I've mentioned this in a couple of other threads and I'll set it all out here. Sorry for the length of this.

One of the most common things discussed on this forum is the problems people have with the keywords. Complaints are wide ranging. This keyword meaning isn't the same as the meaning of the kanji. These keywords all mean the same thing and I can't distinguish. etc. In other threads I've joined the 'don't worry about the keywords' camp and given advice about making the stories memorable and not worrying about how accurate the keywords are in approximating the meaning of the kanji.

Things really came to the crunch when I was writing (with a pen) in Japanese. I knew the words I wanted to write because I spoke them all the time. All I needed to do was recall the kanji. I was thinking in Japanese and in order to recall the stories I had to think about which keyword I needed. I had to put lots of effort into switching my mind from Japanese mode to English mode and back and forth for every kanji where I needed to recall the story. I thought that there must be a better way than this. This is what I've come up with.

At first, I thought about using Japanese words instead of English ones. The immediate problem you have is deciding which Japanese word to use. With keywords like big, small, early, the decision is obvious: おおきい、ちいさい、はやい. With other keywords like 'I', 'risk', etc. the decision is not so obvious. In choosing which Japanese word to use, I have tried to meet two objectives.

1. Try to choose a Japanese word where the meaning is as close as possible to the meaning of the English keyword.
2. Try to choose a Japanese word which is as commonly used as possible.

Sometimes one of these is easily meet and the other isn't. Sometimes both are difficult. In meeting objective one, this means that the story you have already made will fit with the Japanese word that you choose.

Another problem is that there may be several kanji where you would like to use Japanese words that are pronounced the same. For this reason, I have created example sentences. I'm building an excel file and an extract of it looks like this:

Frame 1 一 いち イチ、に、さん
Frame 2 二 に いち、ニ、さん
Frame 3 三 さん に、サン、よん
Frame 4 四 よん さん、ヨン、ご
Frame 15 目 め 日本人は、メが黒い。
Frame 16 古い ふるい こちらは、とてもフルイお寺です。
Frame 1782 助ける たすける タスケテ！
Frame 1783 宜しく よろしく 両親にヨロシクと伝えてください。
Frame 1784 畳 たたみ タタミの部屋に入る前にスリッパを脱いでください。

The format is Japanese word, reading, example sentence. In the example sentence, the word being tested has been written in katakana but this isn't necessary and I may change it. I review with supermemo (sorry Fabrice!). In the question field I put the reading and then the example sentence. In the answer field I put the Japanese word.

With all of the above, it was easy to choose a Japanese word and write an example sentence. With many kanji, this is not the case. With those, I have sometimes been able to choose two words; one satisfying objective 1 and the other satisfying objective 2. I have also included notes in English.

Frame 18 冒険 ぼうけん 子どもはボウケンが好き。 冒す おかす おかす is closest in meaning to risk and is probably what Heisig was thinking of. However it can apparently be tricky to choose between the various kanji that can be used with おかす. 冒険, meaning adventure, seems to be the classic example given for usage of the kanji.
Frame 21 合唱 がっしょう 全員で歌をガッショウした。 唱える となえる じゅもんをとなえる 合唱 is closer to Heisig's story but both are common.
Frame 24 風呂 ふろ おフロに入ってくる。 can't find any words that have any direct relation to spine.
Frame 30 元旦 がんたん ガンタンには近所の神社にお参りする人が多い。 元旦 seems to be common and is the closest I can get to nightbreak
Frame 31 胆石 たんせき おじいちゃんはタンセキがあって、毎日は痛くて大変だ。 although きも is another reading there seems to be too much confusion with the liver (肝). 胆石 on the other hand, obviously relates to the gall bladder and is always written with this kanji.

So some of the time I'm choosing Japanese words whose meaning is quite removed from that of the Heisig keyword. I'd like to build a file where people can choose whichever word they prefer and review with that.

I also have no hesitation in choosing compound words that use other kanji. When reviewing from ぼうけん, I'm satisfied if I can remember it as 冒けん. Or even just remember the kanji by itself and know that its reading is either ぼう or けん.

