Not sure if I should post this in this topic but I'm having the same sort of problem. Maybe this would benefit both me and the TC. Sorry if it seems like I'm hijacking the topic man.

Basically I'm 589 words into Core 6k after working on RTK for about...4 months. I try to read 10 pages of Japanese a day, listen to 30 mins of the news, I'll spend an hour- 2 hours in Anki doing Core, writing out the sentences on the first go, sounding them out, and repeating the audio. For reviews, I just sound out the word and write it out and move on. Reviews first naturally.

On any given day, it takes me an 1-1 and 1/2 hours to review 50-60 cards and write out 30 new vocab words. Like mentioned before in this topic, I try to imagine every situation in which the new word would apply when learning it first and writing out the whole sentence. I make sure to break up the sentence in bite size chunks at first so I can review the grammar as well.

The thing is, I seem to be losing the meanings of a bunch of keywords for the kanji, at the cost of being able to see them clearly. I seem to be picking up the meanings of kanji I see in compounds like 食事, as in I know it has a meaning of "the matter of a meal" or some such thing, but when I see 事 in other words like 事故, I seem to remember that the last compound is "happenstance", and just think like "this kanji would be an unfortunate accident" or some such thing when attempting to remember the compound order. I would not know or care that the first kanji has the keyword of "a matter".

I had got the advice that writing out the kanji during vocab reviews would cover having to do RTK. Was I mislead? Or is forgetting the keywords like this supposed to happen so soon after encoutering so many vocab words in a month?

If it also matters, I switched over to Anki after using the site, and have to start from the beginning of the deck. According to the deck, I'm 700+ cards in. I'm not sure if I should stop vocab and just review to get that deck knocked out or to keep studying and adding new vocab, and work on that deck one day a week.

Mystery Wrote:[...]
Right now I'm leaning towards premade material like the core sentence decks. I'd like to switch to J-J at some point. I'm not quite sure how building custom J-J material will impact the time I spend on learning. But I guess gathering sentences and looking up definitions will aid the learning process as well.

Premade material is practical for building a foundation in the language. [grammar, core words, etc]

(addressing j.j.)

The process:
1.) i+1 sentence + portion of j.j. definition
2.)0-3 new words in definition
3.)Each new word has a new i+1 sentence.
4.)0-2 new words within each new definition.
5.)You end up with 5 new words, give or take a few (depending on how patient you are)
6.)Full comprehension. Create a network of j-j definitions and their sentences.

"Through J-E you extend a network that refers to the same semantic knowledge and relies on the same general language parsing abilities." -- darkjapanese

Choose the dictionary that seems more intuitive or practical for you. Might be one, or maybe both.

[This is a totally different issue, but these are options you may eventually come across.]

Use your own discernment when progressing through the language.

I'm about 930 words into Core but my vocabulary is closer to ~1400 because I have been going through the Genki Vocab deck too (finish this week! ). In general, learning new vocab words will fall into one of 3 categories:
-Words I already know because I hear/see them everywhere (約束、絶対、etc)
-Words that are larger constructions of multiple smaller words I already know (海外旅行、交通事故、etc)
-Words that are completely new to me.

The first two sets are fairly easy to remember and are self-reinforcing thanks to the "connecting the dots" I'm doing in my head piecing words together. The last one is tricky, and where most of my lapses come from. For these, mnemonics (usually in english) work well to keep me remembering them. Or just brute forcing it, but that is usually a smaller group.

I finished RTK1 before starting core, and generally remembering the kanji in each word is not that difficult (instead the kana, and expecially the okurigana in verbs), as most of the time the meaning makes sense with the word. My RTK review retention is starting to go down the drain ~8 months later, but as long as my vocab reps stay above 90% I'm happy.

arnaldosfjunior Wrote:Before asking next time, just type the word and look in the IME　list please.

Maybe he did. しんさん gets you 心算. Dictionaries will tell you it's read しんさん (though the online ones I checked list 積もり separately with no explanation). Not even EDICT mentions つもり in its 心算 entry. It's easy to overlook.

