Sorry if this has been asked before on this forum but I couldn't find anything.
So I was wondering if you guys are trying to remember the onyomi/kunyomi as well as remembering the stories and how to write the Kanji?

I am about 350 kanji deep at the moment but Im not trying to remember the pronunciation. Should I?

Thank you very much,


/Peter

letterboy Wrote:Sorry if this has been asked before on this forum but I couldn't find anything.
So I was wondering if you guys are trying to remember the onyomi/kunyomi as well as remembering the stories and how to write the Kanji?

I am about 350 kanji deep at the moment but Im not trying to remember the pronunciation. Should I?

Thank you very much,


/Peter

I think Heisig says it's better to do one thing at a time, i.e., go through the whole book first learning only the keyword for each kanji and how to write the kanji (and not the on or kun readings) because otherwise it's information overload.

That is the approach I took.

Ever since I finished RTK1, I've been focusing on reading and building up my vocabulary and associating the kanji with their on and kun readings. I think it's working very well.

This is indeed a perennial topic on the forum. Consider the Movie Method (a search will reveal many more conversations about this topic). There's also a movement to learn Japanese vocabulary first (that you know how to pronounce) and then RTK: Japanese keywords method. Most people do what john555 mentioned but you can of course do anything!

Thank you very much for your answers!

Actually one thing I have had success with is finding a common word that has the kanji in it, it can be a compound or not it doesn't really matter. And then putting that word in kana with a "." to mark where the kanji's reading ends, on the front of my anki cards. Then underneath the kana I put a hint with the meaning or keyword (just make sure the meaning is the meaning of the word if heisigs keyword is different). And then on the back of the card I have the kanji and stroke order.

What this does is challenges me to recognize the reading of the kanji by seeing the word, but if I can't remember I can just click show hint and figure it out that way. What happens (for me at least) is I sort of learn the reading without trying. I don't try to learn the reading at all (you can try if you want to) but after a few passes of the card, I can remember the kanji without having to use the hint.

Here is an example of one of my cards. The kanji I am learning is 郊, the word I used is 郊外 which means outskirts/suburbs (which happens to line up with the heisig keyword), and the reading of the word is こう.がい with the kanji itself using the こう reading.



Then if I click show meaning it shows the meaning of the word.

On the back it looks like this.



If you are wondering where I got the stroke order from it is an anki plugin called Kanji Colorizer (stroke order diagrams) it saves you a lot of time.

I also do attempt to put the reading in my story, but again I don't really care if I remember it or not.

So my story for this card was, "In the SUBURBS of Nagoya, a huge COLD(こう) front came through the TOWN. Causing the people to STIR up panic."
NOTE: I frequently come up with my own radicals or steal the from other sources. The left radical is STIR for me and the right radical is TOWN.

If you don't know how to make hints in Anki click here.

So with this method you can basically learn a reading with osmosis. Because if you fail bringing the kanji to mind with just the reading, you can click the show hint and use a keyword. But what happens is after seeing it enough you will probably end up not needing to use the show meaning button. And if not, it doesn't even matter.

Also of course you can't learn all the readings, and I don't recommend doing that anyway. So just find the most frequent reading, or a word that you would like to learn that has the kanji in it. Oh and I forgot to mention I recommend only using words and not just readings, that way you can have that added to your vocabulary. Just be sure to put a period were the reading ends, and make sure that the heisig keyword and the meaning of the word match up. If not you may want to consider using a different word, or using the words meaning as a keyword. I may make a full post on this method soon, but I am trying out a whole new technique currently, and if I have success with that I will make a post including that and this. 頑張って！

I'd say your method should be driven by how much Japanese you know right now.

If you don't know any Japanese, or are just starting out, then do it as Heisig says. (Try it, anyway.) Learn the English keywords, learn how to write the kanji, and learn how to recognize them. Fill in all those little slots in your brain, and make little beds ready for the Japanese words that will be moving in soon enough.

You aren't learning Japanese at this point, though, you're just "cleaning the room" for Japanese, or "setting the table" for it.

Then go back, start learning, and fill in those slots with readings. I'd say overwrite the English keywords with readings as you get confident in your ability to consistently recognize them as Japanese. Just get rid of the English as soon as you're comfortable to avoid confusion. (But do it at your own most comfortable pace.)

If you already know a lot of Japanese, or a good amount of it, then doing one of the other methods, especially one using Japanese keywords, could be a LOT more useful and save a LOT of time. If you know that 心（こころ） means "heart" (and a bunch of other things), then you're good to go. You could use Japanese keywords for Japanese words you already know, and those words only, and use English for the rest.

Or you could just study the 251 radicals that make up most kanji. Put keywords on them, and that's that. For the　郊 example, as long as I know that it's hat/father + flag on the right, I can write it.

And it doesn't really matter what labels I use in my head to recreate it, so long as I can do it successfully, who cares?

RTK is simply a study hack someone came up with around 40 odd years ago. Work with it, or change it as you see fit! (And look around to see what works for different people, if none of these suggestions work for you!)

rich_f Wrote:Or you could just study the 251 radicals that make up most kanji. Put keywords on them, and that's that. For the　郊 example, as long as I know that it's hat/father + flag on the right, I can write it.

That might get confusing before long. E.g., in RTK1 there's the separate keywords "tophat" vs. "cap" vs. "bamboo hat" etc. just to keep everything straight in your mind and avoid confusion. (And then there's bush vs. Christmas tree vs. cornstalk etc. It could get real confusing quickly).

In your example 郊 is analysed as "mingle + city walls = outskirts".

Like you said it's up to the person but personally I would follow the Heisig method before making up my own system using radicals.

john555 Wrote:

rich_f Wrote:Or you could just study the 251 radicals that make up most kanji. Put keywords on them, and that's that. For the　郊 example, as long as I know that it's hat/father + flag on the right, I can write it.

That might get confusing before long. E.g., in RTK1 there's the separate keywords "tophat" vs. "cap" vs. "bamboo hat" etc. just to keep everything straight in your mind and avoid confusion. (And then there's bush vs. Christmas tree vs. cornstalk etc. It could get real confusing quickly).

In your example 郊 is analysed as "mingle + city walls = outskirts".

Like you said it's up to the person but personally I would follow the Heisig method before making up my own system using radicals.

There's actually a deck that uses heisig's primitive names for the radicals if you are so inclined to learn them and proceed to RTK afterwards.