Admin: Edited topic title. The Kanji poster may include slight font variants from that seen in RtK, which are not errors. The topic of font variants has been discussed before. See explanation below (thanks dukelexon). Below is the author's original post.

----

Today I just got my Kanji Poster, from kanjiposter.com. I was elated, so to prove my knowledge with my relatives I dared them to pick any one they pleased so I could give them the correct keyword (completed the 2042 kanji a few months ago).

To my surprise, I could not recognize a couple of them. This was weird, because normally if I can't recall the keyword at least I can remember the primitives and parts of the story I made up.

So, I decided to check them up using this site (luckly the poster is in heisig order), and guess what! After only 5 minutes of looking at the kanji I found 5 errors. The kaniji are misspelled, they have an extra stroke, a different primitive or they are simply unrecognizable.

Right now, I am checking carefully the poster and still finding more errors. So I am asking for a refund or at least for a new poster with no errors. I am really sorry for Kanjiposter.com.

Hi Folks,
I had another person bring this to my attention a couple of days ago. I had the poster checked out and was told that the poster was fine, it was a slight difference in font from the RTK font.
As that I see this will be a problem for RTK studiers I'm in the process of making a new poster with the exact same font as the one we are used to.

I want everyone to be really excited about their purchase so If you've ordered a poster and are really unhappy with the product, as the above member is, please just email me and I will send you out a free new poster when they are ready. This will be in about a week.

Apologies for not nailing this the first time. If I knew my Kanji that well I would never hung out here in the first place... Again "I'm not only the hair club president, I'm also a hair club client".... errrr, maybe thats a North American thing.... never mind.

This poster business has been a bit of a learning experience for myself as well.

All the unstoked please email me. kanjiposter (at) gmail (dot) com

paddy

Hi paddy.

Thanks for your reply, I am sure you are honest and trying to provide useful material for us the kanji learners. I will be glad to accept a new poster with the kanji displayed just like in heisig's book. Although, I must say that I doubt that the problem with the poster is that you used a different font. I still believe some of the kanji use incorrect primitives and that makes it difficult to understand them. I might be wrong, but it seems unlikely.

I haven't seen the poster but isn't this a "problem" related to the new JIS2004 standard. Several kanji were modified in the new standard.

For example: 辻 and 賭 have an extra stroke in the new standard. Is this what you have seen?

javier, can you give an example of when one of the poster kanji uses a different primitive?

The title of the thread is slightly inflammatory. I also notice different strokes depending on the kanji set being used. This is noticeable when I practice Anki on other computers.

That said, it's a testament to how well you're learning when just a small stroke difference makes the kanji unrecognizable. Good job in noticing.

The issue here has little to do with "incorrect" or "missing" strokes or primitives. The poster merely uses some alternate FORMS of the kanji, forms that are a little different from what was presented in the actual RTK books. One of the weaknesses of the Heisig method is that it does little to prepare you against confusion when you encounter some of these slightly altered forms; they do, however, exist.

They are still valid, and would be completely recognizable to a native Japanese person for what they are. A good example of something that looks VERY different depending on the font form is the "orders" and "chop-seal" primitives.

If you need further evidence that both versions of the kanji can be considered the same exact thing ... well, think about how most people's written lower-case "a" looks, then consider what it looks like in most printed fonts (go get a newspaper). It's VERY different, but most people are so used to it that they read them as the same thing without thinking. The comparison is admittedly nowhere near the level of complexity and variety with kanji, but as far as analogies I can make with Roman letters, it's as close as I can get. I think it gets the point across.



On a side note, I've done the "quiz" thing with some of my friends and relatives, too. The difference is, I have them do it right out of the book, from the index in back. That way, they've got the number, and can check for themselves that I'm right. They're always going to eventually find one you can't remember in "backwards" review form ... unless you're literally getting a 100% recall rate on this site! Don't worry when they manage to stump you on one you think you should've known. It'll happen, and they'll still be impressed you can get 90/100. To someone that's never studied kanji, the ability to remember even a single block of seemingly impenetrable strokes and squiggles seems like quite a feat ... let alone thousands!

I guess I never really noticed that alternate forms of kanji existed. But how much variation is there? An extra or missing stroke doesn't seem like a huge deal, but are there many, or even any, cases where totally different primitives are substituted?

