actual meaning then that's great. But I don't think it's worth spending lots of time trying to accomplish this. Far better to concentrate on making the story something you won't forget and not worry too much about the meaning.

Let me know what you think.

wrightak Wrote:Personally, I view the keywords as labels for the kanji and not much more.

I agree. The keywords are like names for the kanji, and once a thing is named it can be controlled.

On the topic of best stories, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the ever-present Mr. T. Before I discovered this site, I thought using Keira Knightly for my person would make studying a little more enjoyable. I was right, but Mr. T and the fools he pities make studying so much easier.

I also like the Lord of the Rings references, especially for those ridiculous Ring and Send Back kanjis.

wrightak Wrote:For me, Heisig's method is all about learning how to write the characters and has very little to do with the learning the meaning. Learning the true meaning of the characters (as they're used in Japanese) only comes after you've seen them in context in lots of situations and you're able to use them yourself.

Of course, if you're story can be both memorable and very close to the actual meaning then that's great. But I don't think it's worth spending lots of time trying to accomplish this. Far better to concentrate on making the story something you won't forget and not worry too much about the meaning.

I see your point, but to an extent I would disagree.

If you construct stories trying to stay true to the actual meaning of the character, you should be able to guess what compound words mean probably at least half the time. So if there are ~10,000 words to know for JLPT L1, you will be able to guess the meaning about ~5,000 of them just after completing RtK1. I can even correctly guess the meanings of 四字熟語 much of the time (although context is very helpful here as well).

Of course, there are many exceptions (the other half of the time), but the point is that you shouldn't underestimate what you can accomplish with just RtK1.

In many cases, Heisig's keywords are ambiguous and no clarification is provided. Most of the time, I looked at other meanings of the kanji to figure out what he was getting at, but a few times, I mistakenly made a story with the wrong sense of the word. One such case is 寧　(rather). Rather than go back and correct these mistakes, I just make a mental note of what the character really means, and keep my original story.

I once argued on another board that even if the keywords he provided had nothing to do with the actual meanings, the book would still be effective to some degree because, as Wakela mentioned:

Quote:The keywords are like names for the kanji, and once a thing is named it can be controlled.

The purpose of the book isn't to be able to read compounds without actually learning them, and it grates on my nerves when someone says "so I'll know what they mean, but not how to read them." I say, if you're lucky you'll know what they mean most of the time, but assigning labels to the kanji and learning to write and distinguish them from each other is such a valuable step that it merits taking the time to do it, even if that's all you get out of the process.

Well, while I already knew it, chamcham's story for 太 (plump) is brilliant and even works to help position the lower radical and not confuse with 犬 (dog)

Quote:Fat("plump") men always have small penises.....the kanji is a combination of "large" with a drop(representing the small penis between his legs).

Matthew Wrote:If you construct stories trying to stay true to the actual meaning of the character, you should be able to guess what compound words mean probably at least half the time. So if there are ~10,000 words to know for JLPT L1, you will be able to guess the meaning about ~5,000 of them just after completing RtK1.

The question is, if you encounter a compound containing kanji that you met in RTK 1, how much more able would you be to guess the meaning of the compound if your stories were close to the meaning of the kanji? Two people, one has stories that are close to the meaning, one has stories that are a little bit more detached, both remember the keywords, how much of an advantage would close stories give? I don't think it would make a huge difference. However, making a story memorable is a much bigger advantage for me.

I agree with everything Jimmy said in his post. It's all about making the shape and structure of each kanji something familiar to you and not just a mess of strokes. Meaning is a whole different ball game.

One of my favorite stories is the one that makes the kanji for "window" a spot on summary of the movie "Rear Window"

I like so many of the stories, it is hard to say... but if I have to pick one I guess it would have to be fiminor's saga of the rice seedlings. It runs from 1513-1518, and is hard to beat, since it helped me remember 6 kanji.

cjon256

I'm with wrightak on this.

Matthew Wrote:If you construct stories trying to stay true to the actual meaning of the character, you should be able to guess what compound words mean probably at least half the time.

That's great in theory, but it's difficult enough for most people to come up with any memorable story at all for many kanji (and I would say most), let alone one which is close to the "meaning" (and there's a rub too, as Wrightak has pointed out) as well as being memorable. If I had to do this, I would give up, it's just too hard already, and does it not fly in the face of one of the pillars of Heisig's system: "divide and conquer"?

I think for most people, attempting this is going to weaken the power of the system and lessen their chances of getting through it.

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Quote:The question is, if you encounter a compound containing kanji that you met in RTK 1, how much more able would you be to guess the meaning of the compound if your stories were close to the meaning of the kanji? Two people, one has stories that are close to the meaning, one has stories that are a little bit more detached, both remember the keywords, how much of an advantage would close stories give? I don't think it would make a huge difference. However, making a story memorable is a much bigger advantage for me.

I think that it's not so hard to make a story that is both rememberable and also stays close to the meaning of the keyword (the intended meaning that is, which is not always evident in the book).

"a little bit more detached" is ok. But we should avoid making stories we are too remote from the intended meaning of the keyword, because these make the kanji-to-keyword recall more difficult. This is best verified through own experience, I would encourage everyone to practice a little sight-reading the kanji from books or online material everyonce in a while during RTK I, to get a feel for how the recall works both ways.

ファブリスI think that it's not so hard to make a story that is both rememberable and also stays close to the meaning of the keyword (the [i Wrote:intended[/i] meaning that is, which is not always evident in the book).

Agreed. But what about when there'e are more than one common meaning? And does anybody know how many joyou meanings there are? I'm trying to give fairly accurate info to a memory expert so he can have a crack at devising a good kanji study plan. So far I've told him there are about 2.5 readings per character. I know that ther are fewer meanings, but I don't have a good number.

I have a new favorite: greenapple's story for printing. "We printed a japanese flag on his white towel by stabbing him with a saber while he was wearing it." That's an unforgettable image I can't get out of my mind even when I want to :o

haha, i liked all the Mr. T stories that many of you posted. A lot were pretty hilarious, so they stuck in my mind.