pm215 Wrote:Well, yes, but I think most learners of Japanese via the "traditional" (ie not Heisig) route will probably already know 中(なか) and 国(くに) and some other word with ~語 by the time they get to 中国語, so this isn't particularly specific to Heisig.

Yup. I think whatever you do, you will probably end up combining small parts to make up a big Kanji, like speaking 5 mouths 言 五 口 make up a language 語 and a jewel is enclosed 玉 口 to make up a country 国. Moreover, the country that is in the center is China 中国 and the language of China is 中国語. It's all combination and I guess as you go along you'll be likely to come up with similar ideas anyway but if Heisig presents a systematic method from the get go, I think it's possible that it can be a great help to learners. When learning a language though, it seems what works for one person often does not for another, and also, I have a feeling that the method is not for people who already know like 1000 Kanji, and are at the level they can understand Japanese keywords, but now I'm just talking out of my butt.

Womacks23 Wrote:

masaman Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:They're not ideograms.

Really? My New Oxford American Dictionary says they are though.

Some are ideograms but most are not (phonetic, morphemic, mixed ideogram/phonetic etc)...

Phonetic Kanji? In Japanese? 当て字 is not that common in Japanese I think?

Edit: OK, Kanji are logograms which are technically not ideograms. I guess mine was the layman version of ideogram. What I meant anyway was that each Kanji has a meaning or meanings and you can often guess the meaning of it even if you don't know how to read it.

Yeah, ideogram is a widely used and accepted term for 漢字, even if it's not strictly correct.

In case you're curious, 喚 is an example of a purely phonetic character (形声):

<解字>
「口＋（音符）奐＜カン＞」。奐の原義（ごっそりと取りかえる）とは関係ない。

JimmySeal Wrote:Yeah, ideogram is a widely used and accepted term for 漢字, even if it's not strictly correct.

In case you're curious, 喚 is an example of a purely phonetic character (形声):

<解字>
「口＋（音符）奐＜カン＞」。奐の原義（ごっそりと取りかえる）とは関係ない。

It makes it even more interesting when you think about it in Japanese context. I can read that わめ(く), and the only reason I write 喚く is to give it an ideogrammatic flavor to it.

Isn't 形声 the combined phonetic and semantic category? (口　being the semantic component in 喚.) I think the purely phonetic ones are the loan kanji (forget the category name).

There doesn't seem to be a universal term for kanji which is why I think "ideogram" has persisting despite efforts by some to curb its use. Other jargony terms have been bandied about (more a reflection of ideology), but none seem to have garnered mass appeal. :-)

Yeah, ideogram is commonly used and not just by laymen. (I would have guessed "pictogram" would be a more likely non-academic term?) Perhaps the meaning of ideogram will eventually reflect its current use by many: to mean graphic thingies which represent ideas (but not exclusively ideas). Similar to how we call scripts logographic which aren't technically logographs.

"Ideogram" could become the generic Kleenex of linguistics. resistance is futile...

I think it's only a small group of people who react against the term 'ideogram', investing it with power it doesn't have, as if it makes people think kanji have no sound or represent meaning intrinsically or something. I guess some people use it to mean that but I doubt it perpetuates or created that idea in them. It's no different from any other -gram you want to call kanji, or 'kanji' or 'character' for that matter.

Since kanji have meaning as learners/usage 'at large' invest meaning into them (and thus there's no such thing as a purely phonetic kanji -- although I think at the onset of Heisig [as it's conventionally and not necessarily optimally used] kanji are purely semantic even if that semantics is skewed/partially inaccurate), I think it's valuable not just logistically (having those placeholders preset in the mind via Heisig as part of the production line process) but when they correlate well with actual usage it allows those placeholders to resonate with vocabulary meanings--and even if the keyword is English or doesn't correlate well with a term one is learning, it's a simple, invaluable trick to twist things a bit and create a mnemonic resonance.

Either way those icons will carry meaning eventually. Don't have to prioritize it but it's certainly useful to get a head start.

This reminds me, I need to add another 100 links to my 'how the brain processes kanji' thread but I'm too lazy.

In Chinese, a 漢字 has only one way of reading = phonetic representation, so may be technically it's not just representing a meaning, but also a sound. However, most Kanji mean the same in Japanese and Chinese with totally different pronunciations. Also, Japanese have several different ways of reading a Kanji, and even in Chinese, there are many different languages/dialects like 広東語、客家語、閩南語、etc, that often have completely different pronunciations for a Kanji (Many people from Hong Kong have no idea what people from Beijing are talking about). Considering that, 漢字 seem exactly the same as arabic numbers in a sense that different languages read them differently but mean the same things.

I have no idea how academically it is handled though. My butt wants to talk so bad today

hey welcome to the club. :-) Talking butts with resources are the new experts. You have a fine one, btw.

My butt is saying thank you. I know, I'm rather proud of my butt

I'm not saying anybody else is talking form their butts though. Just in case. It's just me.

nestor Wrote:Since kanji have meaning as learners/usage 'at large' invest meaning into them (and thus there's no such thing as a purely phonetic kanji -- although I think at the onset of Heisig [as it's conventionally and not necessarily optimally used] kanji are purely semantic even if that semantics is skewed/partially inaccurate), I think it's valuable not just logistically (having those placeholders preset in the mind via Heisig as part of the production line process) but when they correlate well with actual usage it allows those placeholders to resonate with vocabulary meanings--and even if the keyword is English or doesn't correlate well with a term one is learning, it's a simple, invaluable trick to twist things a bit and create a mnemonic resonance.