I appreciate the discussion around this, and yes the poster is definitely correct. It just isn't identical to RTK...
But I am advertising on a site that is centered around RTK so that is why I'm making a new version.
Currently I'm still selling the original version as is because as I mentioned after doing my own investigation a few days ago I found that there was nothing wrong with it.
It's probably a good idea to learn some alternate versions of this kanji we so adore...

That being said I still would like to repeat my offer of a free replacement to unhappy RTKers... (I should of mentioned in the first posting, but I will ask that the shipping is covered, but there is not charge for the poster.)

This will be the last I post in this thread as I'm hoping that the title will go away,

Maybe the author could change the title to...
"Beware! Kanji Poster uses a different font that RTK"
or, preferably
"Beware! Kanji Poster is the greatest purchase I ever made, it brings love and happiness and wealth beyond belief to whomever stands before it"...

just a suggestion.
paddy

paddy71 Wrote:Maybe the author could change the title to...
"Beware! Kanji Poster uses a different font that RTK"
or, preferably
"Beware! Kanji Poster is the greatest purchase I ever made, it brings love and happiness and wealth beyond belief to whomever stands before it"...

I'll second that. Although the second one is maybe a bit over the top! Maybe "Kanji poster is available in different fonts" would be better? Could you change it Javier?

I think that Dragg's question was brought up in another thread although I can't remember which one it was...

paddy71 Wrote:Maybe the author could change the title to...
"Beware! Kanji Poster uses a different font that RTK"
or, preferably
"Beware! Kanji Poster is the greatest purchase I ever made, it brings love and happiness and wealth beyond belief to whomever stands before it"...

just a suggestion.
paddy

Is there a way on this forum to rename threads? I think only Fabrice can do it :/

[ファブリス]

Ditto.

I'm glad to see you guys agree to it. I was hesitant to update the topic title yesterday, as the host of these forums these are sometimes difficult decisions to make because I don't want to loose the trust of the community. My approach so far has been to let people manage themselves and basically trust you. It's been working awesome so far, I've said it before, I rarely have to "moderate" anything, so thanks.

However I will update the topic title, because as explained very well by dukelexon, the errors are most likely variations on the kanji characters (I say most likely because my own kanji poster is stuck at the post office..).

Furthermore as a frequent user of photoshop and similar tools myself, I suspect true "errors" could only happen as a result of picking a completely different character than the RtK one, because the fonts are already made. I bet paddy has checked and double-checked this already.

Regarding misspellings, it would make no sense for paddy to tamper with the fonts as those are standards that are used across the world.

For those RtK learners who are new to this topic, see related topics :

Two ways to write STATELY (2138) 凛 or 凜 ?

Imprecisions with some primitives

Fonts also feature variations of style :
Water (drops) primitive

There are probably some more topics like this. Even more frequent is the discussion of variations on stroke count which is closely related to the font variants.

Hi again. Well I am glad to know that my post has had a lot of feedback. About the title of the post, as you can see, it has been changed by the administrator, which is ok since they have explained that there are no errors with the poster.

However, even if this is true I had to point out that for the Heisig kanji learners the poster is not suitable. I believe that thanks to this post, Paddy will now deliver the product everybody is hoping to get.

I will try to give you some examples of some kanji that are simply unrecognizable for those who use the Remembering the kanji book (it is also different from the kanji in the Minna no nihongo textbooks) very soon if you want, although I think it is unnecessary since Paddy said he will change the poster.

So, if you want the poster as much as I do, please make sure to ask for the correct one. I?ll post again soon. bye

javiergakusei Wrote:I will try to give you some examples of some kanji that are simply unrecognizable for those who use the Remembering the kanji book (it is also different from the kanji in the Minna no nihongo textbooks) very soon if you want, although I think it is unnecessary since Paddy said he will change the poster.

You could make it an opportunity to learn these variations. If the kanji are really hard to recognize, it's better to get used to them now than to stick to the font Heisig/RTK used and risk being stumped while reading a japanese text.

javiergakusei Wrote:I will try to give you some examples of some kanji that are simply unrecognizable for those who use the Remembering the kanji book...

I think that when one makes a rather strong claim such as yours that "try" really isn't sufficient. More than a day has gone by (almost two) since your initial alarm raising with no examples.

