I've still got a few weeks of RTK to go before I start on Kanji Odyssey to learn readings, but I'm already thinking and planning all the time :p
Anyways, I'm thinking that just like with learning the kanji, rote memorization of compounds might be pretty inefficient.

For example, take a word like お風呂 (ofuro, bath).
The Heisig keywords for this are "wind" and "spine".
A simple mnemonic to remember this compound could be something like "The open-air (wind) bath can do wonders for your spine!"

While this initially seemed like a good idea to me, after thinking it through further I have some reservations. Mainly that the Heisig keywords are supposed to "fade away" as you learn the Japanese readings, so do you think this would this hinder my progress and keep me in "English mode"?

I'd say just learn the word the hard way, and learn the kanji that are used in the compound. Try to see the logic (if there is any) in why those kanji are used for that word... But try to keep away from the English, try to use the concepts of the kanji rather than an English meaning. If you need a *keyword* to associate that certain kanji to the meaning to the compound... I think it's fine, as long as it's your last resort kind of thing.

Compounds you see fairly often will eventually just stick anyway, I don't think it's easy to forget 勉強, for example.

I don't believe a mnemonic can hinder your progress. Once you're used to reading a word you simply won't be thinking of the individual kanji.

It's just like you don't really notice the individual letters of an English word unless you stop to think about it. The knowledge is there if you need it, but it's not in the way.

Don't make your life more difficult than it needs to be, use whatever works for you.

i'd probably say to not use them except for really tricky words you have trouble drilling into your memory. For example if you have trouble remembering whether ambulance is 救急車　or 急救車.

I think it's definitely too much trouble for most words like 風呂. when you're speaking you want to recall the word directly, not think about mnemonics

Also, when you see the 風　of お風呂 in 台風, even though it's ふ in お風呂, and ふう in 台風, you'll just start to remember it that way. (Also makes things easier.) I also remember that the 便 (べん）of 便利 becomes the 便 (びん）of 郵便局. And it's also 便 (びん）in 船便. No particular mnemonics, just a solid relationship with that particular character, seeing it in a lot of different places.

If you're having trouble remembering a word, add extra sentences with it in there. Don't just stick to KO's offerings, because you'll wind up going crazy trying to remember some words that just won't stick because you don't see them enough.

johnzep Wrote:I think it's definitely too much trouble for most words like 風呂. when you're speaking you want to recall the word directly, not think about mnemonics

Well yeah, but what if you can't remember the word? I'd rather remember mnemonics that I can build the word from, than nothing at all.

I mean, jeez, why are you even here? That's Heisig's whole book. I'd like to recall the kanji directly when I write but it was so hard to do that I decided I'd use Heisig's book and remember mnemonics.

zarxrax Wrote:While this initially seemed like a good idea to me, after thinking it through further I have some reservations. Mainly that the Heisig keywords are supposed to "fade away" as you learn the Japanese readings, so do you think this would this hinder my progress and keep me in "English mode"?

I wouldn't worry about it. When you have strong images in your mind, you begin you think about Japanese and kanji by concepts. You can either think　"風 means wind" over and over again, or you can think of 風 and associate it with an image of wind. The second works beautifully, because it's the same way you'd think in English. The English word "wind" is associated with all of your experiences with wind, that's how you know it. By using imagery, you can associate with those same experiences, and not the useless English word. Mnemonics are a good step towards thinking in Japanese.

Keep going with using mnemonics for compounds. Use SRS with sentances to remember the meaning to readings that aren't just a combination of the two on'yomi readings. The best way to review is to read as much Japanese as possible and get to where you can remember directly.

By the way, have you ever seen "The Minority Report"? Well, I think of a robot in the water in the movie mechanically lifting it's spine (for maintenance?) and a bit of wind being expelled.

Half the point of doing RTK is so you can make sense of all the kanji compounds...right? But you don't need English to draw connections between kanji and their compounds. When I see a kanji I know, I think of the meaning, not an English word. If I'm looking at a whole word, then I think the Japanese word when I know it(勉強 instead of just 勉).
Although, sometimes I think I should be more thorough, since I do forget some words if I'm not reviewing them.

At one point, some time ago, I realized I was forgetting a lot of kanji, so I wanting to review and relearn them with a flash card game that uses English keywords similar to RTK. But a few minutes in I had to stop! When a kanji popped up, what immediately came to my head was a Japanese word or reading, not the English keyword the game wanted. There's still some uncommon kanji that I can't remember, but I'll tackle them when I ever see them again. Anyway, when you finish RTK, try to shed those English keywords as soon as you can, I'm sure your Japanese reading skills will appreciate it.

