GoDoFCh33se Wrote:i liked all the Mr. T stories that many of you posted.

So did I. They got me thinking about changing my person primative stories to Chuck Norris! What I am using now (a good friend) actually aren't as memorable as I thought they would be.

If anyone isn't familiar with the phenomenon of Chuck Norris quotes, you can hear him read some out on YouTube

Actually one thing I'd like to thank everyone here for is giving me the idea of changing primitives to something more memorable, or grouping primitives which commonly occur togther as another primitive itself.

There are loads of other people's stories that I use. Some that I've come across in review recently are (in no particular order):

hoist - rizzo
second - mnkohi
restore - akimoto
enemy - certain
ring; send back; sulphur - fuaburisu
obese - mattoc_g
window - Ricardo

The whole personification vibe championed by Scottamus has really helped me out too. It's quite exciting thinking what person troublesome primatives are going to become.

Cheers,

Raichu: 腹 abdomen - A part of the body that needs you to go for a walk every day to keep it in shape. Love it. I had real trouble recalling the RTK stories for the double-back primitive and for folding abdomen.

After today's reviewing, some decent stories I use are:

gather - Johan
fear - darg_sama
emotion - mspertus

A challenger for my "favourite story by someone else" has to be:

authority - fuaburisu

"I have Eric Cartman of the ?South Park? animated series, wearing a cop uniform, riding a wooden Pegasus (such as on a funfair), and yelling ?RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!!!?."

A story that is pure simplicity is astridtops' sign of the bird frame 1427. "The sign of the bird on this whiskey bottle is of course the Famous Grouse blended Scotch."

Cheers,

Out of curiosity, how would you look up a kanji for its various meanings when coming up with a story that includes them as faburisu suggested? Should you be able to find any of the kanji with Heisig's english keyword (using WWWJDIC)?

It's an interesting idea, to give a feeling of meaning to a kanji. Although I'm not sure if I'd prefer the faster and easier approach of creating anything memorable.

Seiun Wrote:Out of curiosity, how would you look up a kanji for its various meanings when coming up with a story that includes them as faburisu suggested? Should you be able to find any of the kanji with Heisig's english keyword (using WWWJDIC)?

A while back I invested in "The Kanji Dictionary" by Mark Spahn and Wolfgang Hadamitzky. It contains 5000 kanji, with various readings and a lot of compounds. The only complaint some people have is that it translates readings directly into romaji, but to be honest, I think that is not much of a drawback. It's size of course is a drawback - it's not the sort of book you sneak into your travelling bag, with over 1300 pages and a hardcover.

Anyway, even now that I'm into the more obscure realm of RTK3 kanji, I can always find these kanji and see how they are read and used in compounds.

Looking up kanji online can be a tad difficult if you don't know the reading, unless of course you can copy and paste them into something like http://www.kanjicafe.com (but that hardly works when you're reading manga).

Seiun Wrote:Out of curiosity, how would you look up a kanji for its various meanings when coming up with a story that includes them as faburisu suggested? Should you be able to find any of the kanji with Heisig's english keyword (using WWWJDIC)?

I have the shorter "Learner's" version of the dictionary that Astridtops recommended (covers jouyou plus..) and I find it very good, you get the readings and meanings for the kanji alone and for the compounds that it is included in. Although I still use it (for one thing it has stroke order) I mostly look kanji up with JWPce, a free Windows based word processor/dictionary /look up tool (which you may know about) that uses the EDICT database.

WWW JDIC doesn't seem very handy for looking up single kanji (unless I am not using it properly) whereas JWPce is great for that, if you have the kanji in copy/paste form (e.g. from this site, where you can look kanji up by Heisig keyword) you can just paste it into the dictionary window and all the EDICT entries will come up that contain it. That is, the kanji on its own, compounds containing it, verbs, adjectives and such (with okurigana), expressions and some short phrases. In many cases you get too much information, but there are a few filters to cut things down, and all the popular usages are marked (P) which is a big help.