Choice of example sentences is very important. The best source is kanji textbooks which contain example sentences designed to illuminate the meaning of a word. I sometimes use Jim Breen's, I sometimes take it from the internet and I sometimes write it myself. I ALWAYS try to get a native Japanese person to check it for me. I also try to get native Japanese people to tell me which words satisfy objective two.

So the advantages of reviewing from Japanese word/example sentence combinations over Heisig keywords are as follows:

1.Japanese words will always capture the meaning of the kanji better than English ones.
2.In the process of learning how to write the kanji, you will learn one Japanese word with it. These are usually the kun-yomi which isn't dealt with much in RTK 2.
3.It doesn't matter what your native tongue is.
4.It removes all of the difficulties people have been having with keywords that are similar in meaning (uncommon/unusual/rare, admonish/rebuke).
5.It means you don't have to think in English when you have to recall the story.

Disadvantages are:

1.Extra work choosing Japanese words and example sentences.
2.Extra work getting through RTK 1 ? you have to learn a Japanese word as well as the writing and meaning of every kanji.
3.Complete beginners will find it difficult to find good example sentences that they can understand.

I'd like to build a file that anyone can use so disadvantage 1 will be eliminated after that has been completed.

I need help with this project! If there is anyone else that thinks this is a good idea and would like to help then please let me know. What we have to do for every kanji is:

1.identify Japanese words that meet objectives one or two
2.write an example sentence for each word identified
3.check it by asking a Japanese person to help

Step 3 is very important. Japanese people will know when you've come up with an obscure word from WWWJDIC that is never used. They will know when you've written an example sentence that makes no sense.

I have about 300 kanji to go with RTK 1 but with these remaining kanji, I'm not using the Heisig keyword at all. I'm creating a Japanese word/example sentence combination and using that to make my story. I think that you could go from Frame 1 doing this and completely ignore Heisig's keywords. In that situation, objective 1 would be unnecessary.

I was thinking more along the lines of RTK4 of just translating my keywords and stories into Japanese. So, the story would be the same plot just told in Japanese. It sounds like you've given this a lot more thought than I'm ready to absorb at this point. When I get there, I'll have to revisit this thread and think about it some more.

Good job, wrightak! Me too, I am in the camp of those who care little about keywords.

One fact that is easily forgotten is that Heisig's system is just a great approach and a set of excellent guidelines. Everyone should be adapting the guidelines to their own style, goals and level of proficiency to a certain extent unless they are misusing the approach.

Clearly, complete beginners will have no associations with [kana]furui[/kana] and [kana]yoroshiku[/kana]. For them English keywords are an invaluable crunch. For more advanced students, it will be much more efficient to link the kanji to the actual Japanese words than struggling to distinguish between the different flavours of English synonims (cf. the example in an earlier post of mine on [kana]watashi[/kana], [kana]boku[/kana], [kana]ore[/kana] and [kana]ware[/kana] where learning English keywords is a Waste of Time).

English is not my first language and whatever foreign (Japanese, Chinese, etc.) words I know are not linked in my head to English translations (nor to any other translations, for that matter) but rather to actual NOTIONS. If you look closely at any languages you know really well, you will see the same: translations are imperfect and superfluous. And very often sadly inadequate (cf. [kana]yoroshiku[/kana] and all its connotations). People think in notions when they speak unless their knowlegde is really basic.

For that same reason, I sometimes struggle to recall even the simplest kanji through the English keyword. Most striking example is the trouble I had with the keyword 'all' in today's review - yet I know perfectly well the kanji for [kana]minna[/kana]. But there is no link in my head between the two: in fact, if one wakes me up at night asking to translate [kana]minna[/kana] into English, I am more likely to come up with 'everyone'.

Now, does that mean that I should put the kanji for [kana]minna[/kana] in the failed stack?.. Well, I didn't.

