I'm gonna get started on RTK once it gets here, in a few days.

I've learned two western languages in addition to my native one up 'til now, and I see now that the method for learning Japanese is...vastly different from what I'm accostumed.

I've read that the first thing to do when starting to seriously learn Japanese is to memorize the Kanji, before even attempting to tackle vocab.

This method of learning a symbol and associating it with a western keyword instead of the actual Japanese readings and vocab is quite ... peculiar. It's kinda alien to someone who's learned nothing but western languages 'til now.

I'm just kinda nervous, will vocab really come naturally once you master the Kanji? What are your experiences? Did you learn both the vocab and Kanji at the same time, or did you finish RTK first?

You don't have to do RtK. Learning the symbols before learning the words is not necessary. Plenty of people learned Japanese just by learning words and their respective kanji at the same time. It's just that you need to learn two things about each kanji, the meaning (or at least some vague idea of what it means), and it's readings. Now with RtK you just do the meanings first, get them out of the way and then do the readings later.

Just wanted to make clear that learning meanings first is not a common consensus amongst people who learn or teach Japanese.

And the vocab doesn't come naturally after RtK, you still have to learn it like you would for a language that most likely shares absolutely no vocab with your native one. Just the symbols will already seem familiar which will make memorizing easier.

apirx Wrote:It's just that you need to learn two things about each kanji, the meaning (or at least some vague idea of what it means), and it's readings.

Three things: the ability to recognize it.

Nanafuse Wrote:I'm just kinda nervous, will vocab really come naturally once you master the Kanji? What are your experiences? Did you learn both the vocab and Kanji at the same time, or did you finish RTK first?

RtK won't make you master the kanji. Anyway, at this stage you can't recognize the symbols. Think of it as trying to learn a western language without being able to recognize the alphabet (just another set of symbols) in front of you. To learn a language in that state, you would have to learn to a) recognize the symbols and the way they are aligned to create words, b) memorize the meanings associated with the symbols, and lastly c) memorize the readings of the symbols, simultaneously. On top of this there are plenty of exceptions and slight changes in readings, meanings and the symbols themselves. And there's 2000+ of said symbols. Of course I am also not including d) which is learning to write the symbols. Not a must-have skill but an important aspect of the language nonetheless.

Learning b) and c) simultaneously is manageable, even with the exceptions. Learning a), b) and c) simultaneously is not impossible, but many find it more effective to split the work needed by learning a) (and d) while they're at it) in isolation initially. When you recognize the symbols (and hopefully know how to write them) it's not that different to learning any western language. Except that you still haven't quite mastered the symbols like you have mastered the alphabet and there are very few similar vocab with the languages you do speak.

No, vocab will not come naturally. I actually did half of RTK, and then ditched when I eventually realized it was basically busy work (for me) with very little direct correlation with what I was actually studying. The reason being, I was working on Core 6k (vocab lists based off of frequency), and the words that are the most common are considered "complex" by Heisig and therefore allotted to the latter end of the book. And personally, you don't need to use his method to see, for example, the visual relationship between:
皮 - fur, pelt, 行く - to go, 彼 - he/boyfriend
京 - capital, 魚 - fish, 鯨 - whale

And then there's the extremely infrequent cases of words like, 網, 綱 which I consistently got wrong until they miraculously appeared on the same day.


Then, you have to learn all the weird exceptions (fortunately, pretty rare) like:
気 - spirit, mood
前 - before, in front
----> 気前 - generosity

黒 - black
子 - child
----> 黒子 - beauty mark, mole

BTW, vocab and kanji should be learned together, in my opinion.
It's not really practical to just know that justice is "seigi" in Japanese because 99% of the time it will come up as 正義.
[edit: Actually, I guess it's okay if you're planning on just listening/watching things and don't care about reading]
Here's how I do my cards:
Front side
切り裂く
*jpn sentence using the word*

Back side
切り裂く「きりさく」
Cut up, rip to pieces
*same sentence as front*
*sentence translation*

If I get the meaning or reading wrong, I fail it. Also, go slowly. If you have a lot of enthusiasm, spend it on reading grammar instead of adding more cards (assuming you're using SRS).

You got some answers above, so let me illustrate with a simple example what kind of problems you are faced with when learning Japanese - here is a sentence:
この空手の達人は私の友人です。
(This karate master is a close friend of mine.)

For that sentence to mean anything to you, you need to:
1) be able to differentiate between/recognise 空手達人私友
2) know the meanings of: 空手, 達人, 私, 友人
3) know how these: 空手, 達人, 私, 友人 are pronounced
4) know what: この, の, は, ですare and what's their function in the sentence
5) put all of the above together, so it all makes sense

(And that's only the reading part. You will still probably want to able to listen, and produce (speak, write) some Japanese.)

Heisig helps you (greatly) with 1). Only to some extend helps you with 2). Doesn't help you at all with 3), 4) and 5).

I'm not sure if "come naturally" would be the words I would use, but I had tried for a while to learn kanji, and was unsuccessful. After I finished RTK with the help of RevTK, I started doing CORE 2k, followed by CORE 6k using Anki. I just flew through them! It was amazing how fast I went when I already knew how to write the kanji, and had an idea of what they meant! I thought I would be illiterate in Japanese forever, and there I was reading things! RTK may not work for everyone, but it gave me the huge reading boost I wanted, and got me over the kanji hump. I went on to pass the highest level of the JLPT, and I owe every bit of reading ability I've gained to doing RTK.Yes, there were other useful things which helped later on, but if I hadn't done RTK I probably would have stayed illiterate in Japanese in the first place.

Bokusenou Wrote:I'm not sure if "come naturally" would be the words I would use, but I had tried for a while to learn kanji, and was unsuccessful. After I finished RTK with the help of RevTK, I started doing CORE 2k, followed by CORE 6k using Anki. I just flew through them! It was amazing how fast I went when I already knew how to write the kanji, and had an idea of what they meant! I thought I would be illiterate in Japanese forever, and there I was reading things! RTK may not work for everyone, but it gave me the huge reading boost I wanted, and got me over the kanji hump. I went on to pass the highest level of the JLPT, and I owe every bit of reading ability I've gained to doing RTK.Yes, there were other useful things which helped later on, but if I hadn't done RTK I probably would have stayed illiterate in Japanese in the first place.

Just wondering, how much time passed between starting to learn Japanese and passing the highest level of the JLPT?