Hello,

I am just starting out and really like RTK, I have 150 kanji down solid already. I'm planning on moving quickly. I have a question for those who recently completed the RTK 1 book. Are you able to read a basic newspaper article or part of a kids book, magna etc and get the general idea of what you read. Can you do that without having formally learned the readings, grammar etc that would be the next step. I am just curious if I will be able to comprehend something simple once I know all the kanji. I know the kana well already, so once you complete part one, how literate are you. I definitely don't care about speech yet, just the ability to read and get the general meaning of a simple text.

Thank you.

Oscardog Wrote:Hello,

I am just starting out and really like RTK, I have 150 kanji down solid already. I'm planning on moving quickly. I have a question for those who recently completed the RTK 1 book. Are you able to read a basic newspaper article or part of a kids book, magna etc and get the general idea of what you read. Can you do that without having formally learned the readings, grammar etc that would be the next step. I am just curious if I will be able to comprehend something simple once I know all the kanji. I know the kana well already, so once you complete part one, how literate are you. I definitely don't care about speech yet, just the ability to read and get the general meaning of a simple text.

Thank you.

Simple answer: NO.

I finished RTK1 and it did not give me the ability even to get the general idea of what I'm reading. I still have to learn vocabulary items (mostly compounds).

Here's an example: the RTK keyword "leg": 足. This kanji when it means "leg" is pronounced "ashi". When it means "insufficient" it's pronounced "tarinai": 足りない.

So no, finishing RTK1 won't give you a general idea of what you're looking at, but it helps you get to the point where you can read real Japanese.

Like john555 said, you probably won't be able to get the general meaning of a simple text, firstly because kanji compounds are more frequent than single kanji words (and you have to learn the meaning of compounds, guessing their meaning fails more than it works at the start), and also because of verbs: even if you can read "dog" and "fish" in a sentence, if you can't read the verb then you can't make sense of the sentence (it could be "eating", "looking", "catching"...). And in a way this is linked to grammar, if you don't know the basic sentence structure, how verbs/adjectives conjugate... knowing kanji won't help.

That said you have to be aware of the two considerable upsides of doing RTK:
-- you'll be able to decypher a kanji text (with practice since recognition isn't taught in RTK, only production), which is a huge step for your learning (not be intimidated by kanji)
-- you'll be able to learn vocabulary really quickly: to get the basic meaning of a simple text (like in textbooks), something like 2000 words of vocabulary is needed, and because you will know the kanji part of compounds, learning the meaning+the reading will be a breeze, especially for simple associations like 天気 (heaven+spirit=weather).

Ok, thank you. Mot exactly the answer I was hoping for, but sounds like you guys know what you are talking about. So is there anyway to be more efficient when you study, like learning compounds at the same time you read RTK. Are there resources for the definitions of compounds ? Any recommendations so you can read sooner. It just sort of sucks to spend 3 months on the kanji with no measurable action at the end if you can understand that. If not, what do you recommend to proceed with after RTK 1 to get you where you can read the quickest. Thanks.

When I did RTK, I was also doing my Japanese classes at the same time (and so RTK was more of extra studying for me). This way I was also learning vocabulary and grammar at the same time. RTK definitely helped me with getting the basic idea of words (like if I see 足 I think leg, if I see 本 I think book), and to a certain extent that sometimes worked with multi-kanji words. It also kept my motivation up, as I was learning real Japanese on top of RTK. While I got lazy with RTK towards the end, overall it made learning new kanji very easy for me, and unlike some others in my class I am not so intimidated every time a kanji quiz happens. To me that was one of the big things I got from RTK, getting comfortable with kanji and getting a rough idea of what a new kanji that I don't quite know very well means.

I never really got behind the idea of just starting out with RTK alone and not learning any other Japanese. RTK might jumpstart your studies, but starting with just that is fairly boring, and not terribly rewarding (to me). What was rewarding for me was to be able to see some sentence like これは足です and being able to shout to myself "leg!"

For me it could be a good idea to learn words phonetically, and then associate them with the kanji you know from rtk. Especially ccompounds as modt of the time they use the most common onyomi. For example if you already know the kanji for "car" from rtk, then learn a couple of words which use that kanji.
電車、でんしゃ
自転車、じてんしゃ
自動車、じどうしゃ
So now you know the kanji for car is read as sha when used ib compounds.
Also for meanings, even if for some kanji heisig doesn't choose the most common meaning, you'll pick meanings easily learning bew words. For example I'm not sure if I remember right but I think it gives the meaning of "cooking" to 料 in 料理 which means exactly this. But learning new words with this kanji you'll se it has more to do with "materials" in general. So the previous word is more like "cooking = the LOGIC of putting INGREDIENTS together".
But after some time you'll use directly japanese words. For example if I see a new word with the kanji beforementioned, I think "it's ryou in ryouri".
Also for words with multiple readings, don't be afraid of them. Once you know the word phonetically you'll read the compound the right way. For example the onyomi for "leg" is "soku" but the kunyomi is "ashi", and some compounds (particularly those with body parts) use kunyomi instead of onyomi. For example 足跡 is read as ASHIato, but once you learn it there is no way you misread the compound.
Hope this can be useful to you!

I was impatient to get into reading and such too, and dropped RTK. I think it was a good idea. Of course doing RTK has lots of benefits, but if the idea of spending 3 months (or more!) learning kanji saps your enthusiasm, keep in mind that it's not mandatory. You can move on to studying vocabulary, sentences, etc. whenever you please. At some point kanji will become a problem that you have to overcome, but in the beginning your problem is overwhelmingly vocabulary, because for properly easy reading material there is always furigana.