leosmith Wrote:I wrote to Heisig several days ago about RTH, to see if there's an update. No response so far.

Hi Leosmith!

Did Doc Heisig respond to your email yet?

take care!

The galley-proofs of Heisig's Remembering the Hanzi are finally out and can be found on the Nanzan website. Beware, they are password protected, and there is no use in downloading them whatsoever, unless you happen to know the access code to open the PDF files...

Can't wait to get the book. I started learning japanese (mostly just watching anime and doing a video course called "Lets learn Japanese"). Then I stumbled over the Heisig-PDF started learning, bought the book and after reaching kanji 1600 or so I found myself having a chinese girlfriend. She didn't like the fact of me learning Japanese, and though I still want to learn Japanese at some point of time the priority is now on Chinese. I still convinced her though, that I first wanted to finish RtK, which I did and hope that RtH won't be too hard now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoiku_kanj...0_kanji.29

Click on any of the kanji and you'll find a page that gives a lot of information including the kanji, mandarin and cantonese hanzi etc. This is a great way comparing the Chinese and Japanese forms.

Just in case anyone is wondering - update from Dr Heisig:

Heisig and Tim Richardson are just putting the final touches to Book 1 of 'Remembering the Hanzi' (simplified and traditional). Both courses will have 3000 characters (based on frequency-of-use tables), with each course consisting of two books, each with 1500 characters.

The first volume of each course should be out by the end of the year.



Mark

And the first samples are here:

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publ...zi%201.htm


Mark

Looks like you've pretty much got the traditional one licked if you've done RTK.

Well maybe for the first 60 characters, but you can also already see unfamiliar characters emerging in that small bit. But still not enough new information to do it all over again.

It's interesting to note that 卜 is a character, not just a primitive, in these books. It's actually pretty common in Chinese and appears in the word "占卜."

I would guess so too. Even though some characters have different meanings some have different primitive meanings and some very few are new. (After rushing through the 60 pages I counted 8 new words). Once the whole book is out it would be nice to have a list of the words that are changed/new.
Now who is going to build reviewth.com?

JimmySeal Wrote:It's interesting to note that 卜 is a character, not just a primitive, in these books. It's actually pretty common in Chinese and appears in the word "占卜."

Actually 卜 is presented in RTK 3 (#2103) as a character meaning "augury" [divining; fortune-telling].

I also like the fact that they did away with some of the misleading and/or less than accurate keywords. For example, for 旦 they used the more straightforward "daybreak" rather than "nightbreak", and for 召 they used the more accurate (for Japanese anyway) "summon" rather than "seduce". They even used the same Freudian implications story for it. I wonder why Heisig never bothered to change this in RTK1. (Or has it been changed? I have the 3rd edition.)

It will be interesting to see how many of the RTH characters that are in RTK will have (different) keywords that are more accurate representations of their meanings in Japanese.

I for one will be interested in learning the hanzi with completely different shapes than their kanji counterparts. For example: older brother is 哥 rather than 兄.

Edit: OK, I did a comparison check through all 90 frames of the Traditional sample.
Number of RTK1 characters dropped / not presented (yet?): 15
Number of characters assigned different keywords: 22
(Number of these whose meanings are completely/significantly different: 13)
(Number of these whose meanings are IMHO improved: 6)
Number of characters whose form differs slightly, but all primitives are there: 3
Number of characters whose form differs (primitive missing), but meaning similar: 2
Number of new characters (two of which I recognize from RTK 3): 6

I also like the fact that they include notes after some keywords in parentheses indicating part of speech. For example: I (literary), middle (n./adj.), ridicule (v.), paste (v.).

Hopefully going through RTK 1 & 3 will make it relatively easy and quick to go through the new and different material in RTH Traditional 1. But I agree that the above number and type of differences out of the first 90 characters may not be representative of the whole book.

wrightak Wrote:Looks like you've pretty much got the traditional one licked if you've done RTK.

Well, I studied Chinese first before Japanese (with traditional characters), and I would say that you are mistaken in this belief :-)

Try this:

http://news.chinatimes.com/

Of course, you'll see some from RTK, but there are an almost endless number of Chinese characters, and you need far more to be able to read anything worthwhile.

Here's a really good book for those studying Chinese characters:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0966075...00-7551135


Mark

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"The Basics of the method" is a welcome addition to the introduction of the book.

I like the end :

Remembering the Hanzi Wrote:(...) In time you will find, as previously suggested, that most of the imagery and key-word meanings will have served their purpose and recede from active memory. Some, we should warn you, will stay with you forever.

I'm not really into Chinese, although looking up the background of Japanese characters while studying RtK opened my mind to the culture of China etc... anyways.. I was wondering to what extent the Traditional version could have been synchronized with the Simplified version.