Similarly, I think wrightak's idea to deviate from the keywords in case of rarely used kanji, such as 'spine'. It is much more helpful to learn that kanji as [kana]ro[/kana] of [kana]furo[/kana], with a side note to self that in fact it means 'spine' - a miscellaneous fact that you may or may not remember. (Unless you are deeply interested in the etymology of the characters, in which case you should be learning traditional Chinese script anyway.)

But: all of the above may work for some people and not work for others. By defining yet another set of keywords in Japanese we, once again, are running the risk of misusing Heisig's approach.

So this long-winded preamble finally brings me to a very simple point: ideally, the stack should have a modifiable list of keywords which users adapt to their own goals and level of knowlegde, if they are so inclined. This should be technically possible, innit?

Wrightak,
I like your idea. I imagine it will work very well for you. As you mentioned, it may be more difficult for beginners. With all mnemonics, I like to use clues, keywords in this case, that I know very, very well. This usually means they are in English.

I've been thinking about another way of fixing the keyword issues for a while now, and it goes like this:
1. Use simple English words that are the most common meaning of the kanji.
2. For the duplicate keywords created in 1., add a second word which is the name of a primitive in the kanji.

This will (a) give you words that are true meanings of the kanji (b) eliminate all the complicated words © distinguish between same-meaning kanji. The only disadvantage is having double-words for keywords. But I've used this method for kanji not in RTK1, and the double-words are not a problem for me.

I'm not recommending going back and revising keywords you already know; I'm afraid to do that myself (Wrightak, are you really going to modify all your stories? You've got guts.), but it would be nice for newbies to have a better list of keywords.

Example: Buddha
I have 3 characters that mean Buddha.
1.(Lek, elbow). It's in RTK1, so I left it as Buddha(Incidently, Lek is my imaginary Thai girlfriend. I wish you baboons would stop calling her Mr. T). Lek believes Buddha is always right at her elbow, looking after her.
2.(add, road). I used Buddha-road. It's amazing how much adding a few statues of Buddha along side a road will improve it's appeal.
3.(pinnacle, house, sit). Buddha-sit. I walked into a Buddhist temple. In front of the obligatory pinnacle was a small house with a statue of a sitting Buddha.

Because the keyword already needs to be part of your story, the story isn't any different from what it would normally be. If I were a newbie, I'd definitely use this method.

a more excotic aproach would be to ask heisig directly what japanese meanings he used and adopt that lists an alternative

leosmith Wrote:I'm not recommending going back and revising keywords you already know; I'm afraid to do that myself (Wrightak, are you really going to modify all your stories? You've got guts.), but it would be nice for newbies to have a better list of keywords.

Perhaps I didn't make this point clear enough. The reason I included objective 1 (I feel like a tank commander calling it this but I need to label it with something) was so that I wouldn't have to change any of my stories. My story for old works with ふるい. My story for risk works with ぼうけん. The imagery remains the same and like Serge said, it's a concept and not an English word.

So all I plan to do is create Japanese keywords and example sentences for all of the kanji and use them to review instead. I recall the same stories, only the prompt is different. Would anyone like to join me in creating this?

I'm definitely going to do it so people are welcome to the finished list when I'm done.

ivoSF Wrote:a more excotic aproach would be to ask heisig directly what japanese meanings he used and adopt that lists an alternative

It's usually not too difficult to figure out where Heisig got his keyword from. There are two problems though. Firstly, there sometimes aren't related Japanese words. Spine is a good example. 呂 looks like a spine and etymologically it has that meaning. However, as far as I'm aware, there's no Japanese word that means spine and uses that kanji. Even if there is, it leads us to the second problem.

Even if there is a Japanese word that relates to the meaning Heisig is referring to, it's sometimes rare and completely impractical. That's why I have objective 2 in my original post.

wrightak Wrote:Perhaps I didn't make this point clear enough. The reason I included objective 1 (I feel like a tank commander calling it this but I need to label it with something) was so that I wouldn't have to change any of my stories. My story for old works with ふるい. My story for risk works with ぼうけん. The imagery remains the same and like Serge said, it's a concept and not an English word.

