I am currently going through the RTK1. I am on 800+ frame and I was wondering if it's okay to start reading Tae Kim and continue RTK1 at the same time. Should I do that or will it just confuse me? Has anyone done that or something similar?

As far as I know, Tae Kim teaches you mostly grammar, so there should be almost no overlap. As a matter of fact, I would recommend you learn the language while doing RTK. Kanji study is not a substitute for grammar or vocabulary. So go ahead and start Tae Kim.

(2015-11-23, 10:21 am)riogray Wrote: As far as I know, Tae Kim teaches you mostly grammar, so there should be almost no overlap. As a matter of fact, I would recommend you learn the language while doing RTK. Kanji study is not a substitute for grammar or vocabulary. So go ahead and start Tae Kim.

Thank you for your reply. Will do.

So, Heisig recommends not to do something like that in order to complete RTK in the least possible time and avoid interference as you learn the words that the kanji are used to spell, many of which naturally have meanings that are synonyms to the keywords. However, Heisig also was putting in full time effort when he developed his system, -and- he didn't have SRS systems to help his memory. He created and completed his original version of RTK1 in something like 6-8 weeks (it says in the introduction but I've forgotten exactly how long it was), which is much faster than most people go through it now. Many people have overlapped studies, and though it may have taken them a long time to finish RTK, it didn't stop them from learning the language.

That doesn't mean Heisig's original advice is totally invalid, but it does mean you want to consider - how fast are you getting through RTK? If you're cruising along at breakneck speed and going to finish the whole thing in 6 weeks then you might just as well finish RTK first. On the other hand, if you're on track to finish RTK in 6 months to a year, that's a long time to wait before starting study of the language itself.
Also, how bored are you getting with doing RTK, and is other study going to take away from RTK? If you're running out of motivation to do just RTK, or you run out of motivation to do more than a certain amount of RTK per day, then it doesn't -matter- if it's theoretically 'less efficient'. It's much less efficient if you have time you would be studying but aren't because you haven't finished RTK. And of course, the -least efficient- studying is burning out and -not- studying for a period, or worst of all, never studying again.


Anyway, there's no concern at -all- about kanji interference in your learning if you're studying Japanese with audio and kana, which in any case should be the first thing you do IMO. A good foundation in pronunciation and listening is really essential to understanding a language. I didn't appreciate when I first started how important knowing the sound of the language is to reading the language, but when you think about it, you need to be able to 'hear' the words you're reading in your head. It's a known fact that no matter how 'silently' you read, you're still subvocalizing the words. Even though it may take scientific instruments on your vocal cords to detect it, still, that is how deeply tied the oral and written languages are.

Tae Kim doesn't spend any time at all on pronunciation (other than a kana table), and throws you in the deep end with respect to using kanji, so there is no real oral language study or period of kana-only study in Tae Kim.

I have been studying for several weeks and doing 25 kanji per day  (except for saturdays and sundays), and 70-80 reviews per day. Last week I started to learn 50 kanji per day. Sometimes I loose motivation (but don't stop), but then I remember that it's totally worth it and continue. I wanted to make progress faster so I thought that learning grammar can help me start reading faster. So, are there any alternatives to Tae Kim(with pronunciation)? I heard a lot about Genki, maybe I should go through it? I can only study about 2 hours per day.

(2015-11-23, 11:10 am))webredn7 Wrote: I have been studying for several weeks and doing 25 kanji per day  (except for saturdays and sundays), and 70-80 reviews per day. Last week I started to learn 50 kanji per day. Sometimes I loose motivation (but don't stop), but then I remember that it's totally worth it and continue. I wanted to make progress faster so I thought that learning grammar can help me start reading faster. So, are there any alternatives to Tae Kim(with pronunciation)? I heard a lot about Genki, maybe I should go through it? I can only study about 2 hours per day.

Genki is a good program, probably the most popular self-study course. I didn't use it myself so I can't recommend it from personal experience, but I do think it's a good idea. Be sure to get the version with the accompanying Audio CD - there's a cheaper edition with no CD, but as I mentioned, getting used to the spoken language is very important even if you're primarily interested in reading.

