Heisig suggests in RTK2 to use "Primitive phonemes" to learn the kun-yomi for Kanji. Do I understand it right, that the idea is to use the listed "Primitive phonemes" to create stories/pictures, like in RTK1, to learn the kun-readig for the Kanji? How well does this work?

Has anyone tried this and can give some advise and review about this approach?

Did you try to find personifies primitives for the phonemes?

Last night I tried my first one. I have no idea if what I learned was kun or on, but I still remember it. It was 弱肉強食　（じゃくにくきょうしょく - survival of the fittest, basically）. I actually saw it in the "favourite phrases?" topic of this forum.

The primitive phonemes were:
ja - evil
ku - reel/spin
ni - suitcase
ku - spin
kyo - giant
u - rabbit
sho - signature
ku - spin

My story was an evil substance in the water caught on a fishhook being reeled in. While being reeled in it spun wildly, so it was put in a suitcase to calm it down. Then the suitcase started to spin. So the giant, who I now find out was the one reeling it in, found the rabbit and forced the rabbit to have the suitcase full of the evil spinning stuff. The rabbit had to sign for it, vouching that he received it. Then, as the rabbit walked away, the suitcase began to spin again, spinning the rabbit in his tracks. I think to myself as I see this story: poor rabbit, lousy giant. Oh well, "survival of the fittest".

That was only last night, and one word at that. But it seems that the method works, if only as a last resort to remember the truly difficult ones.

Er, those are on-yomi, not kun-yomi. Wouldn't it be a heck of a lot easier to just use the actual meanings of those kanji?
じゃく weak にく meat きょう strong しょく food
Then you'll be associating the sounds with the correct kanji meanings, instead of something so incredibly round-about.

(I don't use this method, but I think the idea is to assign a meaning to all the hiragana and then use those meanings to make stories for kun-yomi. Like 染める(そめる, to dye) you'd have a meaning for 　そ, め, and る already, and then make a story to tie them all to the single word そめる. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Haven't got the book with me now, but I believe the method is primarily aimed at guessing the hidden kun-yomi, not the okurigana. As with on-yomi you test from kanji to reading, so the okurigana would already be there. In your example you'd try to tie the primitive phoneme for そ with the keyword and/or(?) the meaning.

yukamina Wrote:Er, those are on-yomi, not kun-yomi. Wouldn't it be a heck of a lot easier to just use the actual meanings of those kanji?

Yeah, I figured they were on-yomi, but it worked all the same. And yes, I know the meanings of those kanji and yes, it would be easier to do it if I knew the readings of those kanji, but I don't. (Well, I do know niku). And besides, I wanted to try out the method.

It takes a lot of work though. It will be much easier when I know how to say more words, and I don't have to make a huge story just to remember one word.

In defense of the method: it always works. What I mean is that previously, when learning a completely new word, I had associated its sounds with similar sounding English equivalents. And that is not easy, since I couldn't find ANY word in English like toku, or satsu, or whatever. At least with this method, if you learn all the "primitive phonemes" really well, there will always be a sound the can be associated and made into a story, regardless of kun or on or length or meaning.

But yes, hopefully some day (soon) I will be able to drop this method.

(Oh, and I think a better example of this method would be something like: 体 (からだ). It's one kanji with three syllables. For someone who doesn't yet know the word, and they have trouble remembering random sounds, they could easily look at it and say: Ok, the word 'body' has a /ka/ like a mosquito, /ra/ like nude, and /da/ like an embrace. So I just need to remember a story about a mosquito who took off all his clothes so he could hug his wife's body (or something like that). It would thus help me remember the single kanji word that has many syllables.)

Thanks to MethodGT I've now a really weird story in my head. I forgot the readings but I remembered the story and the meaning of 弱肉強食, dang. So it really seems to work, but I have to put some energy into remembering the sounds the phonetic primitives are supposed to be associated with.

I agree that it sounds like a lot of work to come up with stories for every kun-reading, even if you've learned the phonetic primitives. Currently I learn kun-yomi by learning vocabulary, but I think I'll give it a try when I encounter difficult words that won't stick otherwise.

Looking it up, it appears I was correct for the most part, except you don't use the keyword at all, you just link meaning and primitive phonemes for the non-okurigana part. Interestingly, there are no meanings given in the indices. Nor any compounds for those kun-yomi that only appear in compounds (such as あい for 相, as in 相手, 相棒). Perhaps that's what (BROKEN LINK) Thora refers to when fishing for comments on part Two.

Heisig says to use this technique sparingly, and also to reuse combinations you know from other kanji. So if you already know こころ for 心, you can use heart instead of 2 こ's and a ろ in your story for 試みる.

Haven't used it yet, but I know there are quite a few kun-yomi's I have the utmost difficulty in remembering or producing, let alone link them to a kanji. For them, this (or DrJones' method) could be useful.

MethodGT's story reminds me of the stories for the noodle kanji, also Jarvik7's avatar. Fun for once, but bordering on overkill.

You called?

I can't see why in the world you'd need a story like that to remember whatever it is supposed to aid you with (readings? meanings?). For the meanings of jukugo it is much much easier in my opinion to just disassemble it into its components. For the 弱肉強食 example: the WEAK's MEAT is the STRONG's FOOD.

As for kanji readings, they come for free when you learn vocabulary. Assigning arbitrary meanings to every kana and then making stories out of those is just taking the Heisig system way too far I think. The story didn't even tie the kanji themselves in, so you just had a mnemonic for some readings with nothing attached to them, and a very vague implication of the meaning of the jukugo (poor rabbit lousy giant doesn't really mean anything like survival of the fittest as far as I can see)...

Weird- for 弱肉強食 I instantly thought :
"Weak Meat Strong Eat". It ryhtms, right? And it seems a little primitive, like its meaning (Law of the Jungle). As if a tarzan kind of person said it....

Jarvik7 Wrote:As for kanji readings, they come for free when you learn vocabulary. Assigning arbitrary meanings to every kana and then making stories out of those is just taking the Heisig system way too far I think. The story didn't even tie the kanji themselves in, so you just had a mnemonic for some readings with nothing attached to them, and a very vague implication of the meaning of the jukugo (poor rabbit lousy giant doesn't really mean anything like survival of the fittest as far as I can see)...

Agreed, it would be the equivalent of assigning meaning to the individual strokes of kanji. The guy over at kanji town, has a slightly better method, but based on this idea. Might be worth taking a look at.
http://kanjitown.blogspot.com/2006/01/th...-made.html

MethodGT Wrote:My story was an evil substance in the water caught on a fishhook being reeled in. While being reeled in it spun wildly, so it was put in a suitcase to calm it down. Then the suitcase started to spin. So the giant, who I now find out was the one reeling it in, found the rabbit and forced the rabbit to have the suitcase full of the evil spinning stuff. The rabbit had to sign for it, vouching that he received it. Then, as the rabbit walked away, the suitcase began to spin again, spinning the rabbit in his tracks. I think to myself as I see this story: poor rabbit, lousy giant. Oh well, "survival of the fittest".

This is one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen as far as learning Japanese goes.

What ever happened to, you know, just learning the way most people would? Learning Japanese words, then the Kanji that is associated for them? I can't imagine that anyone ever could possibly become literate in Japanese with this method - and if they can, definitely not faster than had they just learnt Japanese properly in the first place!