At the insistance of just about everyone studying Japanese, I finally sucked it up and started RTK. Currently, I'm about 400 in. Not bad for 8 days.

Now, I have a serious concern that nobody has been able to answer. If I can't get an answer, I'm probably going to drop RTK completely.

Exactly how does knowing 2000 characters help you, when you can't use a single one of them? That is my problem with RTK. Sure, you know vague keywords that sometimes aren't even close to the real Japanese meaning, but suddenly you come across a compound. Possess. Name. The first thing that comes to my mind isn't famous. It's something to do with being named. I thought RTK2 would address this, but glancing through it, it doesn't seem to do much but ask you to do rote memorization, something that just makes all you did in RTK1 useless.

I may seem negative, but this is two hours of time I could be putting towards other forms of study.

If you're serious about learning to read japanese then at some point you need to find a system for learning the kanji. You know this. There are many different views on which is the best.

Many people, including myself, find that breaking the task into two parts makes the process much easier. This is what RTK does. First you learn to recognize/write the character and then you learn to read it (in it's often many forms). Therefore, you will not be able to read Japanese at the end of RTK1, but you will be able to recognize and write all of the basic characters. The journey beyond to full knowledge will become significantly easier (and I can't overstate that).

The people on this forum have found Heisig to be a great way of nailing the first part in a (relatively) fast and enjoyable manner. The subsequent approach to readings is much more debated, with most people preferring to build up a knowledge through studying sentences and vocabulary on their SRS. RTK2 is generally not considered to be a great "next step" to learning readings, but there are a few followers here.

There are many posts on this forum which ask questions such as yours. I suggest you browse through and do a bit of reading. If you think that the system might not be for you then go off and experiment with other study methods, but having tried these other methods I'd advise you to stay open minded with regards to RTK1.

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Hi Triddy and welcome,

The combination of keywords does not necessarily represent the word meaning, in some cases it doesn't at all. For instance, there are words in Japanese for which the characters are used for their pronunciation only.

After completing RtK you will find that having identified each character individually in a compound it becomes a lot easier to remember the sounds and the meaning of the word as a whole. Furthermore, if you put enough attention while reviewing your vocab, or practiced writing the compound a few times by recalling each character individually, you will find that for many words remembering the complete writing is also easy.

Right now for example you know how to write "famous" in Japanese, right ? Regardless of whether the "keyword combination" means something in itself. Soon, you'll know how to write しんかんせん in kanji form just as easily (even if it means "new trunk line" ).

Don't get stuck on the exact keywords. The real key of the method is that your mind makes a distinct recognition for every unique Japanese character. After that, there is a sort of unconscious process that goes on in the mind when you try to remember words, whether or not you remember the exact english meaning, your mind knows where to find the kanji parts in your memory.

PS: also if you feel those 2 hours can be better spent, you can do that too. RtK is great at a certain point in your study. In theory you can do it right after the kana but you will probably want to learn a few hundred words in phonetic form, learn some grammar basics etc, enough to keep you motivated for the RtK ride basically..

Let me explain how RTK has helped me so far. I've been going for 6 weeks and am up to 900 kanji.

I have been studying Japanese on and off for more than 4 years. I'm currently in an "advanced" class at a university. Before starting RTK, I could probably read about 100 kanji, and I might have been able to write about 50 kanji from memory. Sure, I was "supposed" to know a few hundred by now, but the fact of the matter is, I don't. I usually can't even write basic words like 勉強する。 There is just nothing to make them stick for me. Also, learning kanji up until now has been just about the most boring thing I can imagine.

But now, if I am presented with new kanji in class that I need to learn, I will often have already learned how to write it from RTK. In that case, I have very little difficulty at all learning the reading and meaning of the words. The hardest part is just knowing what the kanji looks like! Learning them through RTK is also MUCH more fun and interesting than simply drilling some apparently random strokes over and over again until I finally get it (only to lose it a few days later).

Yes. I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but the way you go about explaining your problem it almost seems as if you expected RtK to be a shortcut to understanding Japanese without actually being able to read (ie pronounce) it. This was never anything like the idea behind RtK - nevermind compounds, it shouldn't even be used to help you read single kanji words. The method is simply to let you recognize and write every common-use kanji character, so that the process of learning vocabulary and readings (separately or together) is much, much easier in the future, as if having the same advantage of a Chinese or Korean speaker coming in. Who, as it happen, are much more successful (and speedy) in learning the language, as a rule.