Personally I went through Minna no Nihongo first, and then Tae Kim's Grammar Guide which is a condensed version of the Complete Guide) for a different perspective and to fill in some gaps that my text didn't cover. (Minna no Nihongo was what my college used so that's not an endorsement or anything. I hear that Genki is somewhat better for self study, although people use both, and some also Japanese the Manga Way but I don't think JtMW has any audio supplement.)

I see. I just googled Minna no Nihongo and the thing I like about it is that everything is in Japanese. I learned English grammar with a similar book, so I guess I'll try it. So, is it a good idea to do both of them (RTK and Minna no Nihongo)?

P.S. I also listen to JapanesePod101.com podcast, so I guess it counts as a listening practice, right?

I got sick of RTK around 1600, and started looking at Tae Kim's grammar guide, and have no regrets.

The early parts of the guide use, as you would expect, very simple vocabulary, and it was very motivational to see the RTK keywords in action, and to see that many of them really did represnt real words. Even though I couldn't pronounce much at the time, I found that I could actually "read" what was written as I could recognise the kanji as real words.

I did go on to complete RTK, but I certainly don't feel that looking at the start of Tae Kim's guide did any harm.

(2015-11-23, 12:56 pm)webredn7 Wrote: I see. I just googled Minna no Nihongo and the thing I like about it is that everything is in Japanese. I learned English grammar with a similar book, so I guess I'll try it. So, is it a good idea to do both of them (RTK and Minna no Nihongo)?

P.S. I also listen to JapanesePod101.com podcast, so I guess it counts as a listening practice, right?

RTK teaches you how to write and recognize the Kanji in a way that no language course does. I think you want to do RTK in addition to your grammar course, no matter whether you use Minna, Genki, Manga Way, Tae Kim or something else altogether.

And yes, JapanesePod101 is pretty good listening practice. Reading along with the liner notes is good. I used to copy just the dialogues (the lessons are full of chatter...) onto my ipod and listen to the dialogues for review.

I like the video series at http://www.erin.ne.jp/ as a listening supplement to any grammar course.

(2015-11-23, 9:33 am)webredn7 Wrote: I am currently going through the RTK1. I am on 800+ frame and I was wondering if it's okay to start reading Tae Kim and continue RTK1 at the same time. Should I do that or will it just confuse me? Has anyone done that or something similar?

I don't know if it will confuse you as much as you'll run into kanji that you haven't leaned yet, so that will be a stumbling block.  The most efficient way would be to just finish rtk and then move onto genki, ninna, or whatever, but I can see it might get bored just learning kanji every day.  If you do start tae kim, I would get a tae kim deck and if you run into kanji you don't know, just suspend those cards until you finish rtk and then un-suspend them.

[ファブリス]

As long as you can maintain the pace of 10+ kanji a day.. why not. 1200 more kanji, 10 a day without fail is 4 months.

For Kanji Koohii SRS users there is a "Vocab Shuffle" mode which can be fun to use while doing RTK. It gives you words from JMDICT which are made of known (ie. reviewed) kanji.

And you can of course lookup the dictionary ( D ) in SRS reviews if you want to see some example words.

Learning Japanese is great and it'll help you remember a handful of the kanji you've been studying. However, time management becomes a major pain in the ass, so please keep that in mind.

It's been about 70 days since I started doing both RTK and Genki from scratch. So far, I've added 1362 kanji and gotten to the beginning of chapter 18 of Genki, but I've been studying Japanese pretty much full time, except for the past week maybe. What happened is, my daily Anki reviews became a little too time consuming once I got to 1000 kanji. I ended up making a thread here to ask what I should do and ended up taking a break from RTK to lower my reviews while focusing mostly on Genki.

I've been adding a whole bunch of kanji out of order since then. I usually see what Genki teaches in the kanji/reading lessons, although they kind of suck in that for some stupid reason decided you should learn kanji for stuff you don't even use in the lessons and vocabulary that you haven't been taught yet. Anyway, whenever I add these kanji I try to add a handful of other related kanji including the new primitives I learn. I also add some interesting kanji that I stumble upon and feel like learning.

Now, the issue here is that doing Genki requires you to keep going. Daily contact with a language is key to learning it efficiently. Just like you shouldn't ditch your daily SRS reviews for the time, I recommend at the very least reviewing the audio exercises of the current lesson you're in if you can't move forward with Genki. That's going to help your brain adapt to the new language you're learning far more efficiently than cramming it for a day and skipping a few days. It's like working out - you won't get good results if you exercise once or twice a week.

