Here's what I got yesterday from the publisher:

The due date is the end of May of next year.

I'd highly recommend everyone NOT wait around for Heisig's 2nd book. Just go learn yourself some chinese already. If you've done RTH1 or RTK1 (as I suspect many here have), additional kanji won't present much of a hurdle.

Here is an email update that Heisig sent out a couple days ago:

"We are informed by the University of Hawaii Press that the books are slated to appear in February. Dr. Richardson and I had not anticipated the added delay, but it looks as if we shall all have to wait another 3 months.

As soon as their is more specific information, I will pass it on."

nadiatims Wrote:I'd highly recommend everyone NOT wait around for Heisig's 2nd book. Just go learn yourself some chinese already. If you've done RTH1 or RTK1 (as I suspect many here have), additional kanji won't present much of a hurdle.

I think doing the chinese characters that are separate from the RTK kanji would be useful to do. I don't feel like doing RTK but for RTH all over again. I think there is a way to do this with anki. Crossing out the duplicates and only leaving the remaining RTH only characters that are not a part of RTK characters.

There are lists floating around the web of 'standard use' characters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland etc. I think Katsuo might have linked to them at some point. You could go through such a systematically while skipping over those you already know. But if you already know most of the primitives and have a good understanding of how chinese characters work, there really is no need for Heisig's special ordering or break down of primitives. I personally have not been making any stories for chinese characters, and I'm able to remember and write them just fine, just by learning them in words.

nadiatims Wrote:There are lists floating around the web of 'standard use' characters in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland etc. I think Katsuo might have linked to them at some point. You could go through such a systematically while skipping over those you already know. But if you already know most of the primitives and have a good understanding of how chinese characters work, there really is no need for Heisig's special ordering or break down of primitives. I personally have not been making any stories for chinese characters, and I'm able to remember and write them just fine, just by learning them in words.

true, that's also another way of doing it. When I think about it, I do remember people saying that: once you do RTK or RTH, there isn't really any point in doing a heisig book. It's really for when you have no background with characters, that it's really helpful.
I'll research about this more and see what I decide after a while.

I've been following this thread closely for over a year now and I just NEED to speak up now:

Why are we even discussing the point of Heisig's method anymore???
Obviously there are people who believe Heisig's books to be a superfluous waste of time (often those who have a deep misconception about the real aim of the books, I find) but then, more importantly, there are those of us to whom the books are an amazing time-saver.
Frankly, I am sick and tired of people telling me how pointless using the books or in this case waiting for them is. If you're not into it, fine. Nobody HAS to read it.

Yes, once you've done the first book you are familiar with his method and you can go on and apply it to new characters. So why are some of us still eagerly waiting for it?
I believe anyone who has honestly done the first book will agree with me that the method is only half of what you're buying. Even after the first 500 char's you're really just appreciating the list and order you're given. 3000 hanzi, sorted by strokes, pronunciation or whatever (like most of the lists floating around that were mentioned) are pretty intimidating. Not because I don't think I'm up for it, but simply because I don't know where to start.

If you look closely at book 1, you will find that there are still quite a few primitives and high frequent combinations of the latter which have not been assigned to a specific word yet. I COULD go and make up my own (which I have in some cases) but the point is that Heisig offers me a keyword, which he won't use again for any other character, sometimes even hints at the real etymology behing the character and groups the ones that use this keyword together (if the primitive is not an official radical this can be a daunting task if done on your own).

Isn't the real beauty of the method that there is ONE single keyword for every character? If you went through the first book and believe this approach has made remembering compound words (which, in the end is what learning chinese is all about) a walk in the park for you (like it has for me), how on earth are you not longing for the complete list with all his keywords? If I were to make them up on my own I woulnd't have the background info to every single character that he has, which allows him to make up keywords that sometimes cover up even completely unrelated multiple meanings of one hanzi.

One can argue that 20 USD for a "list" is a lot of money, but again: some of us are obviously willing to pay the price. Plus: Going through the first 1500 characters in that order only makes sense if you're going for the full 3000. Just like doing the first 1450 thinking you're fine with the most common ones is foolish, because you haven't even learned 马 yet... It's just not the way it works. Time is money and time is what I'm buying here.

