A few months back I got up to 900 in RTK and loved it. Unfortunately I then got distracted by a job and country move and stopped doing it... I still remember most of it though. This month I started a full-time Japanese language course, and today we started kanji. I'm required to learn the kanji out of a different book (Shin Nihongo No Kiso), i.e. in the order they specify (which makes no logical sense to me).

Have any of you had this issue, and if so, how are you managing it? I only really want to learn the kanji in Heisig's logical order but I'm being expected to memorize kanji for which I've not yet encountered the radicals. I'm going to be tested weekly on the specific kanji in my new book (including the readings) so can't just ignore the order. Any advice?

Laylabc Wrote:A few months back I got up to 900 in RTK and loved it. Unfortunately I then got distracted by a job and country move and stopped doing it... I still remember most of it though. This month I started a full-time Japanese language course, and today we started kanji. I'm required to learn the kanji out of a different book (Shin Nihongo No Kiso), i.e. in the order they specify (which makes no logical sense to me).

Have any of you had this issue, and if so, how are you managing it? I only really want to learn the kanji in Heisig's logical order but I'm being expected to memorize kanji for which I've not yet encountered the radicals. I'm going to be tested weekly on the specific kanji in my new book (including the readings) so can't just ignore the order. Any advice?

If you want to use Heisig's order of kanji as a sort of framework, you could take the kanji your teacher gives you to learn, and look them up in RTK1 in order to see them in the context of the Heisig order. Hopefully a lot of the kanji your teacher gives you will be in the 900 in RTK1 that you already studied.

Learn the necessary primitives (they're called primitives in Heisig's book, they're different from radicals), along with the Kanji in your lesson plan.

Shouldn't be too much extra work. And you can afford to work a little extra, since you already know half of them.

I would say that learning a kanji without knowing its components is actually making more work for oneself in any case.

I don't use Heisig myself, but would certainly agree with him that knowing how a kanji is made up is the key to knowing the kanji.

So even if you hadn't learned lots already, learning the components (I am not entirely sure what Heisig-sensei means by a primitive so I won't use the term for fear of misapplying it) would give you a great advantage over anyone trying to learn by mere repetition or "strokes" or something.

I think you're all correct. Is there a list somewhere or do I need to go through the book and pull them out?

Laylabc Wrote:I think you're all correct. Is there a list somewhere or do I need to go through the book and pull them out?

There are several indexes at the end of the book. And for online kanji search, there are cool sites like http://pyrosphere.net/japanese/ , and then you can paste the result on the browsing part of Reviewing the Kanji and it'll give you the Heisig number.

And a keyword list you can Ctrl+F if you have the character in digital form: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/heisigwords.html

Vempele Wrote:And a keyword list you can Ctrl+F if you have the character in digital form: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/heisigwords.html

What order is this list in? Seems random.

It's reading-based:
ア
亜 Asia
唖 babble
娃 fair
阿 Africa
アイ
哀 pathetic
愛 love
挨 shove
あ.う
逢 tryst
あおい
葵 hollyhock
あかね
茜 madder red
アク
悪 bad
握 grip
渥 moisten
あさひ
旭 rising sun

john555 Wrote:

Vempele Wrote:And a keyword list you can Ctrl+F if you have the character in digital form: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/heisigwords.html

What order is this list in? Seems random.

Pronunciation. Some in onyomi some in kunyomi.

Edit: Vempele beat me to it