One thing you could do to make things less of pain is look up all the kanji you're expected to learn in the reading sections of Genki 1 and 2. Then see if there's anything in the N5 - N4 list that you're missing. Learning these primitives beforehand and adding a whole bunch of kanji related to them would definitely help you do Genki efficiently. You could obviously just do that for Genki 1 at first, and then add the Genki 2 ones once you're done, but I think doing everything now might help you keep the momentum.

Oh wait, you said you can only study 2 hours a day. I definitely recommend adding everything from the reading section now then. Going through Genki while doing RTK and daily reviews is probably a little too much, unless you can keep your reviews + add a handful of kanji within an hour, which is pretty unlikely. I could be wrong, but I think you'll have to take a break from RTK to do Genki efficiently... unless you don't mind going through Genki very slowly. It's really up to you though. Genki is much more motivating than RTK, so I recommend doing it but you'll end up taking a break from RTK imo . If you get most of these kanji you're expected to learn out of the way though, it's okay to take a break since you won't need that many kanji in Genki. Then you can get back to it once you're about to go from Genki 2 to Tobira or whatever.

Maybe you can even do some extra work in advance, say, another full week of RTK before adding Genki related kanji... that'll be helpful once you're done with Genki, because if you're like me then you'll probably want to be done with RTK as soon as possible. Having 700 kanji or less to go through by then will probably be a relief. All I can think right now is how many kanji I'll still have to add once I finish Genki 2.

Thanks all of you for your replies and advices. It really helped me. I guess I'll try to do 75+ (or at least 50+) kanji per day for 1-2 weeks, and then start doing Tae Kim. When I start learning with Tae Kim, I'll lower limit of kanji per day to 25. That way most probably I will not run into unknown kanji in Tae Kim.

I don't know about "doing" Tae Kim. If I were you, I'd use it only as a reference website because that's what it really seems to be.

It's a nice idea to take a quick look at each grammar topic to get an overall feel for the language and to make it easier to learn them when you actually study and practice them. But Tae Kim alone is probably not a very good way of practicing Japanese. It helps you when you don't understand explanations in your textbook, but it won't help you achieve a reasonable degree of proficiency.

On the other hand, doing Genki or Minna no Nihongo will help you with vocabulary, listening, speaking, etc. In addition, a good textbook will help you become familiar with the way the language works at a basic level. Of course, you don't need to nail everything right away. But going through a solid textbook helps you put things together more easily imo.

Needless to say, you could also go for something else other than the textbooks I've mentioned. Just keep in mind that you'll need a good amount of exposure and practice. Even if you only care about comprehension for now and don't want to do exercises, which is a perfectly valid approach as well, you'll still need exposure. That being said, I don't know much about these options since I'm taking a different approach, so I guess other people will be more helpful if that's what you're really want to go for.

I never understood the point of not finishing RTK first.
The whole point of RTK is that it makes Kanji easier by both method and order. If you start with the textbooks then you will be getting Kanji before getting the primitives from RTK. If you are fine with that, why bother with RTK in the first place.

That being said if you are doing strictly audio vocab or learning grammar from a heavy English perspective then there is no problem.

Likewise if RTK is driving you nuts or boring the hell out of you, it might be a matter of moving on/adding something or giving up all together.

My own plan is RTK first [at 40% as of tonight. Yay me]
Do the Kana and English Grammar for Japanese students books which would provide a slight introduction to J Grammar and a much needed intro to grammar terminology so I can understand what textbooks are on about as opposed to screaming "Le Grill, what the hell is Le Grill every 5 minutes and blowing up into an explosive rage.
Then it is Genki 1 time and vocab drills.

I figure the time spent learning the Kana and the English Grammar book will help settle down the RTK reviews a bit and allow the Kanji to settle in a bit. Likewise I'll do the H-Kana first before the K-Kana for similar reasons.
In the post RTK pre Genki stage I'll probably do some quick run through of Kanji Recognition using the list in the back of the RTK book. About 3 or so hours, run through it a few times.

(2015-11-24, 2:40 am)Dudeist Wrote: I never understood the point of not finishing RTK first.