I've already proven the effectiveness of this method for myself. I had for a couple of months been studying Kanji the traditional way, and had learned maybe 125 of them. And since I was only learning Kanji and readings for words I already knew, I was literally learning nothing new save for their writings. For only that, I found this rate utterly unacceptable. However, having put my other Japanese studies to the side, in the mere two and a half weeks I've spent studying the kanji separate from their readings I've learned to write (which is all I was learning ever-so-slowly before) 1300 kanji. What's more, even though I haven't been studying any form of Japanese other than the kanji during this period, I've managed to accidentally pick up and retain a number of Japanese words I've encountered during my natural day-to-day activities simply because of actually being able to recognize the characters and (vague) meanings used to write them. Once you've learned to recognize and (so importantly) write the characters, the time spent learning everything else about a kanji is reduced by leaps and bounds. I'd argue that, because of the unique nature of kanji, it makes new vocabulary even easier to pick up than in most other languages...

So, yeah. That's the goal. There's an article about all this linked on the front page at the moment, as well.

How long have you been studying Japanese? If you're just starting out, RTK won't seem obvious. If you've been studying a semester or two, it should be pretty apparent. I took 6 semesters in college, and I saw the benefits after the second chapter of RTK. It just makes it SO much easier to remember how to construct proper kanji from memory, as well as to deconstruct them when you see them on paper.

The other question I have for you: how are you studying RTK? Are you using this site or some other SRS/flash card system? Because if you're not, you're going to get frustrated quickly.

I finished RTK about 5-6 weeks ago, and now I find that my ability to learn new kanji compounds/vocab is a heck of a lot easier than it used to be, simply because I can look at a kanji, and recognize it. I may not always know the keyword right off the bat, but I can look at, tear it apart into pieces, and reconstruct it.

RTK creates a lot of memory hooks and placeholders in your brain for kanji, the same way you do so when learning an alphabet. "A" may not have a meaning, but it occupies a spot in your brain you associate with it. RTK is sort of the same thing. You create connections between kanji and keywords not so much so you can use they keywords to "guess" at Japanese words, but so when you encounter kanji in Japanese, you understand how the characters a) are written, b) fit together, and c) you understand that if all else fails, you have a quick and dirty set of pre-made mnemonics to remember the compound until your brain fills in the gaps with Japanese.

So 京都 is きょうと, that famous Japanese city I so love to visit. I don't have to think it's the "East Metropolis," based on Heisig's keywords, because I've seen it so often, I just know it's Kyoto. But if I was just learning it, it makes a nice crutch. Same goes for 沖縄 or おきなわ, the place in the "Open Sea" where you can find a chain of beautiful islands that looks like a "straw rope" from above. It's a crutch you CAN use (you don't HAVE to) until you internalize it as simply おきなわ.

I find it's especially handy for place names.

I can also keep 待つ　and 持つ straight now.

I think of RTK as lubrication for my Japanese skills. It won't make or break you, but it will make things a LOT easier.

Rather than repeat what others have said, I'll just go with how RtK would help you with your example word.

Knowing 有名 is more of an issue with learning vocab. Would you have been better able to guess the meaning of this word if you had learned 有る (to exist) and 名前 (name) first? You have to learn both kanji and vocab to learn Japanese. RtK is just about assigning a keyword to each kanji to make it easier to recall.

You might not be able to guess 有名 means "famous" from just recognizing the characters as "possess name," but you won't have to work as hard to recall "What are the kanji for 'famous' and how do I write them?"

And actually, my native Japanese teacher said 有名 means "You 'have name' that people recognize, so you're famous!" So you might not be able to figure out 有名 means 'famous' if you didn't already know it. But when you are reading and come across 有名 written somewhere later, you will be much less likely to have forgotten its meaning.

After getting through RtK, there will be some words you can guess the meaning of and some you can't. But you will have a much faster time learning new words if you have a meaning/keyword for each of the kanji than if you think of them as a bunch of seemingly random lines.

I'm surprised, I went into this post even more negatively than I went into RtK, and I actually got some good answers out of it.

To put a background to it, I've been studying lightly for about a year and a bit, seriously for about a month. Through context, I've learned maybe 300-400 kanji for recognition, 150 for writing. My vocab is kinda lacking though.

Prettykitty and rich_f phrased it in a way that makes a lot of sense to me, and I thank you. I never really thought of that angle; that even if it didn't help you read it, it may help you WRITE it.

rich_f Wrote:how are you studying RTK? Are you using this site or some other SRS/flash card system? Because if you're not, you're going to get frustrated quickly.

Mainly use this site. For some of the tricky ones, I hand make a few flashcards to bring to school with me. Generally, I spend my mornings reading over the Kanji (Bout an hour), my B block class reviewing on this site (It's a throw-away class. My mark is actually above 100%), and then I go over the ones I had trouble with when I get home. (Bout an hour)

I found the most benefit from actually finishing RTK1. As I went along the way, I found a lot of helpful ways to remember kanji, but the order he uses doesn't always mesh with the way kanji are traditionally taught.