For example, one of the simplifications is easily seen in the sample PDF files, for "shellfish". It becomes 4 strokes instead of 7. But every time "shellfish" is present in the Traditional version, it appears as the simplified writing in the Simplified version. And I wonder to what extent this remains consistent with the rest of the characters. Because once you know what the simplified writing is, and you know the components, and assuming the components of each character do not change, going from Traditional to Simplified seems straightforward.

Are there many Chinese characters in simplified form where a primitive was swapped for another, or which form changed completely?

ファブリス Wrote:"The Basics of the method" is a welcome addition to the introduction of the book.

I like the end :

Remembering the Hanzi Wrote:(...) In time you will find, as previously suggested, that most of the imagery and key-word meanings will have served their purpose and recede from active memory. Some, we should warn you, will stay with you forever.

I rofl'd when I read that part too

markl11 Wrote:...[snip]...there are an almost endless number of Chinese characters, and you need far more to be able to read anything worthwhile.

Here's a really good book for those studying Chinese characters:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0966075...00-7551135
Mark

I notice that this book teaches 4,000 characters. Are the 3,000 characters that will be presented in "RTH 1 & 2 Traditional" really insufficient? The 1,500 presented in part 1 being insufficient I can understand, but the 3,000 you will learn if you go through both parts 1 & 2 are still not enough?!!

"I notice that this book teaches 4,000 characters. Are the 3,000 characters that will be presented in "RTH 1 & 2 Traditional" really insufficient? The 1,500 presented in part 1 being insufficient I can understand, but the 3,000 you will learn if you go through both parts 1 & 2 are still not enough?!!"


This is what Jim Heisig says himself:

"Book 1 of each course covers 1,500 characters, organized around the 1,000 most frequently used characters. Book 2 will add another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000 frequently-used characters and ****a solid foundation**** for the serious student of Chinese."

So, 3000 is a very good foundation, but you will definitely need to supplement.


Another good set of books for hanzi used to be, 'Cracking the Chinese Puzzles':

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cracking-Chinese...195&sr=1-1

I used to have the full 5-volume set, but sadly lost them in a move. Unfortunately, I think they are out of print now...

markl11 Wrote:This is what Jim Heisig says himself:

"Book 1 of each course covers 1,500 characters, organized around the 1,000 most frequently used characters. Book 2 will add another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000 frequently-used characters and ****a solid foundation**** for the serious student of Chinese."

So, 3000 is a very good foundation, but you will definitely need to supplement.

Whew! OK, that is basically what I meant...that 3,000 characters will be sufficient for a good foundation. Perhaps somewhat like the 2,000 RTK 1 kanji are a solid foundation for Japanese, but once you are actually reading you realize the need for the extra 1,000 kanji in RTK 3 in addition to the kanji that you come across in actual reading. (Although it sounds like for Chinese there is greater need to supplement the foundation with an even larger number of hanzi.)

BTW, a few weeks back I was trying to see if there were any more additions to the official Japanese Names Kanji 人名用漢字 that was at 285 kanji in 1997. I found out that in 2004 a total of 698(!) more kanji were approved so now the total number of Names Kanji (人名用漢字) is at 983 kanji. Which means that the Joyou and Names kanji bring you to a total of 2,643 kanji. Of course, I don't know how important it is to know all of the Names kanji. Probably not as important as other non-Joyou kanji that are used often (like "dare" and "ore", for example). But still it does seem that the number of kanji required to be literate in Japanese is on the rise -- or at least, greater than we would like to think.

Thanks for the book recommendations.

markl11 Wrote:Well, I studied Chinese first before Japanese (with traditional characters), and I would say that you are mistaken in this belief :-)

What I meant was that if you've done RTK then you've got RTH licked. Or a good part of it at least. Of course, this doesn't mean that you can read anything. The same goes for RTK though. Once you've done RTK, you can't read much in Japanese.

It would be interesting to see which RTK characters aren't included in RTH. Since there are over 3000 in RTK1 and RTK3, and there are only 3000 in RTH, there must be a few.

I don't think Mark misunderstood you.
I have doubts that this small sampling is a good indicator of how similar RTH1's selection of characters is to RTK1. Naturally, the first few characters would be essentially the same, but I think you will find that as the book progresses, there is significantly less overlap.

I would estimate about an 80% overlap between RTK1+3 and RTH1+2.

JimmySeal Wrote:I don't think Mark misunderstood you.
I have doubts that this small sampling is a good indicator of how similar RTH1's selection of characters is to RTK1. Naturally, the first few characters would be essentially the same, but I think you will find that as the book progresses, there is significantly less overlap.

Yep, I think you'll find that the samples available on the website are not a good indicator. But, while RTK 'graduates' are not just going to be able to read everything in Chinese straightaway, if you are an RTK 'graduate' then what are a couple of thousand more? Okay, some more effort, but if you've come this far, why not?