More to the point, how is memorizing an irregular reading supposed to make it easier to remember the word?

Vempele Wrote:

arnaldosfjunior Wrote:Before asking next time, just type the word and look in the IME　list please.

how is memorizing an irregular reading supposed to make it easier to remember the word?

How about start with this 穴埋め漢字問題, I found online. The answer is in the end.

　　　　　　　　真
　　　　　　　　↓
　　　　　発→囗→算
　　　　　　　　↓
　　　　　　　　地

Who is talking about memorizing irregular reading for 心算-しんさん? Did you drink all the bottle or you still have something for me? I was showing the 熟字訓 for the word つもり.

It's incredible how you didn't find it cleared enough googling for it. Maybe you didn't have the 積もり・積り・心算 【つもり】 to do so, or Am I wrong, hum?
大辞林 第三版
http://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%A9%8D%E3%82%...3%E7%AE%97
Btw,

Vempele Wrote:how is memorizing an irregular reading supposed to make it easier to remember the word?

Let's suppose it was the case. Simple: you only work one time. Instead of memorizing it one time, and, when you come across the same word in the future with an irregular reading, you would have to re-memorize it for other reading. It just saves time being familiar with the 当て字 or the 熟字訓 from the beginning.
Note:
当て字 specifically using characters for phonetic value. でたらめ-出鱈目
熟字訓 semantic value rather than phonetic value. パンダ-熊猫

There's a version of core10k here in the forum with the pitch accent for the words added. Instead of memorizing all words meanings and after this process begin to learn the pitch accent, why don't learning both same time with this spreadsheet?

You didn't need to search in other dictionaries to begin with. Don't IME has a dictionary and つもり　shows side by side with 心算?



teruminionさん did this question in 知恵袋：
http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/...1281210362
yoshikonation1956さん
http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/...1369074068
other dictionary
http://homepage3.nifty.com/giboshi/kaijitbl026.htm


1004 言語 当字249 心算 　 つもり
999 言語 当字244 一寸 　 ちょっと　I'm not talking about memorizing いっすん
2162 人事 人間7 貴方 　 あなた
1014 言語 当字259 如何 　 どう
1017 言語 当字262 何処 　 どこ
1024 言語 当字269 隧道 　 トンネル　　I'm not talking about memorizing すいどう
1098 言語 当字343 反吐 　 へど
1184 言語 動作1 嗚呼 　 ああ３ 　
1185 言語 動作2 于嗟 　 ああ４ 　
1186 言語 動作3 吁嗟 　 ああ５ 　
1187 言語 動作4 嗟呼 　 ああ６
2156 人事 人間1 彼奴 　 あいつ
1188 言語 動作5 欠伸 　 あくび2
772 言語 当字17 彼処 　 あそこ 　
773 言語 当字18 彼所 　 あそ
666 言語 助副1 宛も 　 あたかも
780 言語 当字25 彼方此方 　 あちこち
782 言語 当字27 彼方 　 あちら
あっち【彼方】の意味
｢あながち【強ち】｣
「彼辺此辺(あべこべ)」
1285 言語 様子9 可笑しい 　 おかしい
lots and lots of words with お　are replace with 御
1283 言語 様子7 美味しい 　 おいしい
1282 言語 様子6 五月蠅い 　 うるさい
えび　蝦
靨・笑窪 えくぼ
うろつく【彷徨く】
有耶無耶（うやむや）
五月蝿い・五月蠅い・煩い　うるさい
1279 言語 様子3 上手い 　 うまい 　
1280 言語 様子4 美味い 　 うまい２
285 衣食住 料理8 饂飩 　 うどん
嫌嫌・厭厭・嫌々・厭々　いやいや
嫌に・厭に　いやに
嫌らしい・厭らしい　いやらしい
814 言語 当字60 悪戯 　 いたずら 　
髭・×鬚・×髯　ひげ
膝　ひざ
肘　ひじ

..........


As you study more Japanese, it begins to feel easier to memorize by the kanji in it. core10k comes with lots of non-kanjified words. If you kanjify them, it's just easier.Why do you think chinese gets vocabulary down 10x faster than European language speakers?