I totally understand what you're saying and think you have a great plan. If language learning were completely about logically approaching a task in an efficient manner, you'd be absolutely right. However, there -are- issues with getting restless, with losing motivation, and so on. Even though it may take somwhat longer to get there, people feel they are making more progress by starting the grammar and vocabulary process sooner. Of course, it's not true - they still need to put the time into learning the Kanji, with RTK or with some other method, it will never come to them for free just because they skipped ahead.
On the other hand - losing motivation and slowing or stopping studies will cost far more than learning in the theoretically most efficient way, which is why I don't feel it's a good idea to press people to stick to The One True Path. There's simply far too many personal psychological and learning-style issues for there to -be- a 'One True Path'.

(2015-11-24, 2:40 am)Dudeist Wrote: I never understood the point of not finishing RTK first.
The whole point of RTK is that it makes Kanji easier by both method and order. If you start with the textbooks then you will be getting Kanji before getting the primitives from RTK. If you are fine with that, why bother with RTK in the first place.

You've got the wrong idea. I knew the vast majority of most kanji presented in Genki 1. I don't think there was a single lesson where I had to learn more than 50% of the kanji presented, and that's not even 10 kanji. You're not supposed to know every single kanji in the book, so it's all good because you'll already have a massive headstart.

Once you know about 1k kanji or so, you'll be so good at learning new kanji and know so many primitives already that it becomes far easier to learn them in whatever order suits you best. RTK teaches you how to learn new kanji in a systematic and more remarkable way than merely rote learning everything. You don't have to ignore the keywords or the approach just because you changed the orders of things temporarily. RTK is much, much more than that.

You'll have a very long journey ahead of you no matter what. While you can learn 2200 kanji before finishing a basic level Japanese textbook, that's most certainly unnecessary. In fact, you're only expected to know all of them at N1 level, so there's no need to tackle all of them right away.

Some keywords are also incredibly similar and even nonsensical at times. The keywords for "watashi", "ore" and "boku" should be that, but instead you have stuff like "myself" or whatever. Others are just easier to remember once you learn an actual word because the keywords are so ambiguous. Honestly, the keywords don't matter nearly as much as the fact that you're writing stories and trying to recall the kanji. I've been using clues for a while and sometimes I rely on them so much that I don't remember the keyword, but what matters is that I'll connect an actual word to my story/kanji later on, so it's all good.

By the way, hiragana and katakana are extremely easy to learn. I'm surprised you haven't learned them yet. You can probably learn each in about 2 hours. All I did was go through:

http://kidspicturedictionary.com/wp-cont...monics.jpg
http://japanese.gatech.edu/WebCTVista/JA...akana.html
http://japanese.gatech.edu/WebCTVista/JA...agana.html

And play the drag n drop game on this site after finding a good mental image for about 5-10 characters at a time:
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/sheaa/projec...index.html


After that, you play it again and try not to look at the images if you can help it. Then you keep doing it for a while until you do it in under 2 minutes. Fluency comes naturally with regular study, although katakana is a major pain in the ass since it's not very common and you tend to get worse at it, unlike hiragana which only gets better. The characters can be hard to remember, but doing workbook exercises helps. After a while, most common characters become easy to remember.

My RTK first fetish is a bit easier for me.
Unlike most people I don't have native material calling to me. I know that sounds odd.
Also I live in a place with no Japanese people. Unless I go over there for an extended period which may or may not happen and may or may not work out for me, I can almost see myself passing N1 and then moving on to another language completely and letting Japanese erode, although that would be a bit of a shame.

So no rush for me. It does get a bit dull at times. However I have bigger problems in terms of motivation. Most of which would apply to any language.


As for key words, yeah they drive me nuts at times.

I was under the impression though that the Kanji order in RTK had nothing to do with how often they show up in the wild, but strictly based on ease of learning by building up. It just seems so much easier doing things the RTK way.

(2015-11-24, 2:03 pm)Dudeist Wrote: As for key words, yeah they drive me nuts at times.

....

I was under the impression though that the Kanji order in RTK had nothing to do with how often they show up in the wild, but strictly based on ease of learning by building up.

Don't be afraid to change keywords or add hints. It's not supposed to be about struggling to keep straight which character goes with which synonym.

