The JALUP guy wrote an article, how many RTK1 kanji are quite useless and how you should go ahead and delete them to increase the efficiency of your Kanji studies

http://japaneselevelup.com/filtering-out...aws-1-500/

what do you think?

So far I haven't encountered these Kanji in words, but at a mere thousand+ words I'm still a beginner.

I think this is a bad idea for several reasons:

- First I have encountered most of these 181 kanji in words.
- Those I haven't are used as radicals in frequent words (like 圭 or 享 or 隻). Which is why when he says:
"I’m aware that the concept behind RTK is to order the kanji so radicals build upon each other. But there are a good number of kanji that just have no use.", it's just weird because if you understand Heisig you stick to the order he devised, otherwise there's barely a point. If you want to learn 掛る you have to learn the three components in it (in Heisig's keywords "hand, ivy, rod"), it would feel ackward/less efficient to be saying "hand, six little strokes, rod".
- even if rare, some of those are easy kanji. I don't see that much of an advantage to skip learning kanji like 凸 or　仁.
- some of those are important cultural items (and are not that rare btw), like ink or carp. You're free not to learn them, but I don't see much advantage
- and finally all of these are jouyou, so you're expected to know them anyway someday, so might as well make use of Heisig's order.

People are free to do RTK lite of course, it's really convenient to start doing Japanese quick instead of just kanji at the beginning for a couple of months (kanji isn't really Japanese), but I'm not convinced by a half-baked list like that.

I don't know, I consider quite a few of the ones he picked to be rather common. Some stuff in RTK is a bit useless though, but you can always use RTK-light or Kanji Damage's selection, which are iirc 1K and 1.7K instead.

There was a thread about this a while back.

My opinion is that it won't make much difference whether you filter them out or not. If learning 1600 kanji through Heisig instead of 2000 kanji causes huge problems for you, you didn't do Heisig correctly. His method isn't just about a list of kanji, it's about learning how to learn new kanji you come across. I don't find the "you'll have to know them someday anyway" argument very convincing because you could make that claim about all the RTK3 kanji and beyond.

I should have added to my original question that I have already completed RTK1.

I read the article a while back and like you guys I also thought it didn't make sense to delete these kanji, because many of them contained primitives that were integral to Heisig's method.

I guess the real question should have been "should I delete these Kanji now?". it's probably true that they most of them are at least somewhat infrequent, and maybe it would make sense to ommit reps of kanji you tend not to find when reading native material, to gain more time to ANKI other stuff?

If you've already learned them, you shouldn't delete them. I wouldn't delete anything I've learned already because relearning it would cost more time than maintaining the knowledge. The amount of time you'll spend reviewing those 161 cards will add up to just a minute or two per day.

Yes, you should delete them. When in doubt, delete. Not just because it's a catchy alliteration, but also because, in language learning, it's not important to learn everything.

Languages aren't a hierarchy of knowledge, they're just a bunch of loosely related components sitting side by side (concepts ARE a hierarchy of knowledge, but in your second language, you're not re-learning concepts, you're mostly just learning new names for the same old concepts).

So, even if you skip something important, you can learn it later without it holding you back in the meantime. But, if you don't skip stuff that's unimportant, that costs you precious time and energy. So just err on the side of delete. Every time. Even if there's an 80% chance something is useful, delete it. There's no reason to spend a fifth of your time learning useless stuff.

No one knows exactly what you're intending to read, but I've encountered many of those characters in his list during my travels or when reading. My opinion: just learn the characters. RTK1 seems more efficient than other ways, after all. It seems counterproductive to me to fall back to less efficient learning schemes.

If you're going to delete random kanji from your deck (especially ones you've already studied) it would probably be best to delete ones that you think you don't need. Using a random list from one person's experience to determine what kanji you do and don't need is... odd.

Anecdotal evidence from the other side! I come across many(most?) from that list regularly. I wonder what he's reading that he feels those are unnecessary or rare.