Personally I went through the first book while I started learning Chinese in class (Though I had done RTK prior to that). Very quickly I noticed that the characters to some very basic words, e.g. 猫 from cat or 苹 from apple (granted, this isn't very difficult), are not even in the first book. Some of them you can build entirely out of known primitives, some of them you can't (yet). So what do you do? You go about them in a wild and adhoc fashion sort of way because you need those strokes down for tomorrows hanzi-test. That isn't half has economic as Heisig's way (if you're going for 3000 ANYWAY because you take learning Chinese seriously). If the second book had been out at the time, I would have held off the Chinese class until I finished the book. That's why I CANNOT wait...

So how about you haters go and read another book (plenty of them out there!) and let the rest of us return to the actual topic of this thread: "Any news when the second book will be published?"

Yours,
Philipp

Just a quick update:

It appears a release date has finally been set... The book will be available in March 2012.

Does anyone know if the Heisig books are sold anywhere in Taipei? I was in Page One at 101 recently and didn't see any. Be great to buy in country instead of having to pay high shipping fees on amazon or whatever.

Hate having to wait for March but a few months longer won't kill me, I suppose.

Also, very well said Phillip! In the end it comes down to the simple fact that

I saw a stack of them at the eslite flagship store on Songgao road in Xinyi district a few months ago. It's also available on books.com.tw. It's expensive though, right at US$40 (NT 1215).

bflatnine Wrote:I saw a stack of them at the eslite flagship store on Songgao road in Xinyi district a few months ago. It's also available on books.com.tw. It's expensive though, right at US$40 (NT 1215).

Awesome, thanks. I'll have to pay a visit and see if they're planning to order the next book. Price is indeed steep, but worth every kuai!

University of Hawai'i press is now selling RTH and RSH book 2!!

http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-8751-9780824836566.aspx

How long do you guys think it'll take for someone to compile an Anki deck for these?

I'll be preordering mine tomorrow. Perhaps we could split the work of compiling an Anki deck among volunteers? I'd be up for it. Never coordinated something like that before, perhaps someone else has?

Perfect timing - I've just reached the last chapter of RtH1!

Sample of lessons 1-5 available for free online:
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/books/heis...Sample.pdf

Will help create a deck once I have it ordered. I may contact them about an ebook/kindle version.

Unfadeable Wrote:I'll be preordering mine tomorrow. Perhaps we could split the work of compiling an Anki deck among volunteers? I'd be up for it. Never coordinated something like that before, perhaps someone else has?

Strange, it appears only traditional is available to order from them right now... If you go to the simplified page it won't allow you to add it to your shopping cart.

rcloud Wrote:

Unfadeable Wrote:I'll be preordering mine tomorrow. Perhaps we could split the work of compiling an Anki deck among volunteers? I'd be up for it. Never coordinated something like that before, perhaps someone else has?

Strange, it appears only traditional is available to order from them right now... If you go to the simplified page it won't allow you to add it to your shopping cart.

Working now:

http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-8750-9780824836559.aspx

Can anybody please explain, are they actually already shipping it?
Or is it some sort of early preordering?
I did pay anyway, I'm just wondering now if I should be holding my breath...

Just got notice that my order shipped today.

So did I, and I ordered both RTH2 and RSH2.

I ordered a couple of days ago; how long between ordering and shipping??

EDIT: just got my shipping confirmation via email. Will report back when it arrives.

Mine is on its way too, hopefully it won't take too much longer to ship to Taiwan. I also cross-posted the collaborative anki deck idea on Chinese Forums: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?...pre-order/

So hopefully there'll be some other people willing to chip in.

My copy of Traditional just arrived. It's real! It exists. There are actually 3,035 characters, plus character #50,001.

My simplified copy arrived today as well. I knew this edition would be smaller as less explanation is needed, but I was still a little shocked to see how thin of a book it is.

#50,001 is going to be a tough one...

The last two comments have made me really curious ... what's this "#50,001"?? :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biángbiáng_noodles