Read this this morning from the mind of Ken Seeroi:

Quote:You might think this book will teach you how to read kanji. It won’t. Or that you’ll learn what the kanji mean, or at least their pronunciations. That won’t happen either. Okay, well, at least it’ll teach you how to write the kanji, right? Eh, even that probably won’t happen. So what will it do? Give you magic glasses, it will. It’ll enable you to distinguish one kanji from another, in the same way you can distinguish an English “b” from a “d.” That’s all.

Honestly, it’s the world’s most half-ass book. Heisig just copied a dictionary, created a rash of horrible English “keywords,” either to avoid copyright infringement or because he was incredibly stoned, and then started making mnemonics but then gave up a few pages in. It’s the kind of book you could write in a weekend with a couple weak pots of coffee. But it’s arguably the best we’ve got, so whatever. Kitty Hawk.

Now, even if you could learn 20 kanji a day, it’d still take you well over three months to complete. So focus on that goal, and don’t waste time stressing over Heisig’s nonsensical keywords and mnemonics. Just plow through, working from kanji to keyword. That is, when you see a given kanji, if you can remember the keyword, then you’re golden. Trying to do the opposite (see the keyword and write the kanji) is far more difficult. So don’t do that.

For every kanji, you’ll break it down into some component parts (again, these don’t always stay consistent or make sense), then create a mnemonic that helps you remember their relationship. Finally, write the kanji a couple of times. And that’s it. Don’t get bogged down with the “meaning” of the kanji or waste time trying to make the mnemonics consistent.

Later on he goes to say:

Quote:I really hesitate to recommend Remembering the Kanji. It’s just that it’s popular and some folks have made some progress with it. Guess that’s not much of a pitch, actually.

And to be completely clear, I really doubt James Heisig “learned” Japanese, at least to any appreciable level. He just created a compelling story and marketed it. Even if you could memorize how to write, read, or make sense of all of the joyo kanji, you’d still be miles away from understanding written, much less spoken, Japanese. Although, for sure, it’s a good start.

http://japaneseruleof7.com/how-to-learn-kanji/

From him to Tae Kim, it seems like people have an actual grudge against Heisig and his book and it makes no sense to me.

People just have different learning styles and are feel strongly that their way of learning is superior. I'm not saying it is or isn't either. Just different. Just like the members of this forum: not every does/did RTK.

BTW, those comments are kinda harsh.

Years ago a lot more people were down on RTK, but over time more people used it and got good results from it. So opinions on it have mellowed out over time I think. It's not for everyone, but if people can accept that it's a helpful and working method, I'm content.

I LOLed at that last part. Dude was totally talking out of his butt at that point, because he was clearly too lazy to do any research on Heisig. "I'm too lazy to Google the guy, so I'm just going to make RANDOM ACCUSATIONS WITH NO BASIS IN FACT AT ALL."

At that point he proved he had nothing useful to say in the first place.

Don't be swayed by every random on the Internet. Use what works for you, toss what doesn't. Isn't that obvious?

Dudes who push one thing over another... you should always ask, "Why? What's in it for them?" If they run a website with a lot of ads for, say, a competing product, you should probably move along.

This guy seems like he didn't even USE RTK. Why would anyone listen to him?

[Zgarbas]

JI feel a bit sorry for Heisig. He's one of the few foreigners who made a name for themselves in Japanese academia, but foreigners only know him as the dude with the kanji book.

I love Ken's blog but I never know how to feel about his posts about Japanese language. 

(I also wrote a really mean post against rtk back in the day, and still have some conflicted feelings about the book itself)

I learned kanji using anki and learning them using grade school order. Being a member of this site I always figured if I learned the heisig order that it would have been easier. I wonder if that is true though

Has any research been done to show heisig's way is better than any other ordering when learning?

It's a book. Use it, don't use it. It's cool. If you use it and don't like it, that's fine. A lot of people have used it and didn't like it.

BUT a lot of people *have* used it and gotten a lot out of it.

It's fair to set out plusses and minuses regarding the book. There's a mix of both. Some people don't want to deal with the minuses, I get that. But the minuses that are a big deal to some people aren't a big deal to others.