So all I plan to do is create Japanese keywords and example sentences for all of the kanji and use them to review instead. I recall the same stories, only the prompt is different. Would anyone like to join me in creating this?

Actually, you were very clear; sorry I didn't read your post very well the first time. For a beginner, what you're proposing is learning a word and sentence for each character before they use RTK1. I like this idea, because not only will a person have all the characters "in play" when they finish the book, but they will also have a reading memorized. Good luck.

Actually one thing I've been doing often is to copy-paste the kanji into a dictionary and most of the time I can find a Japanese word with the same/similar meaning to the kanji. Sometimes the word is just the kanji, sometimes kanji plus kana, and sometimes one or more suitable compound words exist. I still use the Hesig English keywords though.

If you want to use a Japanese keyword (rather than an English one), maybe by searching for the kanji in a dictionary you might find the keyword you're looking for.

Let's look at a few examples.

腰
Heisig keyword: loins
Dictionary words using this kanji:
(n) hip, (P)
腰 [こし]
(n) loins, hips, pelvic region, waist, (P)
腰部 [ようぶ]

In this case Heisig's keyword seems pretty good, but if you chose こし you'd be closer to the meaning than "loins". In one of the "loins" stories someone mentioned Japanese often say 腰が痛い after a long day at the office, which means something like "my lower back hurts".

堅
Heisig keyword: strict
Dictionary words using this kanji:
(adj) (arch) difficult, hard
堅し [かたし]
(adj) hard (esp. wood), steadfast, honorable, honourable, stuffy writing, (P)
堅い [かたい]

Well here, "hard" (as in hard wood) is probably the best choice (i.e. 堅い) When I think "strict" I think 厳しい (きびしい).

献
Heisig keyword: offering
Dictionary words using this kanji:
(v5r) to present, to offer, to dedicate
献じる [けんじる]
(n) an offering
献物 [けんもつ]

Here you could choose either, but it probably makes more sense to choose the verb. The compound word shows, however, how often the two kanjis in a compund word both relate to the meaning - here they are "offering" and "thing". If only all compound words worked out that well .

Of course, Heisig probably thought of this too, so as someone mentioned earlier, it would be great to hear his opinions.

rgravina Wrote:If you want to use a Japanese keyword (rather than an English one), maybe by searching for the kanji in a dictionary you might find the keyword you're looking for.

Yeah, finding candidate Japanese keywords isn't too difficult. The difficulty comes in judging whether they are used often or whether they are obscure. For example, I've never seen 献じる before so it could be common or it could be very formal and rarely used outside of written Japanese. One person suggested using google and seeing how many hits you get to see how common it is, but to be honest, there's no substitute for asking a Japanese person and getting their opinion.

After that, finding or creating an appropriate example sentence is difficult too. At least for non-Japanese speakers.

rgravina Wrote:In one of the "loins" stories someone mentioned Japanese often say 腰が痛い after a long day at the office, which means something like "my lower back hurts".

Yeah, that was me.

If you are using EDICT, words that are marked with (P) are among the more commonly used 20,000 Japanese words. So, that's one indication you can use when choosing a keyword. So for example for offering, I think this might be a good one:

献金 【けんきん】 (n,vs) donation, contribution, offering, (P)

Example sentences you can find over at http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~jwb/wwwjdic.html. But take care, some people say that some of the sentences are a bit contrived, because they're created by English speakers. Well, my Japanese isn't good enough to judge that for myself, but it's something to keep in mind.

Piitaa Wrote:If you are using EDICT, words that are marked with (P) are among the more commonly used 20,000 Japanese words.

Thankyou!!!! I often wished I could know which words were more frequently used and what all those strange letters in brackets meant, and know I know both!

Your link doesn't seem to work but I assume it's the Tanaka corpus on Jim Breen's site.

I talked about the Tanaka Corpus in one of the other threads. It's not contrived as such and it was made by Japanese people. There's documentation on Jim Breen's site describing exactly where the sentences came from. There are two main problems, one is that the translations are sometimes poor, although with user feedback these sentences are decreasing in number. The other is that you can't tell which example sentences were originally English and which were originally Japanese. Ones that start 'he' or 'she' are, I would suspect, originally English. Example sentence pairs where the original is the English part have little value to learners of Japanese. Another problem is that just about everyone giving feedback is an English speaker.

