Is RTK2 useful? Did you use RTK2?

I realized that maybe I may never use RTK 2. I bought it with the other three books, but I looked at RTK2 and did not see any 'jump out at me' usefulness to it. This is in enormous contrast to RTK 1+3, which are absolutely genius, and even RTKana, which was surprising useful.

Have other people who used 1 and 3 found 2 to be less useful, important, necessary? Should I just force my way into it? Is it more optional than the other books? Did the fact that you spoke Japanese beforehand have anything to do with how you saw RTK 2?

I guess stories about what you learned or didn't learn from using it.

(Note: I spoke a lot, and read and wrote a little Japanese before I met RTK.)

A lot of people don't use RTK 2, cuz learning the readings for multiple kanjis without context isn't useful at all. One kanji can have 5 readings, some used in different contexts,etc. So learning them in context is key. Only when you've learned them, you can use RTK2-type stuff to remind yourself of the readings(People do this with RTK 1, they change the english keywords to Japanese ones/add yomi/kun readings,etc

I wouldn't say that learning the readings isolated with the kanji is completely useless. Especially for rare kanji that don't come up very often. If they never come up, then you could say that you could just learn the words that they are used in, and remember those -- which isn't a horrible idea.
On the other hand, you could choose to study the readings beforehand, and at least have an educated guess as to how it is pronounced.
It isn't without its merits.

Although, I have no idea what RtK2's method. I had a list of readings with the kanji that fit that reading, and made Kanji Chains for them, stories where the keywords for all the kanji for that reading would appear. Started with the longest (67? characters for しょう）　and moved down.

If you do this, it's useful to put the kanji that "look similar" together.

Then again, I suggest going into your RTK deck and changing from keyword->kanji to "a few words that use the kanji, with the kanji in question written in hiragana"->kanji
This is what I'm doing right now.

I find RTK2 intermittently useful as a reference, and the chapter on "pure groups" was quite helpful. Now I have a list of a couple dozen "signal primitives", and when I see one of them, I know its Chinese reading. That's somewhat helpful. But no, I don't intend to spend hours at a time staring at RTK2.

Edit: Asriel, do you recommend trying "Kanji chains"?

im not sure if kanji chains is the right name...

i thought it was quite helpful for the ones i did, but the problem was finding an effective way to review, and that was disheartening.

??? has 67? kanji, and even if i knew the entire story by heart, if i missed one keyword (kanji) is that a fail? should i break it up into smaller stories?

it was good, and i saw almost instant benefits.
but it was hard to come up with long stories, and a little bit disheartening.

i loved it, but stopped because i didnt know what to do with long stories and reviews

I just found the movie method (Kanji Town) to be a better substitute to RTK2. If Heisig had thought of that method or had been shown it, that would have been RTK 2 instead.

It's been mentioned before, but here goes: If you just use the common onyomi, of the 2050 jouyou there are only 150 that have two common onyomi. Knowing the onyomi on top of the basic meaning of the kanji means you're likely to know the meaning and pronunciation of unknown words you'll see in reading. That surpasses the already powerful ability of reading and gleaming understanding of an article based on knowing meaning of the kanji in unknown words.

Asriel Wrote:??? has 67? kanji, and even if i knew the entire story by heart, if i missed one keyword (kanji) is that a fail? should i break it up into smaller stories?

That is not displaying for me. Is that SHOU? or ショウ　if you can read my kana.

Nukemarine Wrote:I just found the movie method (Kanji Town) to be a better substitute to RTK2. If Heisig had thought of that method or had been shown it, that would have been RTK 2 instead.

It's been mentioned before, but here goes: If you just use the common onyomi, of the 2050 jouyou there are only 150 that have two common onyomi. Knowing the onyomi on top of the basic meaning of the kanji means you're likely to know the meaning and pronunciation of unknown words you'll see in reading. That surpasses the already powerful ability of reading and gleaming understanding of an article based on knowing meaning of the kanji in unknown words.

I am interested in what you said in that post, but I am lost in the meaning.

1. What is Kanji Town? I heard it mentioned, but a google search only brought me to an abandoned blog.

2. When you say only two of the 2050 have two common onyomi, are you saying that the others have one common onyomi and only one common onyomi? Basically my confusion is as to whether common means everyday, or common means shared.

kapalama Wrote:That is not displaying for me. Is that SHOU? or ショウ　if you can read my kana.

yeah, that's ショウ. I guess I've never posted Japanese from my phone before, didn't know it doesn't show up.