Mnemonics are a double-edged sword, but I wouldn't stop using them ...yet. When I was in kindergarten, I was taught basic addition using the "touch point" system; it entailed using imaginary points along various intervals on each written number. I think it caused us students to learn math very quickly, but it also became a crutch that I embarrasingly used until just a few years ago. I never memorized certain adding combinations such as 7 plus 6, and therefore I had to "touch it out" in my mind to realize it was 13.
Moral of the story: mnemonics are a great way to introduce a concept or, in this case, Japanese compound, but later on these same mnemonics can get in your way as an excessive layer of info that will slow down your processing and intuitive grasp of the language. I would highly recommend only using the mnemonic the first few times you come across the new word, and then you should consciously focus on "ofuro" as simply meaning "ofuro" without reflecting on keywords at all. Remember, the faster you move to "Japanese only" in your studies the better.

alyks Wrote:

johnzep Wrote:I think it's definitely too much trouble for most words like 風呂. when you're speaking you want to recall the word directly, not think about mnemonics

Well yeah, but what if you can't remember the word? I'd rather remember mnemonics that I can build the word from, than nothing at all.

I mean, jeez, why are you even here? That's Heisig's whole book. I'd like to recall the kanji directly when I write but it was so hard to do that I decided I'd use Heisig's book and remember mnemonics.

zarxrax Wrote:While this initially seemed like a good idea to me, after thinking it through further I have some reservations. Mainly that the Heisig keywords are supposed to "fade away" as you learn the Japanese readings, so do you think this would this hinder my progress and keep me in "English mode"?

I wouldn't worry about it. When you have strong images in your mind, you begin you think about Japanese and kanji by concepts. You can either think　"風 means wind" over and over again, or you can think of 風 and associate it with an image of wind. The second works beautifully, because it's the same way you'd think in English. The English word "wind" is associated with all of your experiences with wind, that's how you know it. By using imagery, you can associate with those same experiences, and not the useless English word. Mnemonics are a good step towards thinking in Japanese.

Keep going with using mnemonics for compounds. Use SRS with sentances to remember the meaning to readings that aren't just a combination of the two on'yomi readings. The best way to review is to read as much Japanese as possible and get to where you can remember directly.

By the way, have you ever seen "The Minority Report"? Well, I think of a robot in the water in the movie mechanically lifting it's spine (for maintenance?) and a bit of wind being expelled.

I completely agree with associating each Japanese syllable with strong emotionally charged mental images. Although Japanese is loaded with homonyms, they are often not necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, "fu" can connote wind and also negativity, or a general sense of "un-". So in general, it can be quite useful to associate the negative feeling of a cold stormy windy day with "fu". (hey, "fuyu" means winter after all). "fu" can also mean "touch" or "falling", and again its not hard to tie those in together with the rest. You can imagine the rain or snow falling and touching your skin all over. This type of emotional visualizing will, in the end, prove a lot more beneficial to intuitive understanding than the rigidity of keywords.

When you reach a certain stage, you'll be adding new words so fast that you won't have time for mnemonics. Lately I don't even "add" a good portion of the words in my sentences, because I can infer the meaning/reading from the kanji or the meaning/kanji from the reading or etc. Anyway some of the toughest words to learn have no kanji- lots of special adverbs and, worst, the onomatoepic words.

That said, it would never hurt to use mnemonics at first... I wouldn't recommend it cuz I don't think it's necessary, but it won't hurt you. Just put sentences in an SRS and if you fail to read a word, then fail the card.

Snispilbor's Law of Language Acquisition: As long as you continue getting lots of input, there is no "wrong move" in Language Acquisition. Think of it like this, can you imagine any strategy so awful that if a normal native Japanese kid used it, they'd fail to learn Japanese? No, of course not!!! This proves Snispilbor's Law of Language Acquisition.

snispilbor Wrote:Snispilbor's Law of Language Acquisition: As long as you continue getting lots of input, there is no "wrong move" in Language Acquisition. Think of it like this, can you imagine any strategy so awful that if a normal native Japanese kid used it, they'd fail to learn Japanese? No, of course not!!! This proves Snispilbor's Law of Language Acquisition.