It's not perfect but it's a great tool for exploring EDICT. You can update the database from Jim Breen's server so that it is always up to date with the latest additions and amendments to EDICT.

There is also a huge array of look up tools if you don't have the kanji in electronic form. I mostly use the radical look up table in that case, usually when translating from manga.

Here's just a portion of the results when pasting in 腹 which vosmiura mentioned (note the (P) denoting popular usage), showing nouns, adjectives, verbs and expressions:

腹 【はら】 (n) abdomen, belly, stomach, (P)
腹一杯 【はらいっぱい】 (adv,n) bellyful, full stomach, to one's heart's content, (P)
腹心 【ふくしん】 (n,adj-no) one's confidant, trusted friend, trusted retainer, (P)
腹痛 【はらいた】 (n) stomach ache, abdominal pain, (P)
腹部 【ふくぶ】 (n) abdomen, (P)
腹膜炎 【ふくまくえん】 (n) peritonitis, (P)
腹いせ 【はらいせ】 (n) retaliation, revenge
腹イセ 【はらイセ】 (n) retaliation, revenge
腹がすわる 【はらがすわる】 (exp) to have guts, to be unwavering in one's resolution
腹が下る 【はらがくだる】 (v5r) to have loose bowels
腹が緩い 【はらがゆるい】 (adj) have loose bowels
腹が減る 【はらがへる】 (v5r) to become hungry
腹が黒い 【はらがぐろい】 (exp) scheming, malicious, wicked, blackhearted

One of my favourite stories from this site is from taijuando, for the kanji for 'special':

Quote:The Buddhist temple cow is pretty special ....he's rockin' out in front of the temple...this cow's name is "Special Kay".

I think it's the way it's written -there's no reason I can see, from the primitives, why the cow is called Special Kay, but she is, and I just have to accept that. I'd struggled with this primitive so many times, but after reading that I'd just think, "Right! It's Special Kay! Rockin' out!" and that would be all I needed. In fact, this is one of the few that didn't go in my six month kanji-forgetting spree.

Edit : for clarity

Sibyl Wrote:One of my favourite stories from this site is from taijuando, for the kanji for 'special':

Quote:The Buddhist temple cow is pretty special ....he's rockin' out in front of the temple...this cow's name is "Special Kay".

I think it's the way it's written -there's no reason I can see, from the primitives, why the cow is called Special Kay, but she is, and I just have to accept that. I'd struggled with this primitive so many times, but after reading that I'd just think, "Right! It's Special Kay! Rockin' out!" and that would be all I needed. In fact, this is one of the few that didn't go in my six month kanji-forgetting spree.

Edit : for clarity

Yes. Memory works in strange ways. And quite differently from person to person. The "story" that immediately and firmly stuck in my mind, for 'both' was gorgon's one (see 2nd and 3rd from the bottom at http://kanji.koohii.com/study.php?search=both ), and it is not even a story!

Raichu wrote this for cook:

Quote:Japanese cooking sometimes lacks fire, e.g., sashimi.

So obvious, and I'd spent so much time thinking about a bored chef... :) At least it happened early enough to value browsing through other's stories before hammering away at my own. Keep posting them!

Ha! I just got to "beat" (撃), and I love Inuki's short but schweet story: "Your car has missles?! That beats mine, hands down."

mattoc_g -- quasi-
synewave -- prostrated
Stormchild -- gauze
nmkohi -- second

[ファブリス]

Haha, rizzo's "quasi-" story is pretty funny too:

Story for quasi- Wrote:Quasi-modo was reincarnated as a hunchbacked turkey. Shunned by the other turkeys one winter he retreated to the frozen pond, and used the ice to build a perfect replica of Notre Dame Cathedral.

I thought of Quasimodo as well but sometimes the imagination races ahead of you and I just saw this turkey skating on ice and hence my mnemonic about a "quasi-olympic level ice-skating turkey". I never needed to change it afterwards, go figure!

