I searched for a similar topic with no luck.

I'm not quite finished, I need about a month to finish, but it bugs me when I see kanji like 俺 not in the first book. This kanji is extremely popular and should have been taught a lot earlier. This makes me wonder, is 2042 not enough? Are there tons more out there like 俺? I wanted to quit once I finished but it looks like I may have to continue.

Does Heisig introduce more radicals to rarer kanjis in 2042+? Because if he doesn't then I guess I can add the kanji as I come across them rather than learning another thousand

It's for that purpose that a topic "useful kanjis not in RTK1" has been created with shorcuts to the most useful kanjis of RTK3.
Heisig is not respunsible for that : blame the japanese secretary for education when they created the joho kanji . They include rarely used kanji and forgot daily kanji like dare....

thanks
A problem with searching for older topics is knowing what keywords to look for

I found the topic and if anyone ever stumbles on this topic in the future, the link is http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?pid=4654#pid4654

ghinzdra Wrote:They include rarely used kanji and forgot daily kanji like dare....

They would have had criteria for omission/exclusion.

For example, if by dare you mean 誰 "who", my guess is that they thought that it was a demonstrative and like all demonstratives they should be written in kana, so it was not a high priority to include. Maybe some of the rarer kanji were added for completeness or maybe they were used in older texts used in schools.

I'm only guessing. All I'm saying is that they would have had their reasons. Some decades in the future, we now have the benefit of hindsight and are using a language that has evolved since then.

The 常用　list is in the process of being rennovated, if my memory serves me -- I've read that a hundred or so more characters are being added. If this is the case, RTKI should be similarly updated.

Until then, go ahead and just use the methods that Heisig has taught you to absorb new kanji as you come to them, and as you feel you'll need them. I'm currently making my way through RTK3 -- it's so much more a relaxed task once you've finished the first volume! I've gotten the method down to such a point that I need no longer than 30 seconds to one minute per new character, on average. My target is 10 a day (which is a cake-walk compared to the daily 50 I was doing), but I let myself skip a day here and there, because ... hey. I'm done with the jouyou. This is just gravy, and I don't mind taking a few months to do it. All-in-all, with "only" a thousand more, I'm fine finishing when I'm finished.

I'd recommend that anyone that's absolutely serious about being literate in Japanese not stop at RTK1.

誰 is one of the characters which will be included in the revised 常用 list.

Is 誰 in RtK 3?

Ryuujin27 Wrote:Is 誰 in RtK 3?

Yes, number 2712. It's actually pretty easy to find using this site. Just go to the study tab and paste the kanji into the search box.

Ahh of course. I keep forgetting this site updated to include RtK 3.

Speaking of, is there an index of the RTK3 keywords and kanji available somewhere online, similar to ziggr's extremely helpful RTK1 list?

dukelexon Wrote:I'd recommend that anyone that's absolutely serious about being literate in Japanese not stop at RTK1.

You sure about this? I was always under the assumption Japanese only know a little over 2000 (like 2200~). The problem with learning those last 1000 though is I'd imagine you'd rarely ever see them and you wouldn't be able to apply them in real life often if at all...

I've been learning at 50~ish a day myself, and the thought of having to learn 1000 more will make my brain melt. It would be easier if Anki's heisig deck went to 3000 but it stops at 2042

Oh and Wouldn't all of those rare kanji have furigana on it 99% of the time anyways?

raseru Wrote:

dukelexon Wrote:I'd recommend that anyone that's absolutely serious about being literate in Japanese not stop at RTK1.

You sure about this? I was always under the assumption Japanese only know a little over 2000 (like 2200~). The problem with learning those last 1000 though is I'd imagine you'd rarely ever see them and you wouldn't be able to apply them in real life often if at all...

I've been learning at 50~ish a day myself, and the thought of having to learn 1000 more will make my brain melt. It would be easier if Anki's heisig deck went to 3000 but it stops at 2042

I know for a fact that the sample Heisig deck that comes with the latest version of Anki includes all 3007 kanji from RTK1 and RTK3, since I'm currently using it.

Oh really? Cool, that ought to save some time. I'll go download the new version and try merging the decks

Edit: Seems like merging decks isn't an option, at least not until I finish all 3007 if I decide to. Anki won't let me map them when I choose another anki deck which messes it up, and changing the export format to TXT just destroys the order

dukelexon Wrote:I'd recommend that anyone that's absolutely serious about being literate in Japanese not stop at RTK1.

I don't see much point to going through all of RTK3 until you've mastered the RTK1 kanji including readings & a lot of vocab. If you don't know how to read the RTK1 kanji, it will be a long time until most of RTK3 becomes useful to your literacy.

In my case, I've been studying the RTK3 kanji only as & when I need them, and so far there are not so many.

raseru: you shouldn't have to map anything. just import the big deck into the little one and it should just work.

I tried but it doesn't work properly. It might be because I changed the fields around a bit.

when I merged them, 2043+ show but when I click on them, I can't edit them, it only shows the last card I clicked on that was 2042 or lower.

It's no big deal though cause once I finish them I can merge them together as order won't matter.

I upped the borked deck in case you were interested, along with the out of order deck jut in case
http://www.mediafire.com/?4xzbmrjmjuw

please post that on the bugtracker

vosmiura Wrote:

dukelexon Wrote:I'd recommend that anyone that's absolutely serious about being literate in Japanese not stop at RTK1.

I don't see much point to going through all of RTK3 until you've mastered the RTK1 kanji including readings & a lot of vocab. If you don't know how to read the RTK1 kanji, it will be a long time until most of RTK3 becomes useful to your literacy.

In my case, I've been studying the RTK3 kanji only as & when I need them, and so far there are not so many.

You're ... probably right about that. I dove right into RTK3 barely a week after I had finished RTK1, because I was eager to get started.

I also, however, restarted my normal Japanese studies after I closed the book on frame #2042 ... and I've encountered maybe five or six (if that) of the RTK3 kanji since that time (the last couple of months).

Let me rephrase: if you're really serious about Japanese literacy, you'll probably not want to limit yourself to the jouyou for all time. If that's all you ever teach yourself, you'll eventually get to a point where it won't be enough to enjoy Japanese culture and literature like most natives would, and if that's your long-term goal (it's mine, at least) ... you'll eventually need to be able to recognize more. There may not, however, be much sense on moving onward with another intensive kanji program until you literally get to a point in which you're ready to start reading Japanese classical literature. :/

Until then, learning individual new kanji as you encounter them may be a wiser, more practical use of time.