My Japanese is only very basic, I only spent half a year learning it for a holiday back in 2011. Still, even I think that some kanji on that list aren't useless at all. For example:
暦 - 西暦 Western calendar (e.g. years BC / AD instead of the 平成/昭和 year counting)
凸 - 凸凹注意 (bad road surface warning sign)
酢 - vinegar (if you like to cook from Japanese recipes, you'll certainly come across this)
阿 - in many placenames, for example 阿波池田 (railway junction on Shikoku)
琴 - in placenames like 琴平 (town with the largest shrine complex of Shikoku)
丹 - my favourite color

Well, of course this will vary per person. For example, if you never plan to go to Japan or if you don't like to cook, then you might not need to know certain kanji.

those kanji are important. I don't think you need to learn the kanji in heisig order though... if you are below 1500 kanji I think you should put them on the back burner

Here's a tidbit I sent regarding learning RTK from an email to my successor for my job teaching here in Japan:

once you have those first ~300 characters memorized from the Remembering the Kanji book and understand the method, you should go through the list of all the jouyou kanji and pick out all the ones you can recognize, and learn them using the RTK method.

then, for all the ones you don't know, learn them in order of the grade in which they are taught in grade school, as it's a good approximation of frequency or cultural importance. If you encounter a radical you don't know, learn that, then the kanji it is in: http://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/shotou/new-...ku/001.htm

then learn all the rest.


edit: I should also say that after learning all the jouyou kanji and about 200 non-jouyou kanji that I see/use a lot, I have realized that to function in Japanese at a high level (I.E. life after JLPT N1) you need the RTK3 kanji too, lol. those though, I learn as I come across, as they are usually fairly field-specific. I should note that I have not yet passed the N1, I only just took it so I'm jumping the gun but hopefully I can convey that these kanji are quite useful as your get deeper and deeper into the language.

Japanese is so difficult that one needs to be careful of overthinking study strategies. If one focuses on optimizing micro strategies for writing, reading, speaking, listening, vocab, grammar, he or she will not have much time to actually learn Japanese.

To be clear, I think it makes all the sense in the world to outline and regularly revise a study strategy. Just don't get let that get in the way of studying.

If you want to learn the kanji using the RTK method, I think doing all 2200 characters as presented makes a lot of sense as it is a (relatively) simple and straightforward system.

I just used the RTK 1 book, leveraging the koohii.com stories and an SRS. Hesig's system is not perfect, as some kanji are obscure, some keywords are confusingly similar, the order could be optimized, etc., but coupled with this site, I found it to be pretty good.

maxwell777 Wrote:The JALUP guy wrote an article, how many RTK1 kanji are quite useless and how you should go ahead and delete them to increase the efficiency of your Kanji studies

http://japaneselevelup.com/filtering-out...aws-1-500/

what do you think?

So far I haven't encountered these Kanji in words, but at a mere thousand+ words I'm still a beginner.

I would ask, if these kanji are so useless, why are they on the list of jouyou kanji?

john555 Wrote:I would ask, if these kanji are so useless, why are they on the list of jouyou kanji?

I would say that learning kiln 窯 is useless UNTIL you reach a sufficient level of japanese. if you can't understand an article on, for example, how to made authentic home-made pizza, then learning the kanji for ピザ窯 is not yet a high priority.

s you level up and gain more context, these kanji become more and more useful. if you get proficient in Japanese, these kanji BECOME necessary for ordinary life, thus they are 常用.

[Zgarbas]

Stansfield123 Wrote:Yes, you should delete them. When in doubt, delete. Not just because it's a catchy alliteration, but also because, in language learning, it's not important to learn everything.

Languages aren't a hierarchy of knowledge, they're just a bunch of loosely related components sitting side by side (concepts ARE a hierarchy of knowledge, but in your second language, you're not re-learning concepts, you're mostly just learning new names for the same old concepts).

So, even if you skip something important, you can learn it later without it holding you back in the meantime. But, if you don't skip stuff that's unimportant, that costs you precious time and energy. So just err on the side of delete. Every time. Even if there's an 80% chance something is useful, delete it. There's no reason to spend a fifth of your time learning useless stuff.