By the way, Vempele, please, add a dictionary for 漢字検定 in your list of dictionaries from now on. By the same logic you used to defend your point of view, you couldn't understand a ２ちゃねる thread too. 25% words there (or more depending on the level of formality and topic) are not in the dictionary. Now, just take into account an informal conversation in the real world full time non-dictionary guided and you'd be crazy.　Not every people's name reading are in the dictionary(ex:actress 武井 咲（たけい 「えみ」).　and 絵文字(I can create one right now for this matter)?

Now, as I type this message, There are lots of new vocab been created by people in an infinite circle which will not stop until the Armageddon or the emancipation of the earth-colonies in Mars. Language is just infinite and webbing more connections in the brain to learn words don't hurt.

Answer for the game:

　　　　　　　　真
　　　　　　　　↓
　　　　　発→心→算
　　　　　　　　↓
　　　　　　　　地


真囗　→　真心（まごころ）

発囗　→　発心（ほっしん）
発心とは、悟りを得ようとする心を起こすこと。物事を始めようと思い立つこと。

囗算　→　心算（つもり）

囗地　→　心地（ここち）


See? Even for playing, knowing more kanjified words helps a lot.

There are 549 カタカナ　words in the field WORD in core10k. Most of them if not all instantly memorizable for English speakers. If you focus only on the word you learn nothing. Why not the 漢字 for them. If nothing more, you're expanding your brain connections for kanji.
278 衣食住 料理1 氷菓子 　 アイスクリーム
1426 植物 果実8 甜橙 　 オレンジ
611 言語 仮名16 加特力 　 カトリック
607 言語 仮名12 瓦斯 　 ガス
609 言語 仮名14 型録 　 カタログ
614 言語 仮名19 基督 　 キリスト
1326 鉱材 材料8 硝子 　 ガラス 　
906 言語 当字152 倶楽部 　 クラブ 　

arnaldosfjunior Wrote:

uisukii Wrote:Correct me If I'm making a poor assumption, but wouldn't 「つもり-心算」 be:

つもり-積もり
しんさん- 心算

http://www.geocities.jp/bunakobo/kan/ateji.htm

Before asking next time, just type the word and look in the IME　list please.

http://theimagehost.net/upload/57dab9f7f...692a57.jpg

つもり is written in hiragana except for certain contexts.
心算（しんさん） is a different word altogether.

dizmox Wrote:

arnaldosfjunior Wrote:

uisukii Wrote:Correct me If I'm making a poor assumption, but wouldn't 「つもり-心算」 be:

つもり-積もり
しんさん- 心算

http://www.geocities.jp/bunakobo/kan/ateji.htm

Before asking next time, just type the word and look in the IME　list please.

http://theimagehost.net/upload/57dab9f7f...692a57.jpg

つもり is written in hiragana except for certain contexts.
心算（しんさん） is a different word altogether.

You're right!
つもり is written in hiragana except for certain contexts which includes 心算　as listed for preparation for the 漢字検定一級 or registered in 大辞林 .
心算（しんさん） is a different word altogether.

1004 言語 当字249 心算 　 つもり
http://www.geocities.jp/bunakobo/kan/ateji.htm
大辞林 第三版
http://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%A9%8D%E3%82%...3%E7%AE%97

arnaldosfjunior Wrote:

uisukii Wrote:Correct me If I'm making a poor assumption, but wouldn't 「つもり-心算」 be:

つもり-積もり
しんさん- 心算

snip

I did: Google IME

つもり
top result:
積もり
心算 wasn't even an option.

Fot しんさん, hitting spacebar/the top result was 心算. つもり doesn't even have the option to be displayed as 心算. I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to say here, but you might want to drop that attitude.

...

Wow at all this.

Rather than wait for a response towards my situation, I just decided to suck it up an plug at the RTK Anki deck as well, doing 50 "new" cards a day in addtion to 30 new vocab cards. It'll fix itself one way or the other. I've already decided I'm never doing another story in RTK again. The benefit at this point would be marginal at best.