In my case, RTK was a godsend at a time (2007) when there wasn't a really good way to study kanji. Now there are a variety of ways to do it. They all swap out a variety of plusses and minuses. None are "perfect."

For me, at that time, breaking the tasks down in RTK got me to come back to Japanese after a long break, because I couldn't find a method for learning kanji that worked for me. (I tried a crapton of methods, too... most were variants of "write this 100 times," and sucked for me.)

Are there ways more suited to a random person A or B? Maybe? I don't know. I'm not random person A or B, I'm only me, with my own luggage and experiences. So I can only go off of that. I found RTK to be reasonably effective if you put in the work.

Is it magic? Oh, hell no. It's not even a shortcut. If anything it's an act that requires delayed gratification and endurance, two things modern people have big problems with.

Other than that, it's just a way to separate tasks so you don't overload/burn out. If that doesn't work for random person A or B or C or D, then that's okay.

It's just a book. It's not going to bite. (Well, it might suck, but that's a personal opinion.)

Also, if Heisig didn't write his books, we wouldn't have this site right?

I remember I read this article of the same fellow (isn't he a user here?) when I started studying japanese.

I remember it was a lot demotivational to read it at that time. Then I read the JALUP article and I understood it has an ironic tone. Thanks God I didn't listened to it and continued studying Japanese and now I'm reading light novels without much effort, which was my main goal. And I'm far from being a person who studies a lot. In retrospect, I'm even shoked at my progress considering how little I studied.

Now, we all know the Japanese language is really hard, and it requires time and effort. Blogs like AJATT tends to make you think it's easier than it is, but then "ruleof7" blog does the opposite thing, with even more exaggeration.

I mentioned that articled which was supposed to be ironic, but now I'm reading some other articles and they are all the same in tone. And if that way of writing is supposed to be irriverent and sarcastic, I don't see it. I see a forced attitude which make me think it is trying too hard to appear as an iconoclast which is the only one who knows the truth and all those people and their methods are all sh*t but we are too stupid to see it.

How can you review a method and say:

Quote:"Okay, well, at least it’ll teach you how to write the kanji, right? Eh, even that probably won’t happen."

PROBABLY. What is he talking about?

Quote:"because he was incredibly stoned"

wow, such disrespectful, much rebel.

Quote:"And to be completely clear, I really doubt James Heisig “learned” Japanese, at least to any appreciable level.

Any evidence to support this?

I think many of the things he says are even true, like the stereotypical view many japanese learners enthusiasts have of japan and japanese people. But then he makes a stereotypical description of the opposite view, like all japanese people are racist and so on.

Or that in order to make japanese friends you need to study the english language and not the japanese one. I don't know, but for me to make friends mean to be able to speak to them about things like feelings, hobbies and so on, and I don't know how many japanese people know english that well. Maybe for "make friends" he means "find hot girls to f*ck"? I don't know lol

No offense to the blog owner, only my point of view

Man, I like Ken's blog (mainly because he's a witty writer). But that post was out of line. And I say that as someone who didn't use RTK.

Re: The actual topic - there are a lot of people who love RTK and praise it to the heavens, and that engenders backlash from people who either have legitimate differences with the method, or who just wanna seem like the smartest person in the room. Like everything else on the Internet, it should all be taken with a truckload of salt.

Some people seem to have strong opinions about the way they do things. Sometimes it seems like "Everyone else is an idiot. Blue IS the best color".

Personally I didn't use RTK and I do think it is better to learn kanji along with words rather than as abstractions with often-counter-productive keywords.

But I certainly wouldn't say I am down on the Heisig method or on Heisig-sensei himself (who has been a respected professor in a prestigious Japanese institution and certainly is proficient in Japanese - the things people write without bothering to check!)

If I have expressed some negativity about the Heisig method it is not because I think it doesn't work or that no one ought to do it. It is more that there is a strong current (possibly the dominant one in self-learning at the moment) that says you have to start by learning all the kanji in the abstract, as Heisig-sensei did and recommends.

I don't think that would work for me, or would be the best method for me even if it did. I don't doubt that it is the best method for some people. But I do like to get it out there that it isn't compulsory and it isn't the best method for everyone.

