Guys I have two Kanji decks that I study so far using ANKI


I have Heiseig 6th Edition with about 200 Kanji so far
And KanjiDamage ( Which I really like ) at 320 Kanji so far

In SOME ways I believe it might further my kanji learning but at other times it feels like a hindrance.

I CANT truly say I know 500 Kanji combined due to some kanji over lapping from each deck.

In total I'd say im at 400 KANJI in regards to both... but my reviews are killer with each deck taking 1 hour each ot complete daily.

What should I do?

Stick to one? Both?

Well I don't see any reason to do both. They're the same thing in a different order. Choose one and focus on it.

You could just learn words and ignore kanji individually if you don't care about writing. If you don't seriously care about it and use it you will just forget it anyway.

If you have a free weekend or something, try to create a new deck with common fields from both decks (kanji, keyword, mnemonic, etc) & add all the kanji done from both the decks to the new deck. It might take some time but at least you won't have to juggle 2 decks at one time any more. :-)

kameden Wrote:You could just learn words and ignore kanji individually if you don't care about writing. If you don't seriously care about it and use it you will just forget it anyway.

I agree with kameden, unless writing the kanji is one of your goals just crack into a pre-made Genki deck or something and learn the basics of Japanese first.

Once I have gotten to a respectable vocab and grammar level (N2-ish) I will probably go back and do RTK again.

My own experience is that if you put everything else aside and do RTK1 the knowledge of kanji you gain will help you learn new vocabulary.

I put all my Japanese grammar/vocabulary studies on hold while I worked through RTK1 in its entirety, then I went back to studying grammar and vocabulary. This worked for me.

I didn't do RTK and I had almost no problems learning vocab or grammar. I think it's pretty useless exercise, especially when you're first starting out.

kameden Wrote:I didn't do RTK and I had almost no problems learning vocab or grammar. I think it's pretty useless exercise, especially when you're first starting out.

*Sigh*. Whatever.

kameden Wrote:I didn't do RTK and I had almost no problems learning vocab or grammar. I think it's pretty useless exercise, especially when you're first starting out.

That's great for you, and for people like you I would also avoid wasting time with RTK. However, for many people (including me) it's very hard to keep all the kanji straight, especially the similar-looking ones which differ only by an extra stroke or a different left radical or the like. I found RTK extremely useful in learning to correctly recognize even very similar kanji.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:However, for many people (including me) it's very hard to keep all the kanji straight, especially the similar-looking ones which differ only by an extra stroke or a different left radical or the like. I found RTK extremely useful in learning to correctly recognize even very similar kanji.

This.

Just today I failed みずうみ because I was too fast and read it しお - had I actually paid attention to the character, with no doubt I would have gotten it right.

It's 湖 vs. 潮, btw.

Inny Jan Wrote:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:However, for many people (including me) it's very hard to keep all the kanji straight, especially the similar-looking ones which differ only by an extra stroke or a different left radical or the like. I found RTK extremely useful in learning to correctly recognize even very similar kanji.

This.

Just today I failed みずうみ because I was too fast and read it しお - had I actually paid attention to the character, with no doubt I would have gotten it right.

It's 湖 vs. 潮, btw.

+1

words are made by kanji so if you study words you need to be able to recognize kanji. Also consider many kanji reads the same way most of the time when used in compounds. So knowing ahead of time 真 as "truth" is going to help learning and recognizing new words and will be easier to learn the pronounciation of those words.

I have a 6th Ed Heisieg Deck
and a Kanji Damage Deck

Both have about 300 Kanji done but they teach different Kanji so far but SOME over lap.

Is it doing too much using two of technically the same deck?

Should I only use ONE kanji deck?

It seems as if I am doing "40" kanji a day by using both of these decks... so couldn't I just do 40 new reviews of just one deck? Seems smarter but I just need your input

Go with whichever one you like better, but I would suggest you go with Heisig instead of Kanji Damage. Kanji Damage has mistakes in it that haven't ever been fixed, and seems to have been put together without the oversight of people who are actually knowledgeable about kanji. Heisig on the other hand has gone through multiple revisions, and is really good about warning you when it's telling you something different than what you would find in a kanji dictionary.

If you want memes and stuff in your kanji learning then I'm sure the stories on this site will be more than sufficient, and you won't have to re-learn as much stuff.

I would not recommend doing keyword -> kanji. It takes way too much time and at the beginning stages you probably won't be writing any japanese. I did keyword to kanji and guess what... I'm doing RTK for the second time! All because I trained myself to be able to convert a keyword to kanji. It doesn't help when you're looking at a Japanese word and trying to figure out the meaning, how to pronounce it etc. Do kanji to keyword, and write the kanji when you learn them. I have ~75 reviews a day and it takes less than 10 minutes.

Only use one deck, the heisig rtk deck. No point in 2 decks

Do whatever you like. If you have no particular preference - flip a coin. No matter what you do, so long as you're studying you'll learn something.

The advice given here is - as you can see - conflicting and reflects only the personal experience of the person giving it. You pretty much just need to take your best guess on what to do and do it. rokudo's advice, for instance, completely ignores the purpose of RTK. Personally I agree with Nayr and kameden, but as you can see there are a bunch of people who don't. So basically, no one is going to give you a straight answer - you'll have to work it out yourself.