Hi guys,

I think Ramchip is absolutely right. Knowing that the kanji can be written in different ways is an opportunity to learn the variations. Maybe some of you would like to learn them while using Remembering the Kanji Vol. I, while others would prefer to first learn those in the book, and after a while try the variations.
My point is that you should be able get what you ask for. Paddy understands this, and as great guy he is, he offered me a new poster with the kanji displayed as in the RTK book, because that was what I wanted when I bought his product via this web site. He has also stated that he is willing to change the poster to any other unsatisfied RTKers. I believe that is really good. It seems that from now on, anyone will be able to choose which font they want.
That being said, I will move on and leave this topic (just as Paddy did) and apologize for stating that the poster had errors when I should have written about how the font used in the kanji poster made it a ?not so useful product? for those learning with the Heisig system?. Ok, that feels better.
Since we now know what the problem is, and more importantly, that it is being fixed, I am certain that there is no use in still talking about how the kanjiposter differs from the book. So for the really eager who still want to know (like markal), I would recommend reading the links our administrator gave, or start a new post which should not mention the kanjiposter anymore, and just focus on the different ways a kanji can be written.
This is important, so we can separate those people who want to learn about this issue, from the ones that are only interested in completing the book by using Heisig`s Remembering the Kanji Vol. 1 and using an aid such as the kanjiposter.
Thank you for the responses.

[ファブリス]

It would still be useful if you could at least give some RtK1 keywords for which the character looked different enough that you didn't recognize it. My own kanji poster is stuck at the post office, and I believe it's a "first run", and I am curious and want to check those differences, and then to able to confirm to paddy whether or not his new version fixed some of the stylistic variants.

I would also be very interested to see some of the different forms the kanji are in. This was news to me that the kanji would look different. Though I don`t know why I didn`t think of it before--what with all the differences in the kana fonts I see.
Could you please give some examples? I would love to see some of these variations. We could start a new thread, but I think at this point the publicity is only good publicity for paddy`s business...

Recently I downloaded the EPSON 教科書体Ｍ and others from this site and I have found a couple of such differences.
令 1401 orders (it looks similar to 今 )
浅 369 shallow (the drop is at a different place)
栃 514 horse chestnut
仮 966 sham
陥 1315 collapse
浜 1332 seacoast
vein 1856 vein

Copy those kanjis and check them with the above mentioned font.

By the while, while playing a Japanese PS2 videogame I realized it uses the same variation for 令 as the Epson font, so such changes may not be that strange.

And last but not least, I think that in the real world you are going to face much more than just different fonts. Specially if you have the slightest intention of becoming able to read handwritten Japanese.

Transtic Wrote:And last but not least, I think that in the real world you are going to face much more than just different fonts. Specially if you have the slightest intention of becoming able to read handwritten Japanese.

Indeed. Take a look at some restaurant signs, sake bottle labels etc.

I went to the doctors today. I can't even read an English doctor's hand writing so the Japanese doctor's note was a challenge to say the least...

The HG正楷書体-PRO that I set up as the default for the Change kanji font script because of its closeness to 教科書体 and its omnipresence on Japanese computers (at least those I used so far), has a few interesting distractions. One that I remember quite clearly was the one for #1120 "search" 捜, which replaces the monkey primitive (申) with a shoot (由). This was during my second attempt. I'd half-forgotten about the kanji, so I failed it. Then when I reread the stories, I was like: "Boy, boy, what's with all the monkeys. There ain't no monkey here to shake a stick at." So careful with those fonts.

Personally I think that since RTK (the book) is trying to teach you to *write* the kanji, it would be nice if the kanji shown in each frame were in the usual handwritten style, not a printed font style. In cases like 令 [ORDERS] the difference is quite marked. It's easy enough to learn to recognise variations when you're reading, but if you've learned the wrong written form I think that's harder to fix. So it's a shame that the book (at least the ed. I have) doesn't do that.

laner36 Wrote:I would also be very interested to see some of the different forms the kanji are in.

Here is some examples using four different fonts (MS Mincho, Microsoft JhengHei, Meiryo and HGKyokashotai):

Interesting comparison, gdaxeman.

MS JhengHei is a chinese (traditional) font though, so a few differences are to be expected.

javiergakusei Wrote:The kaniji are misspelled, they have an extra stroke, a different primitive or they are simply unrecognizable.

Could you give us some examples of these? I'm particularly interested in the ones you thought were "unrecognizable". I haven't seen anything that you couldn't use a very small amount of imagination to guess. I'm not trying to be critical but I'm interested to see what gave you such big troubles.