I have been studying Remembering the Kanji, and I currently know 287 kanji from the book. Now I'm taking a break from RTK to study Genki because I have devoted a lot of time to studying kanji but not Japanese (as in all major skills of the language)! I haven't learned all of the kanji that is used in Genki, but I do know some. So, here's the question. Should I learn some words with some of the kanji for a given compound? Here's an example. When learning this word "朝ご飯," because I know the first kanji (朝) but not the second (飯) does anyone think it would be a good idea to learn the word like this for right now (until I learn more kanji): "朝ごはん" -- versus just learning the kana form? Would learning some words this way cause any problems or would it just be helpful?
2014-05-31, 2:01 am
May as well try to learn it with the kanji
I actually just flipped ahead to see how rtk built a kanji, that way I had a better idea of how it was put together, and a better chance of remembering, but stopped short of building a full blown mnemonic most of the time til I got to it in RTK.
Some stuck fairly well this way.
I actually just flipped ahead to see how rtk built a kanji, that way I had a better idea of how it was put together, and a better chance of remembering, but stopped short of building a full blown mnemonic most of the time til I got to it in RTK.
Some stuck fairly well this way.
2014-05-31, 4:57 am
Emerald905 Wrote:I have been studying Remembering the Kanji, and I currently know 287 kanji from the book. Now I'm taking a break from RTK to study Genki because I have devoted a lot of time to studying kanji but not Japanese (as in all major skills of the language)! I haven't learned all of the kanji that is used in Genki, but I do know some. So, here's the question. Should I learn some words with some of the kanji for a given compound? Here's an example. When learning this word "朝ご飯," because I know the first kanji (朝) but not the second (飯) does anyone think it would be a good idea to learn the word like this for right now (until I learn more kanji): "朝ごはん" -- versus just learning the kana form? Would learning some words this way cause any problems or would it just be helpful?Yeah, it helps. That way you learn some readings in a pretty painless way. I think even if you weren't using Heisig that's the usual way!
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2014-05-31, 5:26 am
Emerald905 Wrote:I have been studying Remembering the Kanji, and I currently know 287 kanji from the book. Now I'm taking a break from RTK to study Genki because I have devoted a lot of time to studying kanji but not Japanese (as in all major skills of the language)!Excellent idea! I did the same (with "Japanese the Manga Way") after "finishing" RTK1 and was pleasantly surprised by how much more useful it is to work with actual Japanese and see some real verbs in action, including conjugating them. Better still, that turned out to be a good way of learning the *real* meaning of many Kanji instead of concentrating on the often phoney key meanings (not counting the intentionally artificial primitives) Heisig used in RTK1.
Emerald905 Wrote:"So, here's the question. Should I learn some words with some of the kanji for a given compound? Here's an example. When learning this word "朝ご飯," because I know the first kanji (朝) but not the second (飯) does anyone think it would be a good idea to learn the word like this for right now (until I learn more kanji): "朝ごはん" -- versus just learning the kana form? Would learning some words this way cause any problems or would it just be helpful?Go with whatever works for you, I'd say. Perhaps seeing the Kanji in their natural environment may even add extra motivation for coming up with a Heisig mnemonic/
2014-05-31, 12:06 pm
You will actually get 飯 as one of your Kanji (I believe it's end of Book 1 or beginning of Book 2)
Genki is the series we use in my classes. Generally, when we are quizzed on our kanji, we are only made responsible for the highlighted words in each of the kanji boxes. So you could go with that. Even so, there is still some other good vocabulary in there so don't be afraid to learn that. We've just finished the Genki series, but since then I've been meaning to go back and learn all that extra kanji vocab.
The way Genki works for a lot of the kanji words it teaches is that it will just focus on what you already know. So, when learning 朝 you will only get that in kanji and the rest of the full あさごはん word will be in kana. When you learn 飯 later in the book you will probably get the full 朝ご飯 word in kanji at some point, since you will already know 朝 and will just have learned 飯.
I don't think it would really cause problems, but I feel like the way the kanji section of Genki was designed was to only learn that particular kanji at the time and leave the rest in kana until you learn it. And I can say from experience that such a thing works just fine.
Genki is the series we use in my classes. Generally, when we are quizzed on our kanji, we are only made responsible for the highlighted words in each of the kanji boxes. So you could go with that. Even so, there is still some other good vocabulary in there so don't be afraid to learn that. We've just finished the Genki series, but since then I've been meaning to go back and learn all that extra kanji vocab.
The way Genki works for a lot of the kanji words it teaches is that it will just focus on what you already know. So, when learning 朝 you will only get that in kanji and the rest of the full あさごはん word will be in kana. When you learn 飯 later in the book you will probably get the full 朝ご飯 word in kanji at some point, since you will already know 朝 and will just have learned 飯.
I don't think it would really cause problems, but I feel like the way the kanji section of Genki was designed was to only learn that particular kanji at the time and leave the rest in kana until you learn it. And I can say from experience that such a thing works just fine.