Hi,

I'm having trouble coming up with a mental image for "sword" (#83). Heisig says it looks like the handle of a sword but not to me. If it's a handle is the sword pointing up, left, right, or down? When it's "stretched out" and means saber... is it no longer a sword handle?

Then when Heisig says the drop on "blade" (#84) is a drop of blood on it, I'm even more stumped to imagine this "sword".

Can explain how you visualize it?

Thanks.

Sword was a breeze for me I just Imagined Link from Zelda Majora's mask using his new forged sword after bringing the gold dust to the blacksmiths. XD he he.

To me, it looks like the guard/pommel of a saber, so sword was never really an issue for me. Besides, you'll see it often enough that it'll get stuck in your head pretty well, in either form. The long skinny form is the blade of the sword, thrusting down.

[Katsuo]

Look at this sword.

Rotate it anti-clockwise 90 degrees, and the handle does look a bit like 刀.

For "blade" 刃 you could imagine a drop of blood dripping from the blade and landing on the handle (Memory: That drop of blood on the handle dripped from the blade).

刀 and the right side of 則 are related, so to distinguish between them it is useful to give them two related but distinct images. Hence Heisig's idea of "dagger" and "sabre".

Note that when you first learn a simple shape it can be useful to make it completely pictographic, like "handle" above. But once it is firmly in your memory it can become more conceptual, i.e. in this case any shape of "dagger" will do, it no longer has to look just like the "primitive".

I just memorized it visually, and then connected the "sword" kanji/primitive to the "sword" concept. So, I pretty just imagine any old sword in my stories that include it, and the concept of a sword calls back the primitive. Come to think of it, that's how I handle most primitives. If I can't break it down into component parts, then it doesn't get a story.

Oh, and there's a kanji later on for saber itself, so be careful not to get it confused. I just used sword no matter what, and didn't have many problems after a while. You sort of get the idea of which one you need based on which radicals you're dealing with.

Thanks, everyone!

Katsuo, that picture was very helpful.