I'm struggling with being able to distinguish between these two primitives. I'm a visual learner and I need to picture an image for keywordsand I have no image for these two as they both kind of relate to each other in my stories. Just picture 'words' or 'letters for 言　hasnt' worked for me at all... so mouth and 言 is just more of a concept in my stories and it doesn't help to distinguish them when I am trying to write.

How have you guys been able to distinguish between these two in your stories?

In my mind, "口" was a "mouth" in the sense of it being an orifice, which makes it more distinct in my mind. That remains consistent with RTK, since some of Heisig's slightly risque stories, such as likeness and seduce, also had that connotation.

[Katsuo]

I called 言 "keitai" i.e. portable phone. The meaning fits well because keitais are used for saying words into. Also, pictographically 言 looks a bit like a keitai with the first stroke being an antenna and the mouth at the bottom the bit you speak into.

That worked really well for me, but of course I had to make up all my own stories.

[Zgarbas]

When in doubt, refer to one of the first sentences I learned in Japanese.
その口じゃない、テンタックルさん。
It's memorable.
(Heisig works best when you go crazy with it).

ok, what about for the kanji with keywork 'Noh Chanting'? ... My original image of Noh people chanting and picturing words coming out of their mouths but it doesn't work well over time since it's still a 50/50 guess when I try to produce it. Another one is 'orderliness'

The 'keitai' idea might help

I never use "mouth" with an image with words. That seems to help some.

You may not want to go back and reassign a new meaning to 言 now, especially if you're all the way to "Noh Chanting." Still, I found it wise to change abstract meanings with primitives to tangible ones. In this case "Socrates" worked wonders in distinguishing 言 from everything else, and still carried with it the impression of words (since Socrates didn't actually write anything down, only spoke a lot).

Confusing synonyms really is RtKs greatest obstacle. Distinguish with more unique keywords whenever humanly possible.

[Katsuo]

Noh chanting 謡 is an easy one. Imagine a Noh performance where the chanters are all condors, and instead of holding instruments they are chanting into their keitais.

(Anybody who's unfamiliar with Noh, check this video at 1 min 53 seconds, or this video.)

Incidentally all kanji with "condor" have on-yomi よう. To memorize that just imagine condors always greet each other with a loud "よう".

Orderliness 諧. I didn't use Heisig's keyword for this one. Maybe in Japan for the sake of orderliness keitais all have the same ringtone, or all ring at the same time, or something like that.

By the way, all kanji containing all 皆 have on-yomi かい (but my mnemonic only works if you are sumo fan and know that Kai-o holds all the records).

Thanks Katsuo, your suggestions really helped! I hope this will end my issue with this finally!

Zgarbas Wrote:When in doubt, refer to one of the first sentences I learned in Japanese.
その口じゃない、テンタックルさん。
It's memorable.
(Heisig works best when you go crazy with it).

Where did you learn that from? Far more interesting than "こんにちは、私はジョンです", which I first learned. It was from a school book for Japanese kids, which I found used somewhere. There must be so many young Japanese kids who grow up thinking about who these famed ジョンさん and スミスさん are.


It's a little weird finding Western names used as Japanese examples in Japanese language textbooks. Though at least I think it would have been odd for myself to have learned English set phrases back in early schooling from out English textbooks with "Hello, my name is Tanaka."

[Zgarbas]

Apparently once you gather up enough otakus in one room they start sprouting quotes from hentai. It's a really memorable sentence for some reason.

I think heisig has you picture a human mouth for 口 and 言 as a mouth with sound waves emanating from it.

Zgarbas Wrote:Apparently once you gather up enough otakus in one room they start sprouting quotes from hentai. It's a really memorable sentence for some reason.

お、そうか。分かった。 I've a tendency to crop images from various hentai I read online time-to-time and use the images as Facebook profile images or whatnot. None of the lewd bits, of course. A lot of H-manga and doujinshi are a decent source of reading for the beginner: lots of repetition, rather simple vocab, and a lot of the holes in comprehension are, er, 'filled' in with context provided by the images.

Maybe not a good source for those under-aged, but, you know: find an interest and do it in your target language, and all...