And yes, you're exactly correct about RTK order.

(2015-11-24, 4:58 pm)SomeCallMeChris Wrote: Don't be afraid to change keywords or add hints. It's not supposed to be about struggling to keep straight which character goes with which synonym.

And yes, you're exactly correct about RTK order.

I've started putting hints. Dispose vs discard. Pretty sure dispose is tossing something in the wind while walking and discard is when mobsters bring fingers to drop off at a rural cottage but I donno.

Usually when I see a keyword I remember all the other similar key words and the Kanji for all of them.

Half wondering if I should just be happy with that. After all it means there are 2 words for which I can write 2 Kanji and the meanings are basically the same. I figure it should sort itself out when it comes to the textbooks.

(2015-11-24, 6:23 pm)Dudeist Wrote: Usually when I see a keyword I remember all the other similar key words and the Kanji for all of them.

Half wondering if I should just be happy with that. After all it means there are 2 words for which I can write 2 Kanji and the meanings are basically the same. I figure it should sort itself out when it comes to the textbooks.

This is how I look at it too.  I'm only interested in functional learning and not some overly precise memorization of keywords which aren't precise anyway.

(2015-11-24, 2:03 pm)Dudeist Wrote: As for key words, yeah they drive me nuts at times.

I was under the impression though that the Kanji order in RTK had nothing to do with how often they show up in the wild, but strictly based on ease of learning by building up. It just seems so much easier doing things the RTK way.

Here's the thing - if you're learning both the word and the kanji at the same time, it's not that easy. But if you've already internalized the expressions you're learning the kanji for, it's not much of a problem.

The real issue I have with the kanji sections of Genki is when they do something that makes no sense whatsoever - make you go out of your way to learn 1-2 kanji for a word that you do NOT know yet, when you have about 30 new words per chapter in the vocabulary section. So instead of teaching you the kanji for some of those words, of which you're probably going to know at least 50%, they teach you a knew word out of context along with one or more kanji for it. That's so wrong and stupid it drives me nuts... to the point I don't even care whether I learn these words properly, because there isn't enough meaningful exposure to internalize them. You end up looking them up as you read because you can't even remember the pronunciation or meaning. This is the case even if you already know the kanji for the word.

What I'm trying to say is, once you have a story and get some practice, it might be easier to remember the kanji than the actual word (if you don't already know it). Learning words require more than creating a story based on primitives. However, creating stories for kanji is usually simple if you know what you're doing and have a creative mind. Knowing the words creates a stronger link between the kanji and the "keyword" (i.e. an actual word) because it won't have a vague meaning.

For this reason, it's a good idea to have tips that help you not get similar keywords mixed up. It's not uncommon to know the kanji, but not be able to pinpoint which one it is and write something else. This happens when the keyword doesn't trigger the specific memory you're trying to recall. But an actual word is something more meaningful and therefore more efficient than a keyword.

The good thing about doing RTK in my opinion is that you can get most kanji out of the way and focus on the actual Japanese in front of you. In Genki 1 and 2, that's not a big deal. But in Tobira, I'm pretty sure there'll be a whole lot more kanji, so being familiar with them means you won't have to slow down every time you want to learn a new kanji because the job's already done. I'm basically learning kanji in advance so that I won't have this issue later on. It slows me down now, but later I'll have no worries.

And yes, RTK doesn't present kanji in a very useful order for those learning the language at the same time, but like I said it gives you a massive headstart even if you don't know all of them. This makes it easier to learn new kanji later on. If you're still getting started and try to learn some of the "gate" kanji, you'll have to learn a lot of new primitives. If you've gone through 50% of RTK, that task becomes far simpler. There are some useful kanji there, but it takes too long to get to that lesson. Learning some of these common kanji in advance is like a "free" kanji, because you'll have reviews AND you'll see them in use. That makes it very easy to remember some of them. It's like 曜... it's sooooo common that I just learned the primitives and didn't even need a story to be fair.

It just occurred to me that it would be fairly easy to filter the rtk list by the kanji used in genki.  So if you are in a hurry to get into learning vocab and grammar, you could study that list with no loss of efficiency in either system.  An alternative would be using one of the optimized core 2k decks that is ordered to introduce words with low rtk numbered kanji first.  Just a suggestion.