I had the same happen with "slippery". I immediately saw this skeleton desperately trying to stand up on a slippery floor and that was it. That kanji took about 10 seconds to learn. Most took between 5-10 minutes, I wish they were this easy.

One technique I used a few times for switching to another story is mixing the old inefficient story with the new one. Because you don't get rid so easily of the inefficient one, so you keep the parts for which you had a vivid image, and add the elements that you like from the other story into the scene.

For example I might like to switch to rizzo's story about the hunchback turkey, in that case I might have "Quasi-modo the hunchback turkey ice skating (he used to be quasi-olympic level) in front of a ice replica of Notre Dame on a frozen pond". That way next time whether I remember first the ice-skating turkey or rizzo's Quasi-modo turkey I will recollect the story.

I've got to post up this story, it's really made the kanji stick:

CharleyGarrett wrote:

"Seeing her luxuriant long auburn hair, and other beautiful traits, "cleverness" is NOT the first thing that one thinks of when Trixie the stripper pops up out of the cake!"

This one was the most vivid (and helpful) for me, but "Trixie" has helped me out on many occasions...

Story for cut Wrote:After having such a terrible shave with one dagger, you decide to go for the gillete approach and use seven daggers for cutting edge precision. Just like gillete its a bunch of overpriced arse.

thegeezer3, thank you. I have always found this one inexplicably difficult; now, perhaps, less so.

synewave Wrote:Last edited: 3-10-2006
Resign = 辞める（やめる）。Borat is forced to resign coz of his inappropriate spicy tongue. "You have eh nice tits!" OR Women sometimes resign themselves to the spicy tongue of their boss. There's nothing wrong with a bit of banter BUT if he started to use spicy hands, a formal complaint may well follow!

Almost crapped my pants.

Frame 1507: report
By scottamus: "It is reported that Godzilla has found happiness by playing with his crotch."

I think a lot of your stories are brilliant but coming across this one was perfect timing. I'm entering the home stretch of the grind to 2042 and my spirits have been a little low the past couple days; but this story made me crack up hysterically for some reason. So yea, thanks for cheering me up. =)

saranich Wrote:Remember the horny, brainy, tongue-wagging man who was formerly US president?

This (曽 frame 501) worked perfectly for me, and was useful for 憎 (626) too - I'm a clinton fan, but lots of people (including Freud - see state of mind primitive thread) feel passionate hate for him.

There were lots of great stories by many people -- I remember Raichu particularly fondly, even though I can not recall any specific stories. Which is a good thing imo, I think that when they can be made specific enough, 'natural' stories that explain the logic of the elements without any outside imagery work best for me.
Sometimes it is not enough though, one story of the other kind that was really helpful was the Triffid story by Immacolata for 'land', I really liked Wyndham (sp?) as a kid, so I could remember them pretty well

Have you ever got the experience where you selected one story, and then another one that you didn't select succesfully got stuck in your head instead?

Every time I now see 'benefit', I start singing "for the benefit of Mr. Kite...", and the kanji simply pops up in my head, thanks to cjon256's great association with the Beatles song, despite the fact that I didn't select that story .

As I reached 命 "fate" (frame 400), I wrote a quick-and-dirty script to see from whom I got more stories. Here they are (except those with less than 2 stories):