Anyway, if you're interested, I've still got my resources. It's not much, as most of my thought processes occurred in my head, not recorded. Either way, I can post them if you want them.

kapalama Wrote:2. When you say only two of the 2050 have two common onyomi, are you saying that the others have one common onyomi and only one common onyomi? Basically my confusion is as to whether common means everyday, or common means shared.

There are 2050 jouyou kanji.
1900 of them have only 1 common onyomi (used often, probably with variations, はつ to はっ, 　ひょう　to びょう, etc)
150 of them have 2 onyomi in common use (sometimes　あい sometimes ごう, etc)

Since you only deal with the most common reading, you may not be right 100% of the time, but you'll be good most of the time.

Yep, it's the "More Bang for your Buck" theory. Break common learning items down into Macrochunks of 200 to 500 items of beginner Kanji, Grammar and Vocabulary that covers 80% of whatever you run into. Tack on another two macrochunks for basic level that covers 90% then another four macrochunks for intermediate that gets the 98%. (my percentages may be off, but they should be close).

With that spreadsheet, you'll see I have two Kanji list with the kanji per onyomi counted out. The second list is the 1110 KO2001 kanji which account for 90% of any words you'll run into. Know the most common onyomi for the most common kanji should handle most of your needs.

The Kanji Town or Movie Method is a learning chain variant. The idea is you let a movie or physical location represent an onyomi sound. For example I use "Shawshank Redemption" for ショウ　and "The Lord of the Rings" for コウ. It's then a matter of putting kanji into various scenes of the movie. This is made easy because I can let actors/items/scenes represent repeating primitives to help attach that kanji to that movie to that onyomi. Reason why I sorted by onyomi count is so I can learn onyomi that covers more kanji first.

One member here, who sort of perfected the movie method, actually used it to learn Kanji and Onyomi at the same time. This is not that difficult if you learn all the primitives right off the bat instead of the ordered fashion of RTK. He commented that it made the move to learn vocabulary ridiculously easy as each word he already had a basic meaning and yomi.

Asriel Wrote:

kapalama Wrote:2. When you say only two of the 2050 have two common onyomi, are you saying that the others have one common onyomi and only one common onyomi? Basically my confusion is as to whether common means everyday, or common means shared.

There are 2050 jouyou kanji.
1900 of them have only 1 common onyomi (used often, probably with variations, はつ to はっ, 　ひょう　to びょう, etc)
150 of them have 2 onyomi in common use (sometimes　あい sometimes ごう, etc)

Since you only deal with the most common reading, you may not be right 100% of the time, but you'll be good most of the time.

There are 1945 jouyou kanji, not 2050.

Tobberoth Wrote:There are 1945 jouyou kanji, not 2050.

I was just quoting Nukemarine. I'm assuming he's counting the "new jouyou," which I don't know the official number.

Asriel,

Never assume I know what the hell I'm talking about. Hell, I'm barely able to keep the name of my current wife straight, and that's only because they all have the same number of syllables.

Um, yeah, I've been watching Coupling too much.

Aren't there over 2000 now? Not that I really care, after RTK1 I just learn what comes.

Wikipedia Wrote:2009: The list is expected to be revised to include an additional 196 characters and remove 5 characters (勺, 銑, 脹, 錘, and 匁), for a total of 2,136.

I'm not really concerned about numbers anyway. I'm not concerned about some arbitrary list the government decides upon. If I can satisfy my needs, then I'm good.
Similar to what nest0r said.

Asriel Wrote:Then again, I suggest going into your RTK deck and changing from keyword->kanji to "a few words that use the kanji, with the kanji in question written in hiragana"->kanji

if you want to try that, you could use kanji-vocab or swanki

Asriel Wrote:

Wikipedia Wrote:2009: The list is expected to be revised to include an additional 196 characters and remove 5 characters (勺, 銑, 脹, 錘, and 匁), for a total of 2,136.

I'm not really concerned about numbers anyway. I'm not concerned about some arbitrary list the government decides upon. If I can satisfy my needs, then I'm good.
Similar to what nest0r said.

Exactly the same as my thoughts. Numbers don't mean all that much. So for me I'll keep going until I feel like I've reached the level I want to be at.

Asriel Wrote:Anyway, if you're interested, I've still got my resources. It's not much, as most of my thought processes occurred in my head, not recorded. Either way, I can post them if you want them.

I love resources. Anything helps. It's funny what clicks and what doesn't for different people, but I have this summer to turn my (spoken) Japanese skills into reading and writing skills.

Anything that worked for you will help someone for sure.

I was going to wikify the stuff I was working on here, but the site's owner was worried what I was going to wikify was too close to the Intellectual Property of RTK. And then I was not sure what would be worth wikifying, since the connections I would use to link between Kanji would be off-limits since it is too close to the RTK system (which cannot be wikified for copyright reasons.)

