Hello, good evening, good night and all of that stuff. This thread might be useful; it might not be. A thread like this may already exist (although this Mortal couldn't find it), but if it does, then this thread is obviously irrelevant and would merely take up space.

Now, onto business (I've always liked that expression, it sounds very serious). If you're an astute person you might have noticed that my username is 'genericswedishdude'.

My native tongue is Swedish, with all its benefits and drawbacks, and although I pride myself on the level of English I possess, it is sometimes, frankly, not enough.

Hawthorn, hollow reed, butterbur, cocklebur, shingling etc.

The list containing words I've never heard, seen or read is very long, and I thought that I could impossibly be the only one having problems with the English, or the names of flowers and animals.

I merely want to share my method of RTK 3. I didn't do it in order (gasp), and that helps, picking out kanji you know the word of, like the shape of or whatever it is that tickles your
fancy about it.

What I did was as follows

1. Selected a number of kanji I knew the keyword in English for
2. Entered those cards
3. Repeat until those left had a keyword I didn't know of
4. Took a number of kanji I felt comfortable with (let's say 10) and translated them/got a second definition on them
5. Enter those that were known in Swedish to me
6. Repeated until I had weeded out those that I didn't know, not in my native language, nor in English

After all of this, what I did was write about the words I didn't know, and how, as an example, butterbur, known as fuki in Japanese, is used as, among others, an ingredient in miso soup.

The (English) keyword is, at this point, rather useless, and a Japanese one should be used instead, in my opinion.

I hope someone got the slightest use out of this wall of text, and I wish you well on your Japanese adventures.

Links

http://jisho.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-b...dic.cgi?1C (WWWJDIC)

genericswedishdude Wrote:butterbur, cocklebur, shingling etc.

I don't think I've heard of any of those before, but I'd hazard a guess that the first two are plants with thorns, as that's what "bur" tends to be about.

Although, after looking up all three, I should have heard of shingling before, just maybe I forgot it, lol.

Most native English speakers won't know those words either; that's one reason I'm not sure RTK 3 is worth it. If you find some of those kanji in something you read then you have a basis to learn the word, but if not, why bother?

I can understand your feelings towards the keywords, genericswedishdude. There were a handful of Kanji in the book that I found easier to remember with the Japanese names, like 榊（さかき）, 柊（ひいらぎ）, 紬（つむぎ）, or 澪（みお） (all of these happen to be used in the names of various 2D girls*)--which is really the way it should be anyways, since the long-term goal is to increase Japanese reading ability.

*Giving away my power level here using the word '2D' （笑）

yudantaiteki Wrote:Most native English speakers won't know those words either; that's one reason I'm not sure RTK 3 is worth it.

Yes, most native English speakers don't know those words, but that doesn't necessarily mean those words are useless in Japanese. In my experience, Japanese people generally seem to have a larger vocabulary for names of plants and animals (especially fish) than Americans do.

I remember once hearing the word 差羽(サシバ）and then learning that it refers to a specific kind of hawk. None of the Japanese around me had any difficulty with the term. Yet in English, the only term I know for a specific kind of hawk is the Seahawks, as in the American football team from Seattle, Washington.

Anyway, it's probably the case that most of the kanji in RTK 3 aren't essential. However, my point is that we shouldn't quickly dismiss a Japanese word or kanji as useless simply because we're unfamiliar with its English equivalent. For native Japanese speakers, it may be a word or kanji that everyone knows.

Hopefully you actually enjoyed this process, and didn't just take it like a bitter pill.

After doing RTK3 and a whole bunch of vocab, I'm still now going through the process of finding out how lots of these RTK3 kanji are actually useful. But I did it because I wanted to, not because I felt like I had to. RTK3 probably has a negligible influence on conversational fluency. It's more of a thing you do for curiosity's sake.

vileru Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:Most native English speakers won't know those words either; that's one reason I'm not sure RTK 3 is worth it.

Yes, most native English speakers don't know those words, but that doesn't necessarily mean those words are useless in Japanese.

Absolutely not -- my point was that knowing the English words for them isn't particularly useful for the most part. (Or the kanji; in most cases for those plants and animals, just the word itself is enough.)

I made a list of dictionary definitions for RTK keywords two years ago. It looks like this:

steed 駿 a horse being ridden or available for riding
assiduous 孜 showing great care and perseverance
roost 棲 a place where birds regularly settle or congregate to rest at night, or where bats congregate to rest in the day
escutcheon 楯 a shield or emblem bearing a coat of arms
gossamer 紗 a fine, filmy substance consisting of cobwebs spun by small spiders, which is seen esp. in autumn
stole 袈 of a strip of fabric used as an ecclesiastical vestment, worn over the shoulders and hanging down to the knee or below
awl 錐 a small pointed tool used for piercing holes, esp. in leather

I never tried to learn what kind of a plant butterbur (蕗) is, but I associated it with a margarine package with an image of grass and a path. I associated spindle tree (柾) with a CD spindle because the right side sort of looks like a CD spindle.

lauri_ranta Wrote:stole 袈 of a strip of fabric used as an ecclesiastical vestment, worn over the shoulders and hanging down to the knee or below

My dictionary says this kanji means "a coarse camlet", and dictionary.com describes that as "1.a durable, waterproof cloth, especially for outerwear.
2.apparel made of this material.
3.a rich fabric of medieval Asia believed to have been made of camel's hair or angora wool."