At the end of the day, trying it out for yourself is probably the fastest route to a result, as everyone's experience is going to be different and it's more likely what they don't tell you about their experience is the kicker. Glad to see you found a definite result.

You deleted a mod edit after you broke the rules and were warned. Enjoy your month vacation from the forum.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=180

Courtesy

This website is a labour of love, animosity or competition will not be tolerated.

[RawToast]

I feel this topic is getting a little out of hand.

つもり does not show as 心算 in the Google IME, just like uisukii said. It does show in the Microsoft one. It does rank at nearly 300,000 in frequency on rikaisama though

Quote:Core gets easier as you get a couple hundred cards under your belt. It takes awhile for your mind to process something new but you'll find yourself being able to remember new vocab on the fly once you've learned the readings of so many kanji.

Back on topic, I also found this to be the case. The first few hundred cards are hard, you just have to push past them.

On top of pushing on; it seems that as the words continue to amass in your brain, they form a web of sorts, making it easy to trap newer words. The hardest part of building a web (I'd have to assume) is laying down the first few strands, after all.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:...

Wow at all this.

Rather than wait for a response towards my situation, I just decided to suck it up an plug at the RTK Anki deck as well, doing 50 "new" cards a day in addtion to 30 new vocab cards. It'll fix itself one way or the other. I've already decided I'm never doing another story in RTK again. The benefit at this point would be marginal at best.

Based on experience of having made passive or stopped my RTK reviews, I recommend to continue your RTK reviews in an active fashion. Some people recommend stopping them when you get into Vocabulary, Grammar and specialized learning. My current opinion though is that isn't enough. RTK was structured learning of individual Kanji normally reviewed keyword to kanji. With vocab, you might not run into a RTK kanji that you learned. This is especially true once you pass the top 1,000 kanji that account for >90% of all vocabulary that you likely will not learn words to use those kanji outside of specialized vocabulary. In my mind, if you took the time to learn the Kanji, what's wrong with a little additional time spent retaining what you learned? You then have that learning to draw upon when you do finally see it in the wild or during formal learning of vocabulary and grammar.

If you read the guide I posted, you might know my preference on compartmentalizing the learning and not actively study new things from different areas. By all means review from all areas you've studied, but segment your learning. The benefit as I see it is you can get immediate payback on time invested as the 555 Kanji will be used a lot in those 1,000 vocabulary words and the next 555 Kanji you learn after that will be used quite a bit in the all the following vocabulary words.

Sorry for not responding earlier. Life gets in the way.


I did read the guide(thanks by the way for undertaking that task), so I apologize if it seemed I didn't. I've just been studying Japanese on and off for 6 years, getting serious about it this year, making more progress in these 6 months than ANYTHING I've done before, and trying to learn to deal with that feeling that feels like burnout when my current learning method doesn't seem to be working. I've been really careful about recognizing it and just switching up what I'm doing in Japanese at the moment. Seems to be working so far. And yes, I'm taking your advice into consideration as well.

If I may ask, do you still do RTK this far in your studies? And do you know if even Japanese people have to do some sort of thing to keep the kanji fresh in their minds? I understand that they have constant exposure to it, but I'm a little skeptical that most of the Japanese population can write 3000-5000 kanji offhand just perfectly.

I personally don't keep up on my RTK deck, but then again, I also can't tell you what the keyword is and can't always write them off the top of my head (of course, I've been practicing with 正しい漢字かきとりくん, so hopefully that will change), so take that as you will. My biggest reason for doing RTK was so that I could actually 'see' kanji instead of blocks with some lines.

As for Japanese people and kanji: I've actually read several articles about some Japanese, especially in the younger age groups, having more difficulty with kanji than before. This is mainly attributed to the proliferation of cellphones and computers, since you only need to recognize a kanji when you're using an IME. Of course, they can still write fine, but kanji usage has dropped some because of it.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:but I'm a little skeptical that most of the Japanese population can write 3000-5000 kanji offhand just perfectly.

