I have finished RTK1 and am out and about and encountering kanji in the real world. Well in my classroom and in the iKnow programme. My 2D life . . .

Anyway how about this idea for learning the onyomi readings? At the end of each of my stories add a mnemonic for the onyomi readings pretty much like (or, ideally, stolen from) the ones used in kanji damage. Then continue doing the reviews but failing myself if I don't get the onyomi readings. Good idea? Fail? Any thoughts welcome.

Rusty Wrote:I have finished RTK1 and am out and about and encountering kanji in the real world. Well in my classroom and in the iKnow programme. My 2D life . . .

Anyway how about this idea for learning the onyomi readings? At the end of each of my stories add a mnemonic for the onyomi readings pretty much like (or, ideally, stolen from) the ones used in kanji damage. Then continue doing the reviews but failing myself if I don't get the onyomi readings. Good idea? Fail? Any thoughts welcome.

I've been thinking the same thing after finishing RTK1. I think that it can be done, but it would require a lot of time.

I found that learning onyomi readings is quite easy while doing the Core 6k deck. You can learn at the same time Japanese word with it's meaning and reading as well.

It's like killing three birds with one stone. xD

Besides, some Kanjis have multiple onyomi reading, you would have to check in the dictionary for each Kanji, which one is the most popular one. Fortunately most Kanjis have one commonly used onyomi reading. Just make sure that you don't rare an unused one.

I think, for learning the onyomis, Heisig's RTK2 order is quite good.

The kanji that formed kana, pure groups, one time chinese readings, semi pure, and mixed groups will all help tremendously when you see the signal primitives in the kanji, I found it to be very useful. The other chapters, I'm not so sure. However, one thing that I found really motivating about going through the book is that, by being all cross-referenced, I realised that most kanji have only 1 Joyo onyomi. That made me feel so much better about kanji :p
There is a pretty decent deck for RTK2 the book on anki. However, it's the 5th edition version. I'm working on updating it, but that will take some months, as I don't have much time or energy to devote to it.

Also, there is a new site about, benkyo.co/iikanji, that introduces all Joyo readings in frequency order, which you might like to try too. It's currently in beta testing, and you can comment on it in the thread in "learning resources"

Thanks for pointing me to Benkyo.co/iikanji. Very interesting. I signed up and I quite like it but I find it discouraging that they don't provide a translation of the example sentence. I seem to be spending a lot of time leafing through my dictionary and wondering about the grammar. Which is fine of course but not what the site is about. I saw somewhere the decision not to translate is a conscious one and not just because of lack of time or resource. I think I understand their thinking but it doesn't work very well for me.

The developers said they didn't want to provide a translation for 2 reasons, mainly that a) they believe language is best learnt through immersion, but also b) they reckon that most users by the time they are finished with RTK1 will know some basic vocab and Japanese grammar. I personally advocated for translations to help real beginners, but they decided against it.
You can read the feedback on this site here:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=11201

Rusty Wrote:Thanks for pointing me to Benkyo.co/iikanji. Very interesting. I signed up and I quite like it but I find it discouraging that they don't provide a translation of the example sentence. I seem to be spending a lot of time leafing through my dictionary and wondering about the grammar. Which is fine of course but not what the site is about. I saw somewhere the decision not to translate is a conscious one and not just because of lack of time or resource. I think I understand their thinking but it doesn't work very well for me.

I recommend you to try my Core 10k deck. http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=11095&page=9

It has audio / images / Japanese examples / English translation and more on each card. I even added extra 10 examples of word usage per card just to make my life easier xD

I have opposite views as to order of cards in the deck. I prefer an order of words sorted on frequency, that way whenever I learn a new reading I learn like 3-5 new words as well. The repetition of readings makes it easy for me to memorize cards.

I've been successful at using that deck. I was able to learn 6000 words in 70 days. I mostly study using Anki on my mobile device, I can't image having to sit in from of computer for hours learning with the PC

ktcgx - yes I saw they decided against translation. Their call of course but I personally think that if your philosophy is 'divide and conquer' this is a bit contradictory. And I am an 'advanced beginner' if you see what I mean and some of the words and sentence formation was hard for me. Anyway, it is still a very useful looking site.

pmnox - thanks for the pointer to your deck!

This is what I'm doing. I went through a Joyo list arranged by onyomi and added onyomi mnemonics to my stories. In the past people have said this was inefficient or a waste of time, but I can't possibly see what's so inefficient about knowing at least one reading for each kanji.

It also makes learning of further readings easier, because you begin to spot the sound components in each kanji and you can start to predict how it is most likely read. I started for well into Japanese and so I needed a method that would cater to my skill level; traditional rtk wasn't doing it for me, so I had to go my own way.

ktcgx Wrote:The kanji that formed kana, pure groups, one time chinese readings, semi pure, and mixed groups will all help tremendously when you see the signal primitives in the kanji, I found it to be very useful.

I'm not convinced the one-time readings are useful, as they're not actually guaranteed to be unique, e.g. 別 = 瞥 (一瞥) = 蔑 (軽蔑). Also, the kana chapter is harder than the groups, so I'd leave it for later (or maybe just flip through it and pick up the ones that look sufficiently obvious).

Vempele Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:The kanji that formed kana, pure groups, one time chinese readings, semi pure, and mixed groups will all help tremendously when you see the signal primitives in the kanji, I found it to be very useful.

I'm not convinced the one-time readings are useful, as they're not actually guaranteed to be unique, e.g. 別 = 瞥 (一瞥) = 蔑 (軽蔑). Also, the kana chapter is harder than the groups, so I'd leave it for later (or maybe just flip through it and pick up the ones that look sufficiently obvious).

I found the kana chapter easy, lol, maybe I was just able to picture them a bit better? *shrugs*

As for the one time readings, they're unique amongst the Joyo kanji, so until someone is ready to branch out (at the end of RTK1 I very much doubt many are), so I think there's value in learning them, and they're not a particularly big group...

AkiKazachan - how do you do your mnemonics. Do you build them into your original story or do you have a second story? And suppose the onyomi is eg 'chou' what word do you use to represent chou?

I like this idea so any tips welcome!

Rusty Wrote:AkiKazachan - how do you do your mnemonics. Do you build them into your original story or do you have a second story? And suppose the onyomi is eg 'chou' what word do you use to represent chou?

I like this idea so any tips welcome!

What I ended up doing is making stories for the signal primitives (And yes, as the book went on, it became one for each). Since the words are Japanese, I'd often make some horrendous puns. Chou for example became Chou-colate (I told you they are bad). So 腸 (To pick a random one) ends up with "I love me some チョウ-colate intestines". I built up an anki deck for just the stories and drilled that while using a RTKv2, it helps.

ktcgx Wrote:As for the one time readings, they're unique amongst the Joyo kanji

蔑 is a Jouyou kanji...

Quote:, so until someone is ready to branch out (at the end of RTK1 I very much doubt many are), so I think there's value in learning them, and they're not a particularly big group...

Fair enough; I "branched out" before even starting RTK1...

Vempele Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:As for the one time readings, they're unique amongst the Joyo kanji

蔑 is a Jouyou kanji...

Unique readings don't count those where a sound change takes place due to compounding. In the RTK2 to go with the 6th edition of RTK1 (I think it's the 4th edition??), there are a lot less one time readings due to more kanji being added to the Joyo list.