The only word with 袈 in the dictionary is 袈裟 (a kesa; a patched-cotton robe [stole, surplice] worn by a Buddhist priest), which you'll mostly only ever see in 大袈裟 (大げさ). I've also seen 袈裟斬り, but that's obviously not something that sees a lot of use.

Incidentally, it's also the only word 裟 is seen in. No point learning them separately.

Haych Wrote:Hopefully you actually enjoyed this process, and didn't just take it like a bitter pill.

After doing RTK3 and a whole bunch of vocab, I'm still now going through the process of finding out how lots of these RTK3 kanji are actually useful. But I did it because I wanted to, not because I felt like I had to. RTK3 probably has a negligible influence on conversational fluency. It's more of a thing you do for curiosity's sake.

Nah, I love Japanese, and especially kanji, but some of the kanji in the RTK 3 are useful only in compounds or a few words rarely used. To even begin this book without a certain devotion and/or immense curiosity of the Japanese language and kanji itself is tantamount to killing all enthusiasm regarding Japanese.

Vempele Wrote:The only word with 袈 in the dictionary is 袈裟 (a kesa; a patched-cotton robe [stole, surplice] worn by a Buddhist priest), which you'll mostly only ever see in 大袈裟 (大げさ). I've also seen 袈裟斬り, but that's obviously not something that sees a lot of use.

Incidentally, it's also the only word 裟 is seen in. No point learning them separately.

That's not a lot of uses for poor ol' 袈. I've seen 大袈裟, but it always struck me as a very fancy way of writing 大げさ, which I've come across far more in my Japanese adventures.

It was more than a little surprising to find that I had to increase my English vocabulary to do Heisig. Must be much harder for those for whom English is not their mother tongue.

蕗 is delicious :3 it is kind of like rhubarb. I've only ever seen it at the local supermarket, already cooked. kind of like this: http://cookpad.com/recipe/1684754. that's the only time I've read this kanji in 2 years in Japan (note how the recipe I linked uses kana. orz)

In conversation, fuki came up with a co-worker when we were talking about 山菜. 蕗の薹 (ふきのとう) is a popular and sought after mountain vegetable in the spring in Japan, and everyone knows it..... except for me.... but now I do!

(BTW dovetron, your link gathered the period(.) into itself into the link.)

蕗の薹 is the best way to remember the word. The character itself is easy enough to remember cause those are some mothers, and a quick google image search （ For just 蕗) will show these huge plants sprouting up next to the 家路. The wind fuki-ing you home, and maybe all the way to Taiwan (臺灣/台湾)． The second character 艹 + 臺 (the traditional form of 台湾/臺灣/Taiwan. This is one of those character that had the powers that be just gone ahead and always replaced 臺 with 台 would be a simple character of 苔. Yeah, it would bump into that same character in 海苔, but so what? We could at least read and write it easily. Now it is just hiragana outside of an IME.

Always worth remembering the RTK books were written by a person who studied religion. A bunch of these words are originally Buddhist references that entered the language as aphorisms. And if the are Buddhist, then they are Chinese, and if they are Chinese, they are going to be two character words, not single character words. 袈裟, 躊躇, 菩薩,

I think the stretch made for some of these words was just a continuation of the ideas of RTK1, but the 躇 of 躊躇う is a perfect example of one that's just better remember a hesitating butt.

Also I think the fact that Heisig stresses the order is not longer necessary is a clue of how to proceed.

In my list of characters 躇 gets renumbered as 1258.5 because it is read like 著 and built straight from it. And the same goes for any new characters like that. 躊 is 1565.5 by the 寿/壽 (壽 becomes 1565.1 itself because it is the 旧字体 of 寿), then attaching ⻊to that.

like 嗜 of 嗜好品, a common enough word not in Heisig goes at 455.5, after 旨 455 ( shared reading, connected meaning) Once RTK1 is done, don't worry about the munchkins of 耂(1251.1) or 口. Find the shared reading character it is built from.


Worth noting that the recipe page actually uses ふき not 蕗 and completely skips over the 薹, appropriate since what is being made in the recipe is the stalk, not the flower.


Anyway, when you ate the Fuki, did you eat the bud or the stalk?

I had trouble with the Heisig keyword "mandala". I was like, what the !@#$% is a "mandala"? Turns out it has to something to do with some sort of mystical stuff.

曼荼羅 is actually used as a description for Mandala shaped/laid out things as well.

If it helps you remember it, since the character has a strong reading of Man, just remember it as a dried up 漫画. I even heard someone argue that the standard 4-panel manga layout is based on the Mandala's influence on Japanese culture.

The fact that that last sentence might be a complete lie will still let you remember it as such. Sun-eye Crotchet the hero of the old dry manga Minamoto Vice.