If you go to 町: http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/町
and 村: http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/村

You see that the keywords Heisig used is 町 for village and 村 for town.
However in the comments and the dictionary I checked, switch these 2 meanings around.

Actually I think Heisig is right in this one, because if we check Wikipedia:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town
"People in towns usually get money from industry (factories etc.), commerce (shops etc.) and public service (working for the town) not agriculture (growing food)."

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village
"Villages were a usual form of community for societies that do subsistence agriculture, and for some non-agricultural societies. After the industrial revolution, when people started making a lot of things in factories, people lived more in towns."

Because 町 contains the Kanji 田 (rice field), I would think this Kanji is more appropriately for village.

Anyone with more insights in how this Kanji is actually used in Japan?

Heisig's keywords are relatively accurate but they're often only vaguely connected to the character and sometimes they're completely random. They're just mnemonics.

町 is used to mean "neighbourhood" (of a big city), "suburb" or "town", whereas 村 is closer to "village". But if he'd used "town" for 町, the mnemonic would probably have been more convoluted. Probably centuries ago in China, the 田 in 町 made more sense, but you can always imagine a grid of suburban streets or something.

I think it's more important to associate a Kanji with it's actual use than a distinct keyword. Thanks for the information, then I go for 町 as town and 村 for village.

I wouldn't over-think this. It's a different language and words don't have a one to one relationship with English. So 'actual' use isn't really accurate - most every translation is an approximation.

Especially when you start getting into compounds, you'll abandon this exercise pretty quickly. To take a random example, look at 治(#746 reign), which could be government(治める), or it could be to be at peace(治まる), or a medical treatment(治療).

I agree with you yogert909, it's better to learn multiple meanings and get a true understanding by reading a lot. In this case with 'actual' I meant: if 町 is more associated with town than village (irregardless of past origins), than town is the better word for getting approximate meaning of this Kanji (besides other possible meanings).

NumesSanguis Wrote:I agree with you yogert909, it's better to learn multiple meanings and get a true understanding by reading a lot. In this case with 'actual' I meant: if 町 is more associated with town than village (irregardless of past origins), than town is the better word for getting approximate meaning of this Kanji (besides other possible meanings).

Is there a list of kanji which aren't part of any other kanji? That way you'd know which keywords are completely safe to change.

Anyway, in case of confusing keywords I've found the best way is to use an actual Japanese reading as a keyword and don't really pay much attention to the English.

Maybe Kanjidamage is better suited for you - I really like the site although I don't like their mnemonics at all...

poblequadrat Wrote:Is there a list of kanji which aren't part of any other kanji? That way you'd know which keywords are completely safe to change.

Here is the opposite - a list of RTK kanji which ARE used as components in other RTK kanji. So anything that's not on this list should be safe to change the keyword without having problems with subsequent kanji.

@poblequadrat
Thanks for your recommendation. My aim for now is when I study Kanji I just want to be able to tell them apart and have a vague sense of what each Kanji can mean. This should be possible much faster than actually learning all there is to a Kanji such as pronunciation and writing. Then by reading text with furigana I hope to associate the right pronunciation and sense of meaning in the right context.

(a bit off-topic)
For these reason I'm making an app to study the English meanings (and not just 1 keyword) for the Kanji. Adding 2000+ Kanji is going to take a while though... So even though Kanjidamage has some similarities with me, I don't want to focus on a single keyword and I want to learn all of the Kanji. I want to associate a mnemonic with how the Kanji is used in context. E.g. 則 as rule similar to law and not ruling over a country. I don't want to provide false information, hence the questions on this forum.

poblequadrat Wrote:Anyway, in case of confusing keywords I've found the best way is to use an actual Japanese reading as a keyword and don't really pay much attention to the English.

How do you make that work with RTK?

Also, if you are going to add Chinese to character reading ability, then it does make sense to maintain an English word, because there is pretty good one-to-one keyword match.

NumesSanguis Wrote:(a bit off-topic)
For these reason I'm making an app to study the English meanings (and not just 1 keyword) for the Kanji. Adding 2000+ Kanji is going to take a while though... So even though Kanjidamage has some similarities with me, I don't want to focus on a single keyword and I want to learn all of the Kanji. I want to associate a mnemonic with how the Kanji is used in context. E.g. 則 as rule similar to law and not ruling over a country. I don't want to provide false information, hence the questions on this forum.

Every character has a 'most common' usage; but trying to hit the most common usage and also catch the essence in a keyword is way more difficult than first glance.

Physical objects often are named after each other and the most common usage are connected by joke rather than meaning.

In English, a kid is young goat who is not joking, and yet in English, far and away, the most common usage of kid is young human, or joking. 餓鬼 (though no longer written in Kanji for this meaning) is a prefect Japanese example.
When Japanese call kids "gaki" they are not even slightly thinking of a Starving Demon that that name comes from.

For many 袋 will be a bag, for other it means "Mom", which just cracks me up every time.

Overall, anyone who actually Uses Japanese will use the keywords as a crutch, and then throw them away, so worrying about distinctions is probably less useful than getting close enough keywords useful for remembering enough kanji to start reading.

kapalama makes some good points, and I think trying to make a distinction between 村 and 町 is arbitrary. The area around the NEC 本社 in Tokyo was called NEC村, and it's not anything like a village, for example. If a distinction helps you learn the characters, okay, but it has no relationship to modern Japanese.

Yoga Jones: Try to look at your experience here as a mandala, Chapman. Work hard to make something as meaningful and beautiful as you can. And when your done, pack it in and know it was all temporary.