I think this is a very good description of what's going on.

The real beauty of heisig as I see it, is the order in which the characters are introduced (from simple to complex). Learning the kanji this way allows you to keep forward momentum with built in recursion. You're revising old stuff as you learn new stuff. As for phonetics, it seems obvious to me that the vast majority (I'm not aware of the numbers) of kanji contain a semantic and phonetic component, with only the simplest one being pictograms abstracted over time (山、女、木 etc). I guess you could call them phonetic ideograms. Like Masaman pointed out above, arabic numerals are kind of like kanji in that they carry a meaning but are pronounced differently accross languages. Arabic numbers can be used phonetically too. ex. Sk8ter boi, c u l8tr etc.
I've mentioned many times on this forum the benefit of systematically learning onyomi and I'll mention it again. Learning onyomi along with RTK is hugely beneficial and so easy to do (using mnemonics) so it really is a no brainer for me. I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you go straight into learning vocab before learning onyomi. Sure you'll pick them all up eventually as you learn vocab, but if you just learn it before hand, something like 90% of japanese vocabulary becomes immediately readable and then all that needs be done is observe the context in which it is used to figure out the meaning, or you can atleast check it in a dictionary quickly without relying on radical lookup. Ignoring onyomi is like learning english without learning phonics. Not saying it can't be done, but why would you bother?

You actually think it's possible to learn 2000 kanji and their onyomi at the same time before starting to learn Japanese? That's 2000 kanji plus god knows how many different onyomi. Good luck with that project.

womacks23 Wrote:You actually think it's possible to learn 2000 kanji and their onyomi at the same time before starting to learn Japanese? That's 2000 kanji plus god knows how many different onyomi. Good luck with that project.

Yes. I know it's possible, because I have done it and so have plenty of others. You don't learn every onyomi, just the most common one that is used in 90% of vocabulary. Half the time additional readings are just variants of the main one anyway, ヒツ＞ピツ, キョウ＞コウ, リョ＞ろ etc. Furthermore the vast majority of kanji in existence contain either a component or another complete kanji that hints to its reading. Because of this, I'd venture to say that learning just one onyomi for each kanji allows you to read something like 95% of onyomi words (which make up the bulk of the language). The kanji with the most different readings tend to be commonly used so they are learned easily anyway. I also found myself able to correctly read a surprisingly large amount of Chinese (albeit without tones) on a recent trip to china just by recognizing phonetic components that I had seen in other kanji and matched with pinyin written on signs. Learning onyomi is as easy as adding one more primitive(phonetic) to each of your stories. Just use a consistent mnemonic for each new reading as you encounter it. カン is ghenghis KHAN, コウ is CORE reactor, ホウ is cargo HOLD etc. It's really not that hard.

And this whole time I always thought there was a good reason why people skip Heisig's second book.

Womacks23 Wrote:You actually think it's possible to learn 2000 kanji and their onyomi at the same time before starting to learn Japanese? That's 2000 kanji plus god knows how many different onyomi. Good luck with that project.

It's not an all or nothing deal. Take a look at this spreadsheet. Each row contains an onyomi reading and the number of unique kanji that use that reading. Exactly 31 onyomi readings apply to 20 or more kanji, respectively. Just 31 readings alone are used in 937 unique kanji. The one drawback to the spreadsheet is that it counts uncommon readings. Regardless, the ratio of these 31 readings to kanji is still impressive.

I'm not saying the onyomi method is the way to go. I just think it's important to seriously consider the benefits of it before dismissing it off-the-cuff.

Womacks23 Wrote:You actually think it's possible to learn 2000 kanji and their onyomi at the same time before starting to learn Japanese? That's 2000 kanji plus god knows how many different onyomi. Good luck with that project.

It's been documented on this forum for over two years now. One method is called "Movie Method" developed by Alyks. It's a variant of Memory Palace, but what Alyks did was

1. Learned all the primitives first
2. Learned Kanji grouped into their Onyomi ie NOT IN THE HEISIG ORDER
3. As the mnemonic device, he placed the Kanji and its primitives into a movie scene where the movie itself represents the Onyomi.
4. Like others doing RTK normally, he learned about 50 kanji a day for 40 days (roughly a four hour study days iirc).

What I've done is modified ala Memory Palace but also use the Movie as the onyomi hook with the kanji AND the primitives populating the movie. Others just used Memory Palace to learn Onyomi also.

What makes things useful:

1. Khatsuo has a spreadsheet with Onyomi readings, some which have asterisks denoting rare readings
2. I developed a spreadsheet that weeds out the rare readings, splits up the kanjis with two readings (so it's on two lines). I think I've posted that elsewhere.
3. 1800 RTK Kanji have only 1 common Onyomi reading, the rest have at most two common Onyomi.

Point being, it's not a bad idea to learn Onyomi alongside learning Kanji. However, the unmodified Heisig method would not be the way to go. Doing Heisig, then memory palace or just doing the movie method are known ways to go though.

Womacks23 Wrote:And this whole time I always thought there was a good reason why people skip Heisig's second book.

Personally, I think his method in the second book just sucks. I gave it a fair shot but it's just not good once you get past the pure groups. Truth be told, if Heisig had been shown Memory Palace or Movie Method way back when was learning readings he'd have gone that route instead.