On one side I would agree with this.
On the other, almost once per week I get amazing feedback due to my basically having started to drill a dictionary a.k.a. the coreplus deck. I never thought I'd get to use words like 骨董品、海馬 ,浄化槽、染色体, etc., so I didn't even pay that much attention to them when learning, but I didn't have the heart to delete them. Lo and behold, I actually ran into them somehow; I wouldn't be bummed out to find out that I don't know such words, but it's quite an ego boost when people turn to you when they see an unknown word.

If it's bothering them they should delete them, but I wouldn't jump to classify something as useless. It depends a lot on circumstance, what you want to do with the language and where you want to use it, as I've run into most the kanjis on OPs list at least once, though to be fair many of them were in people's names.

I see a lot of these kanji pretty regularly, so I would say they're worth keeping. Granted, a lot of them I see in names more often than words--but I like knowing them as it makes remembering the names of people and places easier.

Just don't forget that deleting a kanji from anki or not learning it via RTK is *not* the same thing as saying that the kanji are completely and totally useless or that you will never learn the kanji at all.

Dovetron Wrote:

john555 Wrote:I would ask, if these kanji are so useless, why are they on the list of jouyou kanji?

I would say that learning kiln 窯 is useless UNTIL you reach a sufficient level of japanese. if you can't understand an article on, for example, how to made authentic home-made pizza, then learning the kanji for ピザ窯 is not yet a high priority.

s you level up and gain more context, these kanji become more and more useful. if you get proficient in Japanese, these kanji BECOME necessary for ordinary life, thus they are 常用.

These questions for 'useful' or 'not useful' are so binary. I can't imagine a kanji or word that I wouldn't want to know. But you have to prioritize otherwise we would just memorize the dictionary. As dovetron points out, how about 'more useful immediately', or 'good to know later on' or the thousands of answers in-between 'useful' and 'useless'?

Of course, in maxwell's case, it's more complicated because he's already learned the kanji in question. So his question is more 'is it a better use of my time reviewing these kanji, or use that time to learn something more useful immediately?'

My feeling is that if you haven't already studied them, you're probably better off skipping them because there's probably more useful things that you can learn and use immediately. But if you've already learned them, the time it takes to do reviews is minimal, so you might as well maintain the knowledge.

I got to the second kanji on that list, and it's one that I have seen on at least 3 place names, one of which is my fiancé's hometown, and it appears on a sweater I own.
Also, Heisig relies on an 'economy of scale', in that the more kanji you know that use that have the same radicals, the better the system works. Kanji that you would never bother learning by rote, become worthwhile to know, even if they are rare, because of the simplicity of learning them.
So I would advise against deleting them, and learn the full set the way the author intended.

In my opinion, the point of Heisig is learning how to write all standard kanji as fast as possible so you can easily learn any word you encounter. That's why I think the usefulness of a given kanji relative to your level isn't really a factor when doing Heisig, and also why I think Heisig only makes sense if you can work your way through the whole thing fast.

When learning kanji by studying vocabulary and readings, paying attention to frequency and usefulness makes a lot more sense, and from what I've heard few people actually study all jouyou kanji systematically when learning this way, but it's quite difficult to gauge the usefulness of a word if you don't speak Japanese already because you never know in which contexts that useful-looking word is actually useful in comparison to its 4 or 5 quasi-synonyms. Kanji-teaching materials are sadly a bit skimpy on this sort of information...

Which means that incidentally Heisig makes it easier to learn vocabulary in an order that suits your needs, as opposed to cramming lists of junk you don't know how to use into your head. So no, I'd say don't delete these kanji, rather try to finish Heisig as fast as you can and move on. That's when you can consider the usefulness of the vocabulary (and thus the kanji readings) you're learning.

(just my 2 cents as someone who has tried both Heisig and the traditional way and ultimately decided on Heisig for convenience. please note my Japanese is Genki II-level, so I might not really know what I'm talking about.)