You'll probably hit a few speed bumps in the early 500s, when he stops holding your hand a little, then in the 1000s, when he just sort of leaves you there to figure it out on your own. There are some rough patches in there, and some easy patches. Some keywords are confused with others easily, and some are just poorly chosen, but it's ok.

Just keep momentum going, clear your failed pile, write out the kanji as you review them, and do your reviews every day. It's not really rocket science, it's more about showing up, doing the work, and not skipping. Your brain will do the rest of the work while you aren't paying attention.

You'll reach that "aha!" point as you start studying real Japanese after finishing RTK1, if not sooner. It's a late payoff, but a big one.

It's great that the number of people that have "finished" RTK1 stick around to post advice for those asking. I had assumed when I "finished" RTK1 I'd eventually move on to another forum, but I'm finding the community here very refreshing and positively builds on my studies.

I'm pretty sure advice from those that complete RTK and go on to complete further Japanese studies holds some weight about the efficacy of RTK.

By the way, I put "finished" in quotation marks cause I'm of the opinion you're not done with RTK just because you put the last story into the SRS deck. Nor are you really done when you put 90% into stack four or higher. Anyway, sorry for the brief thread jacking.

Triddy, glad you're getting the answers you didn't really think you sought. I will add caution that since you had prefabricated knowledge of Kanji prior you're at risk of going about RTK the wrong way. Remember not to rely to heavily on mnemonics. Create or use stories that make visual images even for the kanji you already know. For myself, complicated kanji that I learned prior to RTK (the ones for 飛行機, airplane) actually gave me problems cause I knew them already. I brushed off creating a good story for them, meaning I was missing the proper writing.

Based on comments in this forum, around 1000 mark people start hitting a brick wall with recall. Even at 1800, people were getting burned out. Just a word of caution that fast going early on does not mean completion at that rate. Do the method properly and you might avoid that.

Yeah, I agree with you, Nuke-- I made a conscious effort to forget how everything I had learned about kanji beforehand. (Not too hard for me these days. Heh.) That actually helped quite a bit. I knew a lot of kanji before I started RTK, but now I know them as totally different critters.

About being finished-- you're finished when you no longer need to do daily reviews. I'm not sure when that's supposed to happen, tho. I'm still reviewing 50-90 kanji a day, and I've been done with the book for over a month now. I suppose I won't be done reviewing for quite a while. (And sometime in the near future I'll probably start doing the 960+ kanji in RTK3, too.... just as soon as I finish KO.)

Funny you should mention that. I too am doing KO, but today I made a decision: I'm going to also add about 20 to 30 new kanji a week (from RTK3) into my Anki deck (not RevTK). I figure it could take 6 to 10 months to fully finish KO at my rate. By that time, I could have almost all of RTK3 entered in Anki.

Reason I'm not doing RevTK for these is I'm really wanting to experiment with the Kanji to Keyword and Keyword to Kanji reviewing.

About finishing, yes, I think it's important to remember that even after you added that last story you still need to review every day getting the kanji into long term memory. Soon, those 40 to 50 reviews a day dwindle down to 20 to 30 (where I'm at) and hopefully to 10 to 20. Just mathematically, assuming that Kanji will never be spaced out farther than 240 days for stack 8, then 3000 cards means roughly 12 reviews a day minimum. Well, that is until Fabrice decides to add a stack 9.

Triddy,

have you been to Japan yet? If not, once you're immersed in kanji top, bottom, left & right, RtK may seem a lot more efficient. When I lived there I had 700-800 kanji "mastered" and was up to 1300 in RtK, and I was thankful for those 1300 because they helped me navigate all kinds of things, from menus to signs to office memos.

Even if you can't read it out loud, you can get the gist of it. It's like "getting" French because you know the etymologies and feel of a word-- and inferring the gist of something before learning it from a textbook is the best way to learn.

And I don't know of a better way to learn kanji, other than rote (ugh).

Nukemarine Wrote:Triddy, glad you're getting the answers you didn't really think you sought. I will add caution that since you had prefabricated knowledge of Kanji prior you're at risk of going about RTK the wrong way. Remember not to rely to heavily on mnemonics. Create or use stories that make visual images even for the kanji you already know. For myself, complicated kanji that I learned prior to RTK (the ones for 飛行機, airplane) actually gave me problems cause I knew them already. I brushed off creating a good story for them, meaning I was missing the proper writing.

To be honest, I find it hard to use stories for the ones that have already be etched into my mind. It's a thought process something like 'Well, this character means time. Why WOULDN'T it mean time? It just makes sense.' I use stories rather than mnemonics for the vast majority of the characters I don't know, however. Almost 100%.