I can't imagine a strategy for a native Japanese kid. But for non-natives, just because there are no wrong ways, doesn't mean there aren't better methods.

Come on! The whole point of Heisig's book is to use the mnemonics! Consider the situation: You're on a forum where people ask for help coming up with mnemonics, centered around a book specifically designed to utilize mnemonics, in a thread on applying mnemonics to a situation. Then you come along and say not to use mnemonics. All of this is after you wrote a rave review on said book for using mnemonics on your website. The whole point of Remembering the kanji is to use mnemonics and make them easier. Breaking down to components and creating stories is mnemonics. Remembering the kanji IS mnemonics. If you recommend the book, you recommend mnemonics.

With that, I do feel the need to blame RTK a little for not describing mnemonics in more detail. It seems like the author accidentally stumbled on his method without knowing anything about mnemonics. Multiple books on mnemonics describe and counter most problems we've been talking about. (See: Dominic o'Brien's "How to develop a perfect memory", Harry Lorayne's books, ancient memory books like "Rhetorica ad Herennium")
When you do reach that "certain stage", you should be making stories for the kanji almost instantly, but it's harder to do this when he doesn't teach you the best way to think up mnemonics.

All that being said, snispilbor, I do think learning kanji from the sentences as you do is extremely effective. It should be a primary method. Mnemonics are memory aids. They are effective methods to aid your memory, not do the work for you. It's when you depend on them exclusively, you get problems like what Dragg described.

alyks Wrote:Come on! The whole point of Heisig's book is to use the mnemonics! Consider the situation: You're on a forum where people ask for help coming up with mnemonics, centered around a book specifically designed to utilize mnemonics, in a thread on applying mnemonics to a situation. Then you come along and say not to use mnemonics. All of this is after you wrote a rave review on said book for using mnemonics on your website. The whole point of Remembering the kanji is to use mnemonics and make them easier. Breaking down to components and creating stories is mnemonics. Remembering the kanji IS mnemonics. If you recommend the book, you recommend mnemonics.

I'd disagree with saying RTK is mnemonics. Those that use mnemonics for a majority of their stories I think are finding their recall rate lower. Now, if using visual imagery of the primitives and the keywords in a picturesque story qualifies as mnemonics, then I stand corrected. It just seems unlikely that "Person, Flower, Cliff, Utilize" will net you "Equip" over the long term.

That said, I'm not against mnemonics at all. It's just another of the Black Box (Input ---> ???? ---> Output) ways the brain memorizes things.

Only a few mnemonics work for me. Certainly less than 10% of my kanji do mnemonics actually give an advantage over the visuals. The visuals definitely stick better.

Mnemonics are great and all, but I'd have to agree that they can be overused, especially since, as I see it, they're a means to an end and not the end itself. Which is why a lot of the things you say confuse me, Alyks, as you seem so focused on the mnemonics themselves. I consider the goal to the be the (dreaded) rote, and the mnemonics a way to hold on to the information until you get there, since rote TAKES a lot longer, especially when there's 2000 of these characters you have to tackle for basic competency. After all, the kanji I know best are the ones I learned by rote before RTK, the kanji I had to learn by rote during RTK because I couldn't get the mnemonics to stick, and the primitives, which of course I've learned almost exclusively by rote. These kanji (and primitives, and kana), I can scratch off without the need for a single thought, which is a result of rote, not mnemonics, and the way native speakers write these characters they've written all their lives. I don't have a rhyme or a picture of something bizzare in my head when I draw 時 anymore than I have a rhyme or a picture of anything other than 't i m e' in my head when I write (or speak) the word time in English. With how quickly I speak, I think I'd have a seizure or go blind if I did...
That's my goal for everything.

So, as thankful as I am for mnemonics as a temporary expedient in letting me keep a (very loose) grip on this information, I don't consider them holy or vital, and I'm much more interested in the long-term rote, common sense, and simple language familiarity I'll develop as I move into the future... especially where vocabulary is concerned. That last bit, the familiarity, is of particular importance. As snispilbor said, at a certain stage in a language, it doesn't take much effort to learn new words in truly vast quantities, and without the use of silly memory tricks. Until that point, I'll use mnemonics as a poor solution to an unfortunate problem, but only sparingly as needed.

Nukemarine Wrote:I'd disagree with saying RTK is mnemonics. Those that use mnemonics for a majority of their stories I think are finding their recall rate lower. Now, if using visual imagery of the primitives and the keywords in a picturesque story qualifies as mnemonics, then I stand corrected. It just seems unlikely that "Person, Flower, Cliff, Utilize" will net you "Equip" over the long term.