..+-- # of stories
..|
..| % Author
--- -------- ---------------
115 (14.37%) heisig
74 ( 9.25%) fuaburisu
56 ( 7.00%) raulir
54 ( 6.75%) raichu
24 ( 3.00%) cjon256
24 ( 3.00%) mspertus
23 ( 2.88%) gorgon
23 ( 2.88%) ruuku35
22 ( 2.75%) taijuando
22 ( 2.75%) charleygarrett
21 ( 2.63%) immacolata
21 ( 2.63%) stormchild
18 ( 2.25%) matticus
17 ( 2.13%) astridtops
16 ( 2.00%) chamcham
15 ( 1.88%) rizzo
13 ( 1.63%) ivosf
13 ( 1.63%) synewave
13 ( 1.63%) johnskb
13 ( 1.63%) darg_sama
11 ( 1.38%) mattoc_g
11 ( 1.38%) matthew
10 ( 1.25%) rgravina
9 ( 1.13%) ruuku
9 ( 1.13%) pepeseco
8 ( 1.00%) ergerg
8 ( 1.00%) piitaa
8 ( 1.00%) sweetneet
7 ( 0.88%) johnnyltn
7 ( 0.88%) the_marshal
5 ( 0.63%) wakela
5 ( 0.63%) scottamus
5 ( 0.63%) fluhk
4 ( 0.50%) johanvg
4 ( 0.50%) pauline
3 ( 0.38%) greenapple
3 ( 0.38%) fiminor
3 ( 0.38%) wrightak
3 ( 0.38%) lb
3 ( 0.38%) johan
3 ( 0.38%) radical_tyro
3 ( 0.38%) rptb1
3 ( 0.38%) erikkusan
3 ( 0.38%) jmadsen
3 ( 0.38%) laxxy
2 ( 0.25%) ayoung24
2 ( 0.25%) cjon
2 ( 0.25%) akimoto
2 ( 0.25%) elitentity
2 ( 0.25%) neurons
2 ( 0.25%) henroski
2 ( 0.25%) stauff
2 ( 0.25%) snozle
2 ( 0.25%) khooks
2 ( 0.25%) kyldyyr
2 ( 0.25%) sboegema
2 ( 0.25%) smithsonian
2 ( 0.25%) happychair
2 ( 0.25%) bigloui
2 ( 0.25%) toddi
2 ( 0.25%) copycatken
770 total.


Sometimes I get more than one story for a kanji, when I think that they seems equally good. Later I remove the stories that didn't stick, add another one or try to make one myself. As you can see, more than half of the stories I'm using are from other users. Thank you all for your great help, and 倍 thanks (again) for Fabrice (for both the site and the stories). Everybody, please keep up with the great work! :-D

Failed particularly earlier. So went and had a look at the stories and found a great one by wazzab - "When fighting the undead skeletal warriors (bones) the vermillion ones are the elite. These are particularly dificult to kill."

Reminded me of a game I used to play as a kid, Golden Axe. There were vermillion skeletons that were particularly hard to kill! Or at least that's how I remember it.

Cheers,

ファブリス Wrote:Whoah, nice one scottamus. This will go well along with my Tolkien stories then ;p

One thing I consider when makig stories is that I want to keep as close as possible to the original meaning. In this case there is room for interpretation, but you can adapt scottamus's story in the way you picture it to get closer to the use of the kanji that Heisig went for (likely) :

幽か 【かすか】 (adj-na,n) faint, dim, weak, indistinct, hazy, poor, wretched

For example, you may imagine that Frodo and Sam became very weak, and actually became hazy as some kind of magical effect of the spider's poison. Then when you recall the image you have directly the right concept in mind.

The kanji also means "deep and remote, secluded", hence the mountain radical. So you can make a story closer to the meaning, or closer to the primitives that the kanji contains (the origin of the character, if it's an old one). The best is to try and get the meaning as well as the primitives in the story in the way that makes a little sense and also carries the concept.

There are cases where the story gets too far away from the meaning of the keyword (as used in kanji compounds), which I prefer to avoid. You get a feel for it when you start reading (or just "sight reading" the kanji), and you notice you have to take that extra 1/10th of a second step to go from the image and the wrong interpretation to the correct interpretation of the keyword as used in the kanji compound.

I respond to this in a new post called multiple "meanings."

I just now got to stefanot's posting about Kanji #216 未:
"the Baron in the trees (I.Calvino)" lived one (FRAME 1) level above the tree (FRAME 195). Everytime they asked if he would come down, he always answered "not yet".

Reading "The Baron in the Trees" by Italo Calvino was a pretty fond memory for me... so It's nice to be able to connect that one to a Kanji now.