There are some that are impossible to use mnemonics for, at least in my opinion. Treetops, for example. I cannot possibly think of something for treetops that doesn't involve a story of some sort.

billyclyde Wrote:have you been to Japan yet? If not, once you're immersed in kanji top, bottom, left & right, RtK may seem a lot more efficient. When I lived there I had 700-800 kanji "mastered" and was up to 1300 in RtK, and I was thankful for those 1300 because they helped me navigate all kinds of things, from menus to signs to office memos.

No, I have not been to Japan yet, as I am only 15 and can hardly afford to go on my own. My school district apparently offers a homestay program that I am looking into, so I hope to go sometime next year.

It's nice to hear that this helped out with being in Japan.

I've recently started playing an old SNES game (Chrono Trigger) in Japanese and it really opened my eyes to how important knowing the kanji is.

The fonts are so restricted, that many characters are highly distorted. And since it's in an emulator, you can't just copy and paste. To look up the kanji, you need to know them.

The Windows IME has an option for looking up kanji based on handwriting. Ie, you write the kanji in a window, and it tries to put it in your word processor. This seems to be based more on stroke order than on actual visual resemblance. If you do the stroke order wrong, it'll output totally wrong kanji even if what you enter LOOKS perfect. On the other hand if you use the right stroke order, you can make it the shittiest handwriting ever and the IME will still find the kanji.

Some complicated kanji, you just plain HAVE to know in order to look up, because the restricted font forces entire radicals to be squished together. For example, if there's a "big dog" radical below a horizontal line, they might just squash it into two tiny drops coming out of the bottom of the horizontal line. If you didn't already know the kanji it'd be hopeless.

You probably say, "well old SNES games are rather obscure". But I'm sure it's the same with handwriting, calligraphy, etc...

I just want to really encourage you to keep studying Rtk.

One of the beauties of RtK is the sheer structure it provides. It's something that has a pretty definite end (there are kanji not covered by RtK, but by doing RtK you can handle those fairly well on your own) and provides you with a lot of information and ability you'll gain throughout the way. It's not difficult per se, just time consuming. It also isn't really hard to "get lost" like it is in general language learning; discouragement is likely to come from feeling overwhelmed by the volume rather than feeling lost on what to do. It's easy to keep going because what you need to do is always in plain view.

At 15 I think this is an incredible task to complete. Really, you can accomplish a lot. You have so much time ahead of you to study language without worrying about other responsibilities too much. Doing RtK now will put you leaps and bounds ahead of other people. If you take Japanese at college (in America) you will probably laugh at the lists of vocabulary and kanji to memorize while your classmates forget the simplest ones they learned last year.

Keep at it and Japanese reading and writing will be a cinch in the future.

Triddy Wrote:At the insistance of just about everyone studying Japanese, I finally sucked it up and started RTK. Currently, I'm about 400 in. Not bad for 8 days.

Not bad indeed, congratulations.

Quote:Exactly how does knowing 2000 characters help you, when you can't use a single one of them?

It doesn't, really. Its helpful to have those hooks in your mind to easier associate Kanji with later, but I agree with you that just knowing a single keyword is quite useless in itself.

Quote:That is my problem with RTK. Sure, you know vague keywords that sometimes aren't even close to the real Japanese meaning, but suddenly you come across a compound. Possess. Name. The first thing that comes to my mind isn't famous. It's something to do with being named. I thought RTK2 would address this, but glancing through it, it doesn't seem to do much but ask you to do rote memorization, something that just makes all you did in RTK1 useless.

I think one of the things Heisig enthusiasts should be careful about is talking up RTK too much in relation to compounds, because I don't think its much help there either. Occassionally you can put two kanji together to derive the correct meaning of the compound, but I'd say usually the links aren't obvious enough to be able to do that.

Doing RTK is a personal choice, and different people to different things. I think RTK has an addictive appeal in that you can classify your exact progress with a single number, which is not something you can do with other parts of your study. It means that people feel like they are making progress all the time, and keep feeling motivated, which ultimately is helpful to them.

My advise to you if you are not sure is also to try other methods. Just writing the same Kanji's again and again isn't the only way to learn. Just by reading more, playing DS games, and watching Japanese TV can be a great help. You may find things that suit you far better or are more enjoyable to you, and thats probably the most important thing for you right now (since you don't live here there is no desperate rush to learn everything ASAP).

Don't get hung up on kanji too much, it looks far more difficult than it is. Once you get more and more comfortable speaking/hearing and reading, the Kanji themselves begin to eventually fall into place. Learning tens of thousands of new words, and succinct grammar, is far more challenging than reading/writing (I promise you)

Triddy: you may find the following interesting

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...5#pid19415

or directly: http://wrightak.googlepages.com/afterrtk1