Maybe you're confusing Japanese with Chinese? The claim that most of the Japanese population can write 3000-5000 kanji offhand is a rather odd thing for anyone to claim.

uisukii Wrote:

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:but I'm a little skeptical that most of the Japanese population can write 3000-5000 kanji offhand just perfectly.

Maybe you're confusing Japanese with Chinese? The claim that most of the Japanese population can write 3000-5000 kanji offhand is a rather odd thing for anyone to claim.

I definitely was exaggerating, though it seems as though you just reassured my thoughts that my recollection of the kanji isn't so horrible and hopeless as I thought and I should just chill out and let it happen instead of being a perfectionist. I definitely seem to have a better recollection of kanji and their parts even if I do miss a stroke or whole radical, I just say to myself I'll do better next time. Hearing that about kanji useage dropping reminds me of the state of proper handwriting in the states with technology. Cursive is all but dead.=/

I just wish I had the mindset that missing a kanji/vocab during reviews ISN'T failing years ago. I probably would have been N1 by now.<_<

I am only 1500 words into core10k but here are some random things that have helped me.

- I start with the entire deck suspended and add words manually. This allows me to use my own judgement and pick words that might be easy to learn together rather than have them appear in whatever order the deck is in.

- I add new words in batches of 5-8, then I review them, then I do more new words. At first I was adding 20+ in a single go and when I came to start reviewing I had forgotten them already.

- When selecting words to learn I try and find related words. For example a single kanji like 宅 has three words with the same reading and similar meanings so I add them as a group. I also look for opposite type words, i.e. hot/cold, fast/slow or words that are otherwise related to help reinforce each other.

- I use some mnemonics to help remember readings but not many, and mainly when I find a word that is taking a while to remember.

- When reviewing I ignore everything except the word and I try and review words fast (~10 seconds/card). This means I fail words I might have worked out if I had 20+ seconds to umm and arr over, but it means I can do 100 reviews in 20 minutes so I can handle adding new words faster, or do more reading/production practice.

- I am lenient on failed cards if its new, and select hard, until it reaches about the 5-6 day review time at which point I am very aggressive about failing it. So far I am stubborn and haven't suspended any cards but the highest failure rate on a card is only 6 so far.

- Often I will fail cards because I don't read the complete kanji. I see a primitive and and pick a word without looking at the rest of the kanji.

- In the evenings when I go to bed I try and see how many of the new words I can recall, and I do the same thing the following morning while riding to work or whatever.

- I also do a lot of production practice each day and try and use the new words as much as I can.

You will fail a lot of cards, it doesn't matter, let anki do it's job. If your not failing a bunch of cards each session you are not adding enough new words each day!

The more words you learn the easier it becomes. I know so many kanji with the きゅう reading now that when I come across a new one its easy to slot it into the same place in my head where all the other kanji sit with that reading. This is harder at the beginning when every new word has strange and different new readings.

Mystery Wrote:You mention that immersion is working very well for you. Did that also affect the beginning stages? Or did you have to overcome a certain hurdle until immersion really made an impact?

No hurdles, I've been making steady progress since the beginning. But I did do things in a specific way, I didn't just "immerse" myself in random, unintelligible native Japanese.

First off, I watched most things with subs, while trying my best to pay attention to the spoken Japanese. To this day, I still just pause and look for subs if I don't understand something, I hate to watch anything that's unintelligible. I find that this works just fine, despite the many claims around the Internet that it doesn't. Usually, the counter-argument I see is: "But I watched thousands of hours of anime and movies with subs, and never learned any Japanese; so you won't either". That's a ridiculous argument: I watch while paying attention to the language, not to mention that I also study Kanji, grammar and basic vocab on the side, which give me a foothold into the language that someone just paying attention to the subs and tuning out the language doesn't have.