Zgarbas Wrote:On one side I would agree with this.
On the other, almost once per week I get amazing feedback due to my basically having started to drill a dictionary a.k.a. the coreplus deck. I never thought I'd get to use words like 骨董品、海馬 ,浄化槽、染色体, etc., so I didn't even pay that much attention to them when learning, but I didn't have the heart to delete them. Lo and behold, I actually ran into them somehow; I wouldn't be bummed out to find out that I don't know such words, but it's quite an ego boost when people turn to you when they see an unknown word.

If it's bothering them they should delete them, but I wouldn't jump to classify something as useless. It depends a lot on circumstance, what you want to do with the language and where you want to use it, as I've run into most the kanjis on OPs list at least once, though to be fair many of them were in people's names.

My post rests on an unstated premise: every beginner language learner's only goal should be listening/reading comprehension of everyday speech/easy written materials. There should be no other goals, until that intermediate goal is first reached.

When I said "useless", I meant useless towards that goal. If OP disagrees with that premise, and wants to spend precious study time on tasks that aren't geared towards taking him closer to that intermediate goal, then he shouldn't follow my advice.

Did you really study words that are now impressing Japanese locals before you could understand basic spoken Japanese?

Stansfield123 Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:On one side I would agree with this.
On the other, almost once per week I get amazing feedback due to my basically having started to drill a dictionary a.k.a. the coreplus deck. I never thought I'd get to use words like 骨董品、海馬 ,浄化槽、染色体, etc., so I didn't even pay that much attention to them when learning, but I didn't have the heart to delete them. Lo and behold, I actually ran into them somehow; I wouldn't be bummed out to find out that I don't know such words, but it's quite an ego boost when people turn to you when they see an unknown word.

If it's bothering them they should delete them, but I wouldn't jump to classify something as useless. It depends a lot on circumstance, what you want to do with the language and where you want to use it, as I've run into most the kanjis on OPs list at least once, though to be fair many of them were in people's names.

My post rests on an unstated premise: every beginner language learner's only goal should be listening/reading comprehension of everyday speech/easy written materials. There should be no other goals, until that intermediate goal is first reached.

When I said "useless", I meant useless towards that goal. If OP disagrees with that premise, and wants to spend precious study time on tasks that aren't geared towards taking him closer to that intermediate goal, then he shouldn't follow my advice.

Did you really study words that are now impressing Japanese locals before you could understand basic spoken Japanese?

The first time I quit studying Japanese was because it is basically impossible to learn Japanese vocabulary without kanji, and without SRS I ran into a wall after 50 kanji or so.
I think Heisig's premise isn't necessarily different from yours, it's just that he wants you to get all kanji down so you can naturally learn whatever vocabulary you encounter according to your needs (which, by the way, isn't quite the Core deck approach). Basically, the point of Heisig is allowing you to focus entirely on grammar and conversation. However, this means that Heisig isn't very practical if you don't do it fast, as I said in my previous post. On the other hand, knowing some basic Japanese makes Heisig much easier - you can replace some confusing keywords with actual Japanese words, and entirely skip some stories.

I'll also add that the kanji in the words Zgarbas mentions aren't particularly rare, are they? Well, I don't know what 董 is, but as for the others...

poblequadrat Wrote:

Stansfield123 Wrote:

Zgarbas Wrote:On one side I would agree with this.
On the other, almost once per week I get amazing feedback due to my basically having started to drill a dictionary a.k.a. the coreplus deck. I never thought I'd get to use words like 骨董品、海馬 ,浄化槽、染色体, etc., so I didn't even pay that much attention to them when learning, but I didn't have the heart to delete them. Lo and behold, I actually ran into them somehow; I wouldn't be bummed out to find out that I don't know such words, but it's quite an ego boost when people turn to you when they see an unknown word.

If it's bothering them they should delete them, but I wouldn't jump to classify something as useless. It depends a lot on circumstance, what you want to do with the language and where you want to use it, as I've run into most the kanjis on OPs list at least once, though to be fair many of them were in people's names.

My post rests on an unstated premise: every beginner language learner's only goal should be listening/reading comprehension of everyday speech/easy written materials. There should be no other goals, until that intermediate goal is first reached.