BTW - Heisig mentions 3500-4500 as being required to read most Chinese texts. Chinese people used to tell me that it was '..5000, minimum', and that set of books that I mentioned previously had 5888, I think:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cracking-Chinese...69&sr=1-11

Vol. 5 was just the index.


BTW, just as a personal opinion, one difference when going through RTH as opposed to RTK is that it is going to be more worthwhile leaning the pronunciations as you go along (and don't neglect the tones!). This is just because Chinese characters typically have only one pronunciation, so that aspect that will be a bit easier that with the kanji.

Also, you can have a bit of fun comparing the real Chinese reading with the on-yomi! Of course, the on-yomi are just approximations of the pronunciations at the time of the kanji's absorption into Japanese, but even so...

One last thing that I personally would mention is that anyone seriously contemplating learning the hanzi should very carefully consider which form they want to learn: traditional or simplified. I learned traditional and was quite surprised when I went to mainland China and found that it wasn't always as straightforward to read the simplified forms as I had thought it would be...

I think that 80% overlap would qualify as 'a good part of it'. If not, it's one heck of a head start.

After studying Japanese with Chinese people, it certainly seemed as though there weren't any characters that they couldn't identify so I am presuming that the traditional Hanzi you need to know as a Chinese student is a superset of the Kanji you need to know as a Japanese student. I would guess that if you were studying Chinese seriously then in the long run you'd need to cover all of the RTK kanji and as Mark pointed out, probably a lot more after that too!

The question is then which of the RTK kanji haven't been included in RTH, and I would assume that they haven't been included because they occur infrequently. Although I have heard of some kanji that are pretty much exclusive to Japan and it would be interesting to see which ones they are and look up the history of them.

markl11 Wrote:BTW, just as a personal opinion, one difference when going through RTH as opposed to RTK is that it is going to be more worthwhile leaning the pronunciations as you go along (and don't neglect the tones!). This is just because Chinese characters typically have only one pronunciation, so that aspect that will be a bit easier that with the kanji.

I personally advocate an approach of learning one Japanese reading for each kanji when using the Heisig method. One pronunciation for each hanzi sounds like a dream!

markl11 Wrote:One last thing that I personally would mention is that anyone seriously contemplating learning the hanzi should very carefully consider which form they want to learn: traditional or simplified. I learned traditional and was quite surprised when I went to mainland China and found that it wasn't always as straightforward to read the simplified forms as I had thought it would be...

What are the pros and cons of learning both?

Almost on topic, French-chinese dictionnary:

http://www.chine-informations.com/mods/o...rechinois/

you need java and you draw the character with the mouse, nice.

there is also a tool to learn how to write in the right order:

http://www.chine-informations.com/mods/o...re-traits/

or personal seal:

http://www.chine-informations.com/mods/o...x-chinois/

wrightak Wrote:

markl11 Wrote:One last thing that I personally would mention is that anyone seriously contemplating learning the hanzi should very carefully consider which form they want to learn: traditional or simplified. I learned traditional and was quite surprised when I went to mainland China and found that it wasn't always as straightforward to read the simplified forms as I had thought it would be...

What are the pros and cons of learning both?

In my opinion, it's a non-issue and certainly one needs to be fully proficient in both forms to be considered litterate.

I initially only concentrated on traditional forms. On my first trip to the mainland, I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that I actually did struggle to recognise some simplified forms. By my second trip this ceased to be an issue: simplification follows a few basic principles and it is very easy to make the transition from traditional to simplifed (not so vice versa, I believe). I now routinely learn both forms.

markl11 Wrote:BTW, just as a personal opinion, one difference when going through RTH as opposed to RTK is that it is going to be more worthwhile leaning the pronunciations as you go along (and don't neglect the tones!).

Totally agree.

In fact, I have reviewed the Hanzi excerpt on the website and find it a horrible book.

First of all, it is a straight copy-paste from the Japanese version. Quite reasonable conclusions that he has drawn for Japanese simply do not stand for Chinese - he makes an effort to reconcile the method with the realities of the Chinese language and does a very poor job at that, in my opinion.

Chinese has a very strong connection between pronunciation and the form which is visibly expressed in the phonetic components. It is possible to organise the material in such a way that it is presented logically and making full use of this connection. In Heisig's book, it's broken completely.

Personally, I have quite enjoyed working through the Japanese book but I now cringe at the thought of learning 3,000 English keywords and nothing else...

In fact, I have my own project going on at the moment, working towards 6,000 character proficiency by year-end, and that is including readings AND tones. I am using a different book and have made excellent progress. Some details on this are in the 'All Things Chinese...' thread in this forum.

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Serge Wrote:Chinese has a very strong connection between pronunciation and the form which is visibly expressed in the phonetic components.

You bring a good point there. They might have optimized the method further for Chinese by grouping the characters by readings as in the kanji chains method. Well I'm sure a website could fill that gap