I think this really has *a lot* of potential.

I went through a few lessons of Kanji in Context in parallel with Heisig, and one thing I noticed was that when I put an example sentence on the answer side of a card, I learn the unknown words in that sentence almost as well as the actual word that the card is designed for.

wrightak, if you happen to have an electronic file with your Japanese keywords and examples, I would be most interested.

Just a short note:
The word 厳しい as well as the word 献じる are rather uncommon. Not because of their meaning but because of the frequency of usage. Instead use 厳重 for strict (厳しい has a rather severe and pretty negative meaning to it).
For the meaning of 献じる is rather unique as I think, there would be no "better" word. But IF you want to use it, use it in letters or books, it's rather part of the written language. Also, it's a law term. If you wanted do say donate use 献金.

Anyway, that's it already

Interesting post, wrightak. I've already been doing some of what you're suggesting. Where a kanji has a Japanese reading that is a word I know of can easily learn, I prefer to remember it using the Japanese word rather than the Heisig keyword. It's been a good way of expanding my vocab. Where there is no easy Japanese word, esp. when the kanji only occurs in compounds, I go for the nearest English word that I can make up a memory tag for (not necessarily the same as Heisig's keyword).

Makes it harder to do reviewing at the main site though, because I don't always know what kanji corresponds to the keyword.

The point of Heisig's approach is to teach how you write each kanji and give you a rough idea of its meaning. It was never meant to be accurate or complete in terms of meaning. He avoids Japanese readings except in isolated cases because he's trying to give a headstart in learning kanji to people who may not have a grasp of Japanese vocab.

However, since some of us know some Japanese, or are in the process of learning it, or don't have English as our main spoken language, learning it by Japanese word is a great idea.

wrightak, great suggestion! I would support and help this project. Let me add my two cents here. As some have suggested, it won't be easy. Kanji conceptually often cover a wide range of meanings. I believe, sometimes, the English keyword in fact might be more serviceable than an Japanese equivalent.Sometimes because a concept is rendered in katakana or hiragana rather than kanji, English keywords might be particularly helpful. Also some keywords are very "English" for story purposes and would be hard to duplicate in Japanese. It is a matter of cultural background. These comments will not dampen the project, for at least if half of the keywords could be Japanese, then we would have great improvement.

But there is one point that I hope could be dealt with. KanjiGym. Could it be hacked, edited so as to change the keywords? If not, then I might be willing to stick with an English keyword system.

Aikou Wrote:Just a short note:
The word 厳しい as well as the word 献じる are rather uncommon. Not because of their meaning but because of the frequency of usage. Instead use 厳重 for strict (厳しい has a rather severe and pretty negative meaning to it).
For the meaning of 献じる is rather unique as I think, there would be no "better" word. But IF you want to use it, use it in letters or books, it's rather part of the written language. Also, it's a law term. If you wanted do say donate use 献金.

Anyway, that's it already

Actually 厳しい　（きびしい） is used all the time. It has a slightly negative meaning I suppose but it usually used to describe situations, often in a joking manner. I would reccomend it to intermediate students as a word to make your Japanese sound more natural. 厳重 is used mainly in texts and in 5 years in Japan have never heard it in casual conversation. Just to make sure that I hadn't somehow messed this up I checked with my boss (A Japanese translator) and she agreed. I agree with the rest of your post.
Regards-
Hyland

