In my vocab list I encountered: 寄る, "to drop by". I hadn't encountered this kanji in RtK yet, but the primitives are so easy: house + strange. I immediately starting thinking about walking down the street, seeing something STRANGE in a HOUSE thru the window (a naked woman, anyone? and deciding to DROP BY. Immediately the kanji became my friend and the vocabulary stuck.

Can't wait til the starts becoming a more regular occurence. However, I'm only on frame 264 so that will likely take a while!

Congratulations! You've just invented a keyword for yourself.

I'd advise you to stick with that keyword, even when later you will find that Heisig calls this character “draw near”.

Using your own keywords will make doing RtK very confusing after a while. Heisig picked his keywords carefully, making sure they're as hard to confuse with each other as possible. Calling this "drop by" will no doubt make things confusing once you encounter another primitive or Kanji that has "drop" in the keyword (and I seem to remember that there is something like that).

Besides, 寄る may be used to mean "drop by" in the context you encountered it in, but the Kanji is usually used to signify closeness to something ( http://jisho.org/words?jap=*%E5%AF%84*&e...&common=on ). So even just because of that it makes far more sense to stick with Heisig's keyword of "draw near" (my story for that involves Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house: a strange house the twins couldn't help but be drawn near to).

Finally, it makes far more sense to focus on RtK first, and then use it to learn vocab (which is what it's meant to help you with) once you're done, than to do both at the same time. Or at least do a light version of RtK (either RtK Light with 1000 Kanji and all the primitives you need for them, or the extra light version with only 500 Kanji), and then do the rest as you encounter them (but even then, study the Kanji first).

Stansfield123 Wrote:Finally, it makes far more sense to focus on RtK first, and then use it to learn vocab (which is what it's meant to help you with) once you're done, than to do both at the same time. Or at least do a light version of RtK (either RtK Light with 1000 Kanji and all the primitives you need for them, or the extra light version with only 500 Kanji), and then do the rest as you encounter them (but even then, study the Kanji first).

For better or for worse, the cat's out of the bag on that one I had already been studying for about 2 years before learning about the book, and knew 500-600 kanji.

I like Heisig's method for learning Kanji, but I'm skeptical about an approach to learning Japanese that involves exclusively learning kanji before learning vocabulary and grammar, or practicing any speaking, reading, listening and writing. I'm travelling to Japan in December to give a presentation in Japanese on my research. In addition to the presentation I'll be meeting with lots of other engineers, scientists and so on. I need to communicate with these people, and dedicate a lot of my study time towards that end (as well as doing what is necessary to pass the N4, which I plan to take while I'm there).

That kanji is actually in the book at frame 192, did you miss it? You can use rikai-chan for firefox or rikai-kun for chrome to get quick details about a kanji you see in your browser, including if it's in the book and what fram it is. Then you can look it up in the study pages on here. http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/draw%20near

ariariari Wrote:I like Heisig's method for learning Kanji, but I'm skeptical about an approach to learning Japanese that involves exclusively learning kanji before learning vocabulary and grammar, or practicing any speaking, reading, listening and writing. I'm travelling to Japan in December to give a presentation in Japanese on my research. In addition to the presentation I'll be meeting with lots of other engineers, scientists and so on. I need to communicate with these people, and dedicate a lot of my study time towards that end (as well as doing what is necessary to pass the N4, which I plan to take while I'm there).

Well it's an approach that's good for the long run, not as much for learning the essentials or the "survival kanji" first. Personally I think you should either reconsider the method, switch over to RTK lite, or just plow through it and finish quick as hell.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Calling this "drop by" will no doubt make things confusing once you encounter another primitive or Kanji that has "drop" in the keyword (and I seem to remember that there is something like that).

Issues of that kind can be easily addressed by adding extra "hints" to Heisig's keywords. In this particular instance the OP could opt for:

drop by/come by

to disambiguate it from:

drop (off)/fall out

But overall I agree with you - one should be careful with naming the characters with names that are different from those chosen by Heisig and for cases when you do choose your own keyword double check the book for possible conflicts.

Edit: This just occurred to me - all the above becomes no issue whatsoever if you use Japanese words as prompts for kanji. For example, if the OP is familiar with よる, he/she can use this Japanese word on the front side. (BTW, in my RtK deck, I use ちかよる for 寄).