Tae Kim-sensei, by the way is opposed not only to the Heisig method but even to Anki. He believes in learning vocabulary organically by massive input. I also believe that to be the best way, but find pragmatic use of Anki (as a secondary support to massive input) to be an acceptable shortcut/compromise.

However, different approaches suit different people, and yelling "Blue IS the best color" doesn't achieve much (I don't accuse Tae Kim-sensei of doing that, by the way).

Besides which everyone really knows that the best color is pink（⌒▽⌒）

I won't deny that RTK was a ridiculously long journey, but it helped me accomplish what I yearned for - the ability to focus on learning words without having to worry about kanji. I can't picture myself trying to read something as challenging as native material without knowing them. Because it's already very challenging even if you do know them. Having to take extra time to focus not only on the meaning/reading of a word, but also on new kanji and primitives/radicals would be a pain. These are things that prevent you from reading. But if you're willing to get them out of the way in advance, you lift part of that burden. In other words, it's a way to make the rest of the process more enjoyable.

Another great thing is that I have mental hooks for new kanji that I may not have learned. Learning kanji at this point is fairly quick, because they generally rely on primitives you've already seen. More often than not, all they do is rearrange primitives you already know, sometimes with a few small changes based on a primitive that you already know.

(2016-06-05, 4:14 pm)CureDolly Wrote: Some people seem to have strong opinions about the way they do things. Sometimes it seems like "Everyone else is an idiot. Blue IS the best color".

Personally I didn't use RTK and I do think it is better to learn kanji along with words rather than as abstractions with often-counter-productive keywords.

But I certainly wouldn't say I am down on the Heisig method or on Heisig-sensei himself (who has been a respected professor in a prestigious Japanese institution and certainly is proficient in Japanese - the things people write without bothering to check!)

If I have expressed some negativity about the Heisig method it is not because I think it doesn't work or that no one ought to do it. It is more that there is a strong current (possibly the dominant one in self-learning at the moment) that says you have to start by learning all the kanji in the abstract, as Heisig-sensei did and recommends.

I don't think that would work for me, or would be the best method for me. I don't doubt that it is the best method for some people. But I do like to get it out there that it isn't compulsory and it isn't the best method for everyone.

Tae Kim-sensei, by the way is opposed not only to the Heisig method but even to Anki. He believes in learning vocabulary organically by massive input. I also believe that to be the best way, but find pragmatic use of Anki to be an acceptable shortcut/compromise.

However, different approaches suit different people, and yelling "Blue IS the best color" doesn't achieve much (I don't accuse Tae Kim-sensei of doing that, by the way).

Besides which everyone really knows that the best color is pink（⌒▽⌒）

This is the difference between a legitimate criticism and a hasty, summary one. CureDolly san gives argumentation to what he thinks, while that blog post is biased and disrespectful.

I don't find Ken's writing witty at all. It requires way more than this to be witty, at least to me. It reminds me of Katzumoto's "yo mama" jokes, but at least with Katzumoto it is clear he is never serious and he is self-ironic. Ken takes himself too seriously, it SEEMS (maybe it's not, this is just my impression) he doesn't ever dubt of himself like he is always right.

About RtK, I think it has many fallacies but so is every method.

I agree that Curedolly gives great advice and insight on things without being disrespectful. I always enjoy a post written by Curedolly :)

(2016-06-05, 4:14 pm)CureDolly Wrote: Besides which everyone really knows that the best color is pink（⌒▽⌒）

Though I used to loathe the color pink growing up (I didn't want to be the stereotypical female who liked pink), I now come to appreciate it. A couple of my most prized possessions are in pink: 3DS XL carrying case and plush alpaca purse. Even my vocab decks (core and working on one for shirokuma cafe) have pink font.

Core (front and back)
Shirokuma cafe (front, front with hint revealed, and back)

I found the color pink (light pink) gives enough attention to the unknown vocabulary without it screaming "LOOK AT ME
!(((φ(◎ロ◎;)φ)))". It's more like "hello there friend ( ᐛ )و" kind of vibe lol.