If you have original thoughts about things that link readings, or a system to work out readings, then that could certainly be wikified.

haha im not sure if anything i have is worth wikifying, just some spreadsheets (from nukemarine?) charts to help you guage progress, and maybe, if were lucky, the stories that i wrote.

i just used words or situations instead of movies etc. like, "shou" took place before performing a play, or "show"
"kou" was about poor "coal" miners.

also, some readings only have a few kanji, so you might be like me and not bother with a story and just memorize them.

edit: ill upload them when i get back to my computer tonight

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NUKX3RDO
It seems I deleted most of everything useful. What I have left is what's here...
Take a look, see if you find anything interesting.

ta12121 Wrote:

Asriel Wrote:

Wikipedia Wrote:2009: The list is expected to be revised to include an additional 196 characters and remove 5 characters (勺, 銑, 脹, 錘, and 匁), for a total of 2,136.

I'm not really concerned about numbers anyway. I'm not concerned about some arbitrary list the government decides upon. If I can satisfy my needs, then I'm good.
Similar to what nest0r said.

Exactly the same as my thoughts. Numbers don't mean all that much. So for me I'll keep going until I feel like I've reached the level I want to be at.

It's a fallacy to believe that just because it's "numbers", it's not important or that it's arbitrary. The jouyou list isn't for letting foreigners know how much kanji they should learn, it's a guideline for Japanese society. Changes to the jouyou list will definitely have far-reaching effects. Stuff gets added, you start seeing it on newspapers etc. Stuff gets removed, it falls out of use.

The jouyou list is a tool, and it's wise to use it instead of hastily dismissing it.

Tobberoth Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:

Asriel Wrote:I'm not really concerned about numbers anyway. I'm not concerned about some arbitrary list the government decides upon. If I can satisfy my needs, then I'm good.
Similar to what nest0r said.

Exactly the same as my thoughts. Numbers don't mean all that much. So for me I'll keep going until I feel like I've reached the level I want to be at.

It's a fallacy to believe that just because it's "numbers", it's not important or that it's arbitrary. The jouyou list isn't for letting foreigners know how much kanji they should learn, it's a guideline for Japanese society. Changes to the jouyou list will definitely have far-reaching effects. Stuff gets added, you start seeing it on newspapers etc. Stuff gets removed, it falls out of use.

The jouyou list is a tool, and it's wise to use it instead of hastily dismissing it.

I'm not dismissing it at all. I find it to be very useful. I agree completely that it's a guideline for kanji(most common ones) for Japanese society. I've always kept in mind for the joyo kanji listed by the Japanese government. I'm just saying afterwords, I can aim for more words/context to learn,etc

Tobberoth Wrote:It's a fallacy to believe that just because it's "numbers", it's not important or that it's arbitrary. The jouyou list isn't for letting foreigners know how much kanji they should learn, it's a guideline for Japanese society. Changes to the jouyou list will definitely have far-reaching effects. Stuff gets added, you start seeing it on newspapers etc. Stuff gets removed, it falls out of use.

The jouyou list is a tool, and it's wise to use it instead of hastily dismissing it.

Wow, this went from me quoting Nukemarine to you criticizing the fact that I don't learn kanji because they are Jouyou. Yes, I realize it's not for foreigners -- and that it's aimed for the actual Japanese society (=good). Yes, I realize that it consists of kanji you see all over the place (I'm looking at you, 朕 !!)
And you're right, I never see kanji that isn't in the jouyou list in real life (i've never been able to drink 珈琲 in Japan）

I'm a little bit more concerned with JLPT levels (emphasis on "a little") because I may, at some point, need it. That and, there's a lot of learning materials geared toward it, so has easy access to.

What you're saying is like bringing up Law in an Ethics class. Yes, the law exists, and it affects people. But the law isn't going to have any bearing on my moral compass.

I'm not criticizing you, I'm pointing out that JLPT is far from just numbers and an arbitrary collection of kanji, and it's not too smart to belittle it. There are several reasons to learn every kanji in the list, most of them good. That the government picked them and that every japanese schoolchild has to learn every single one are just two reasons.

That some of the kanji in the list are used rarely and that some common kanji (not that 珈琲 could be called daily use by any stretch of the imagination) are not in it doesn't really take anything away from it, especially not since it was made in 1981. I would recommend everyone who is serious about Japanese to sit down and learn the new kanji because they are added for a good reason. The list isn't made by some drunk politicians, there's a lot of deliberation behind it.