Err, ok. I'm not living in Japan, so I don't have Japanese conversations every day. I just read Japanese books and newspapers and I wrote that judging from that experience.
Though one word, because I *think* you got my post wrong: The frequency of usage of kibishii as "strict", as rgravina said, is very rare! I have never ever read or heard someone describing someone as "kibishii" meaning "strict". Kibishii is, as far as I know, only used for situations or events or so and means rather "harsh", pretty colloquial . Tell me if I'm wrong, though my girlfriend says the same (just asked her, bilingual).
At least, I seem I didn't think enough about what I wrote...
厳重 is a word I've *read* quite frequently (proof: google, 5 million hits), but it isn't used to describe people either. Pooh...but at least it is translated as strict, different from 厳しい in most situations (*I* know).
「道路法規は厳重に守らなければならない」　just read that.
Also I realized why I thought that 厳重 is so often used: 厳重な注意 which is quite common. But 厳しい is much more frequently used, but rather colloquial, while 厳重 is rather...high language. Ask your boss on that! Whenever I use 厳しい it's always something like やべ~ or so.

So far....

Aikou-
I see what you mean now. I did misinterpret your post a bit, my apologies. Also, I also use 厳しい for やばい( risky, chancy in the dictionary, closer to the american english "Fu-ck" but if your a high school student, it is more like "sweet" or can be. I can't keep up with high school students anymore..) and had unconciously included that in my image of how widely 厳しい is used.
But in conversation,父がとても厳重です。(My father is very strict) would be unnatural/strange, if technically correct. 父がとても厳しいです。 Would be grammatically correct and natural.
2) I spelled recommend wrong in my first post. I hate it when I do that. Have to put it back in the zero pile....

Sorry to have take the thread so far off course.

This took off a little bit while I've been away. I've been without internet access for a couple of weeks so sorry for the late reply. I'll try to get back to people who posted as soon as I can.

laxxy Wrote:wrightak, if you happen to have an electronic file with your Japanese keywords and examples, I would be most interested.

Sure thing, just let me know where to send it to.

Raichu Wrote:The point of Heisig's approach is to teach how you write each kanji and give you a rough idea of its meaning. It was never meant to be accurate or complete in terms of meaning. He avoids Japanese readings except in isolated cases because he's trying to give a headstart in learning kanji to people who may not have a grasp of Japanese vocab.

I agree that the first step should be to concentrate on making a story and using that to remember the writing. I don't think that this necessarily implies that you have to use English words though. Just one Japanese word. That's the key: don't try and overload on all of the different readings and meanings, just pick one Japanese word and associate it's meaning with the kanji. At least, this is the approach that I've taken. I see no reason for not being accurate and complete with one meaning of the kanji.

I've been reviewing for a long time now and instead of looking at 'mountain' every time, I look at やま now instead. I also use supermemo because the review section of this site creates a workload that is too much when you've got over 2000 kanji to review.

One thing that I should point out is that anyone interested in what I'm doing cannot use reviewing methods that don't allow you to change the keywords. (This site and probably kanjigym). I think this site is brilliant but it's strength comes with the community that's been developed rather than with the review section. Until Fabrice decides to have more than four boxes in the review section, you've got your work cut out for you if you're reviewing more than 1500 kanji.

I'm probably going to be reviewing kanji for a very, very long time and I will also be reviewing the stories I've created for a long time. It's crazy for me to keep doing this with English keywords. The faster you change to Japanese keywords without forgetting the imagery from your story, the better.

Personally I quite like the comfort of English keywords. Often they fit well into the stories. Using a Japanese word from the start if great if you already know a word that contains the kanji you are studying. Or when Heisig introduces you to a word you don't even know in English (e.g. catalpa), why not go straight to Japanese?

That said, I do my review on this site so at the stage that I am at, English keywords are the most convenient for my study methods.

wrightak Wrote:Until Fabrice decides to have more than four boxes in the review section, you've got your work cut out for you if you're reviewing more than 1500 kanji.

I've not finished RTK1 yet however think that the reviewing schedule on the site works very well as long as you didn't add too many cards from the blue stack on any given days. I made the mistake of adding the first 1000 within a short space of time so I do have some days that are pretty tight. However as cards move to the right, the heavy days become less and less. The final box is "4 or more reviews", kind of like Dr Who's Tardis I suppose.

The idea of using Supermemo or whatever and changing the keywords to Japanese words once you have done the first round of learning with RTK1 is excellent. This is something that I may well progress to. Nice idea, thanks.