Thank you both for the kind words. Just for the record, I am a she-dolly, not a he-dolly.

We made our Sound Sisters Kanji readings Anki deck pink 'cause we like it, but also because the color seemed bright enough to be zingy without being glarey and tiring. Kind of like RawrPk-san said.

Always nice to meet a fellow Shirokuma fan(˘◊˘)/

I can confirm CureDolly is helpful and informative!

Quote:You can get it right here. The cost is – free, ’cause Dolly loves you!

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...this is so cute! Love the look and feel of the deck too. And also gomen, I had a feeling you were a she-dolly with your icon but I wasn't 100% sure. One can never judge someone based on their icon after all.

There are some legit criticisms of Heisig's RTK, however almost all of those criticisms deal only with the book and most if not all are corrected thanks to online sites and communities like RevTK.

Edit: I just found and read Ken's Blog Post and it's obvious he's not insulting the RTK method. He's using humor to get points across and is recommending RTK as important the same way he's recommending Core 2000.

Plus, for every hater of RTK, you get awesome people like this guy who freaking love RTK -

(2016-06-05, 11:19 am)cophnia6 Wrote:

Quote:"And to be completely clear, I really doubt James Heisig “learned” Japanese, at least to any appreciable level.

Any evidence to support this?

I met Heisig in Tokyo a few years ago, and in two hours with roomful of Japanese people, he spoke zero Japanese, although he did draw the kanji for "flower" on the board. Nice enough guy, but he's a spinner of tall tales and quite the used-car salesman. When I asked him how he learned how to speak Japanese, he said, "I played baseball with the kids." Fair enough. I learned how to play baseball the same way.

Before you follow in his footsteps, you might want to look for evidence that he does know Japanese. Unless your real objective is to learn how to sell books.

(2016-06-06, 12:57 am)JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

(2016-06-05, 11:19 am)cophnia6 Wrote:

Quote:"And to be completely clear, I really doubt James Heisig “learned” Japanese, at least to any appreciable level.

Any evidence to support this?

I met Heisig in Tokyo a few years ago, and in two hours with roomful of Japanese people, he spoke zero Japanese, although he did draw the kanji for "flower" on the board. Nice enough guy, but he's a spinner of tall tales and quite the used-car salesman. When I asked him how he learned how to speak Japanese, he said, "I played baseball with the kids." Fair enough. I learned how to play baseball the same way.

Before you follow in his footsteps, you might want to look for evidence that he does know Japanese. Unless your real objective is to learn how to sell books.

Here's a collection of his published Japanese writings on the Nanzan website. I'm not seeing translation credits given to another which is usually the case so it's possible he wrote these himself. However, Dr. Heisig's Japanese level is actually quite irrelevant. He created a method that worked for a large number of us with regards to remembering kanji and honestly for that alone he has my thanks and two purchases of his book to back it up. Hell, most people here ignore his second book that deals with the reading and pronunciation of kanji so really we're not following Heisig to learn how to speak Japanese from him anyway.

Your anecdotal two hours is interesting, but if it mattered that much to you, why didn't you speak to him in Japanese yourself?

(2016-06-06, 1:39 am)Nukemarine Wrote:

(2016-06-06, 12:57 am)JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

(2016-06-05, 11:19 am)cophnia6 Wrote:

Quote:"And to be completely clear, I really doubt James Heisig “learned” Japanese, at least to any appreciable level.

Any evidence to support this?

I met Heisig in Tokyo a few years ago, and in two hours with roomful of Japanese people, he spoke zero Japanese, although he did draw the kanji for "flower" on the board. Nice enough guy, but he's a spinner of tall tales and quite the used-car salesman. When I asked him how he learned how to speak Japanese, he said, "I played baseball with the kids." Fair enough. I learned how to play baseball the same way.

Before you follow in his footsteps, you might want to look for evidence that he does know Japanese. Unless your real objective is to learn how to sell books.