And then there is the repetition. Whenever I came across something that I really liked, I would download it, and use it as a study aid. In the beginning, I focused on understanding materials I was using in this way, and "immersing myself" in them only afterwards. I did this for songs (which I translated and even SRSed line by line, especially in the beginning), as well as TV shows (variety/comedy shows, which I watched several times with subtitles, until I knew exactly what was going on). Only then did I put the songs and the audio from the TV shows on my mp3 player, and played them back many times as "passive listening" or "immersion".

Note that this later repeated listening still resulted in learning vocab: just from watching something with subs a few times, you don't remember every word or sentence in it; but you do learn the English meaning of what's being said, and then, when you listen to it over and over again without having to also read subs (because you already know what's in them), it's much easier to decipher the meaning of most Japanese words and sentences in the audio.

These days I find that watching something once with subs, and then listening to it once or twice again, is more than enough to get everything there is to get out of it. But, as a beginner, I would listen many times, and would find new words or finally get a feel for how an expression is used, every single time.

P.S. All the stuff above is a means to actually learn Japanese words, with their meanings. There is another, less obvious benefit to immersion for a beginner: the ability to familiarize yourself with how a language sounds, how its sentences sound, and, crucially, what its words sound like. Even if you don't understand words, you gain the ability to tell what's a word and what's not a word. And that is half the battle won. After that, it's much, much easier to also commit the meaning of such words to memory.

Some people brought up mnemonics for vocabulary. While visual mnemonics really help with RTK and kanji I didn't find them all that useful for vocabulary. It's very easy for one's mnemonics to get cluttered with homophones, synonyms, etc. with vocabulary that simply wasn't much of an issue with RTK. I think this is partly due to the fact that Heisig planned out the kanji in such an order to minimize potential mnemonic conflict. With vocab, there is no such system of which I'm aware. Even if there were, I would seriously doubt its efficacy.

Just like the kanji, vocabulary acquisition gets easier as you progress and you start to see patterns. You hit plateaus. The first 200 or so words might be easy, while the next 500 or so are difficult, but then the next 1000 are "easy". Of course, this is different for everyone but you get the idea.

Personally, I've found that learning vocabulary solely from "immersion" (i.e. native Japanese materials, speaking with native speakers, etc.) isn't that effective. Contact with native materials certainly solidifies one's knowledge—it transforms it from passive knowledge to active knowledge—but it is a very ineffective way to acquire new words.

To me, one needs to study vocabulary on its own and then use other materials to "understand" the vocabulary and really own it. I like to think of vocabulary as bricks, we need to acquire a bunch of them in order to build a house but it's not until we add other things (mortar and order) that they can be fully utilized. This is where flash card programs come in (I may be biased as I've written an iPhone application that focuses solely on vocabulary, but I only did so after realizing these things through my own studies). Basically, I learn and "drill" new words with software. At this point they precariously exist in my memory. However, when one of those precariously understood words is heard, whether it be through reading a 小説, talking to friends in Japanese, watching a ドラマ, or something else, I have that "Aha" moment and the word is forever mine. You need to give yourself these words so that they may be solidified through contact with native materials. You can't hope to simply learn new things through osmosis. Anyway, that's my 2¢. As always, YMMV.

Not to thread hijack here but I must agree with the following.

Wrenn Wrote:[...]When selecting words to learn I try and find related words. For example a single kanji like 宅 has three words with the same reading and similar meanings so I add them as a group. I also look for opposite type words, i.e. hot/cold, fast/slow or words that are otherwise related to help reinforce each other.

Reviewing related words certainly helps one to pick up patterns. While living in Japan I would do this on paper. Basically, I'd pick words in groups of about 5, write them in Japanese on a piece of paper, and then fold that paper into thirds. On the middle third, I'd write the English translation, checking my ability to translate the words. Then on the last third, I'd write the Japanese again, testing my ability to write it. This method first tested my passive recognition (Japanese to English), then immediately succeed by active recall (writing English to Japanese). The cool thing about doing them back to back was that it allowed one to do English to Japanese without having to worry about homophones, which is a major problem when trying to do active recall with regular flashcards.

Anyway, doing this with groups of related words was most effective but it was a bit tedious with paper (also, there wasn't any spaced repetition with paper) which is why I use software for it now.