When I said "useless", I meant useless towards that goal. If OP disagrees with that premise, and wants to spend precious study time on tasks that aren't geared towards taking him closer to that intermediate goal, then he shouldn't follow my advice.

Did you really study words that are now impressing Japanese locals before you could understand basic spoken Japanese?

The first time I quit studying Japanese was because it is basically impossible to learn Japanese vocabulary without kanji, and without SRS I ran into a wall after 50 kanji or so.
I think Heisig's premise isn't necessarily different from yours, it's just that he wants you to get all kanji down so you can naturally learn whatever vocabulary you encounter according to your needs (which, by the way, isn't quite the Core deck approach). Basically, the point of Heisig is allowing you to focus entirely on grammar and conversation. However, this means that Heisig isn't very practical if you don't do it fast, as I said in my previous post. On the other hand, knowing some basic Japanese makes Heisig much easier - you can replace some confusing keywords with actual Japanese words, and entirely skip some stories.

I'll also add that the kanji in the words Zgarbas mentions aren't particularly rare, are they? Well, I don't know what 董 is, but as for the others...

What if we take the same premise from another point of view? If RtK is essential in order to learn vocabulary, what about the other common kanji you still don't know after you do RtK vol. 1? And maybe even after RtK vol. 3?
Unfortunately even when you finish RtK 1 you will still encounter new kanji from time to time, maybe after RtK 1 you will know relatively uncommon kanji and still don't know more common ones? *

Obviously if you already know them it doesn't make sense to suspend them, but if you haven't studied them then you can by all means put RtK on pause (just review the kanji you know) and study a lot of vocabs which use the kanji you already know.


* This is based on the 4th edition, maybe in the 6th edition of RtK1 are included all the common ones you don't see in the 4th edition?

Dude read 100s of books and vinegar didn't make the list? If you spend any amount of time in Japan at all, this kanji will come up in daily life. Maybe it's not in many books but it's certainly in my kitchen and at the table of every Chinese restaurant...

Also many of those kanji are common place in the people or place names. There's a reason why they are part of the general education kanji. I don't know them all because I never finished my kanji studies, but if they came up in my personal experience that means they are in use in daily life in Japan, so I wouldn't have deleted them.

I'd guess he doesn't live in Japan and if he doesn't, I wish he'd leave making a list of unnecessary kanji to someone who actually has experience using the kanji in real life. Not everything comes from a book or your Anki flashcards...

edit: Just had a proper look at the list and wow, a few more that I refuse to believe wouldn't come up in books. 竜、唐 from 唐揚げ、曇り and to a slightly lesser extent, 扇ぐ、孝 from 親孝行. These are just everyday words, are they not? There must be others that I just don't know to be common, but these words, especially dragon or kara-age must certainly be known to the author as very common. Anyway, I am just surprised at such a list really and the way he claims so matter-of-factly that these kanji are never gonna be needed as his anki reviews haven't had them come up in 3 or 4 years... Sounds like quite the expert.

Jawful Wrote:Dude read 100s of books and vinegar didn't make the list? If you spend any amount of time in Japan at all, this kanji will come up in daily life. Maybe it's not in many books but it's certainly in my kitchen and at the table of every Chinese restaurant...

Once again, this isn't about kanji that you'll never use, and kanji you might see at the chinese restaurant. Otherwise, you need to memorize every kanji in existence, because, hey you don't know if you'll run into it eventually.

Some people want to learn the MOST useful kanji first, then learn some common vocabulary and some basic grammar so they can figure out wtf people are saying - even if it's only a tiny bit of what they hear or read. Then, once you can understand a little bit, come back and learn the kanji you skipped.

I'm sure you'll agree that RTK 1 is missing some important kanji as well. But you have to draw the line somewhere. Some people learn RTK, or joyou, some people like me, do RTK lite first, or go by JLPT levels. The point is that it's all valid, and every one of those groups are missing some useful kanji. But you can always study them later or learning them just from seeing them a bunch of times.