Here's a collection of his published Japanese writings on the Nanzan website. I'm not seeing translation credits given to another which is usually the case so it's possible he wrote these himself. However, Dr. Heisig's Japanese level is actually quite irrelevant. He created a method that worked for a large number of us with regards to remembering kanji and honestly for that alone he has my thanks and two purchases of his book to back it up. Hell, most people here ignore his second book that deals with the reading and pronunciation of kanji so really we're not following Heisig to learn how to speak Japanese from him anyway.

Your anecdotal two hours is interesting, but if it mattered that much to you, why didn't you speak to him in Japanese yourself?

Thanks for the list. You might want to look at it a bit closer. Heisig has his name on papers in languages that appear to be Spanish, German, Russian, and possibly Greek. For example: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2013...tzakis.pdf

Quite the linguist, it seems.

I can't even begin to describe how much of a fallacy it would be to judge the quality of his work based on his ability to speak or write Japanese.

(2016-06-06, 2:27 am)JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

(2016-06-06, 1:39 am)Nukemarine Wrote:

(2016-06-06, 12:57 am)JapaneseRuleOf7 Wrote:

(2016-06-05, 11:19 am)cophnia6 Wrote:

Quote:"And to be completely clear, I really doubt James Heisig “learned” Japanese, at least to any appreciable level.

Any evidence to support this?

I met Heisig in Tokyo a few years ago, and in two hours with roomful of Japanese people, he spoke zero Japanese, although he did draw the kanji for "flower" on the board. Nice enough guy, but he's a spinner of tall tales and quite the used-car salesman. When I asked him how he learned how to speak Japanese, he said, "I played baseball with the kids." Fair enough. I learned how to play baseball the same way.

Before you follow in his footsteps, you might want to look for evidence that he does know Japanese. Unless your real objective is to learn how to sell books.

Here's a collection of his published Japanese writings on the Nanzan website. I'm not seeing translation credits given to another which is usually the case so it's possible he wrote these himself. However, Dr. Heisig's Japanese level is actually quite irrelevant. He created a method that worked for a large number of us with regards to remembering kanji and honestly for that alone he has my thanks and two purchases of his book to back it up. Hell, most people here ignore his second book that deals with the reading and pronunciation of kanji so really we're not following Heisig to learn how to speak Japanese from him anyway.

Your anecdotal two hours is interesting, but if it mattered that much to you, why didn't you speak to him in Japanese yourself?

Thanks for the list. You might want to look at it a bit closer. Heisig has his name on papers in languages that appear to be Spanish, German, Russian, and possibly Greek. For example: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2013...tzakis.pdf

Quite the linguist, it seems.

Yes, and some of those papers seem to give translation credits at the end such as "Traduction de Françoise Vinel" for the "As seen when the lights arise" paper. And again, it DOES NOT MATTER. Last I checked, none of us have bragged about Heisig's Japanese ability. We brag about his ability to use a method to memorize the stroke order of 2000 kanji based on a single English keyword. 

He already knew English and Spanish prior to being hired by Nanzan University in 1977. He had a Ph.D. in religious studies and was hired for works he created while living in Latin America. I don't know his language abilities, but it seems he is a well studied person that publishes in the Religious Studies area which is his job. Not sure on why all of a sudden people want him to be a polyglot or ramble in Japanese for 2 hours at some event of unknown purposes all of a sudden.

(2016-06-06, 2:52 am)FlameseeK Wrote: I can't even begin to describe how much of a fallacy it would be to judge the quality of his work based on his ability to speak or write Japanese.

I agree with this. Heisig-sensei's ability in Japanese is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether his method is effective for learning the kanji.

At the same time I do not feel that any serious doubt has been thrown upon his Japanese ability. He is a distinguished academic who has worked for a long time in Japan. He says that he can speak Japanese. The burden of proof rests with people who, on no reasonable grounds that I can see, choose to imply that he is lying.

I am not personally an advocate of Heisig-sensei's method, but I do feel that he should be treated with respect as a gentleman and a scholar.

to think about it, he even wrote a book about hanzi with the same method, and I don't think he speaks chinese.

I find rtk2 even more useful than rtk1 :p

about him not speaking japanese, even if this is true, I think you need to put evidence on your article with references.
but now I'm seeing you wrote an article about it where you explain the baseball thing. so it's ok