That said, I'm not against mnemonics at all. It's just another of the Black Box (Input ---> ???? ---> Output) ways the brain memorizes things.

But that is exactly what mnemonics are. Creating mental images to remember information better is what mnemonics are. That's what mnemonic systems like Method of loci, Link association, Mnemonic major system, and the Dominic system all do. Create mental images to represent information.

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=96
Fabrice's post on mnemonics and imaginative memory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
An old mnemonic memory system where you create images to represent information you want to remember. Very powerful for remembering a lot of information. "The Method of Loci is a technique for memorizing many things and has been practiced since classical antiquity. It is a type of mnemonic link system based on places "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_link_system
A system where the user associates images together, forming a "link". Exactly what the chain method is, too. "For example, if one wished to remember the list (dog, envelope, thirteen, yarn, window), one could create a link system, such as a story about a "dog stuck in an envelope, mailed to an unlucky black cat playing with yarn by the window". It is then argued that the story would be easier to remember than the list itself."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system
Assigns phonetics to numbers (Just like how RTK assigns meanings to primitives), and creates images based on the resulting sounds. Associates them together with a story!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_dominic_system
Assigns people to numbers and combines them with the Method of Loci to remember people as representations of numbers.

If that's not enough for you, dictionary.com gives this definition:
mne?mon?ics (nĭ-mŏn'ĭks):
A system to develop or improve the memory.

See, Remembering the kanji is exactly what mnemonics are. Images. Mnemonics like this have been around for a long time, and are a lot more than what the average person thinks. There are tons of ideas for remembering vast amounts of information and how to do it better. That's why I'm disappointed Heisig didn't talk about mnemonics or seem to research them, because mnemonics is exactly what Heisig uses.

And like I said earlier, QuackingShoe, they're a means to rote and should be used as a memory aid. You use them when you can't remember. It's almost like carrying around a dictionary in your head to refer to when you need it. Refer to it enough, and you learn it by rote.

alyks Wrote:Come on! The whole point of Heisig's book is to use the mnemonics! Consider the situation: You're on a forum where people ask for help coming up with mnemonics, centered around a book specifically designed to utilize mnemonics, in a thread on applying mnemonics to a situation. Then you come along and say not to use mnemonics. All of this is after you wrote a rave review on said book for using mnemonics on your website. The whole point of Remembering the kanji is to use mnemonics and make them easier. Breaking down to components and creating stories is mnemonics. Remembering the kanji IS mnemonics. If you recommend the book, you recommend mnemonics.

I do think "mnemonics good for remembering kanji, not so necessary for random vocabulary" is a defensible position. After all, the kanji are something of a special case: they're like nothing you've come across before, they're often visually very similar to each other, there's a lot of internal structure to them you can leverage. So I think that mnemonics are both more necessary and easier to apply consistently.

You'll notice that generations of Japanese learners have been complaining about the 2000-odd kanji more than the vastly huger number of words -- which I think suggests that there's less need for this kind of technique. Words and kanji are different and I think the degree of difficulty in remembering them also differs.

It's not exactly the same situation but we're still talking about kanji here as in remembering which kanji to use to write a word and not just remembering spoken words so there are a lot of similarities.

I also find that the arguments used against the use of mnemonics in this case are mostly the same as those used by the Heisig skeptics. Isn't that a bit surprising coming from Heisig enthusiasts?

I've been wondering about using mnemonics (visual/picture-type and similar-sound-type) and learning kanji compounds and their readings too. For learning vocabulary with usage of mnemonics I stumbles across this thread.

Currently I'm trying to go through RTK2 with the help of Anki, and have some serious problems learning the readings through learning kanji compounds. The main problem is probably that I have not learned a lot of vocabulary yet and have only a foggy idea about the basic Japanese grammar.

It takes a reasonable effort to connect known vocabulary to the corresponding kanji compounds, but as soon as I have to learn new vocabulary it gets really difficult. If I don't know the new vocabulary I have problems to connect the reading to the kanji compounds and to the meaning. I know that RTK2 is not meant as vocabulary builder but I have even more problems to remember the reading of compounds if I have no idea of the meaning.
Visualizing a mnemonic to connect meaning with compound is quite helpful, but leaves out the reading; and when I come up with a sound-mnemonic I can't remember what the compound was but do remember the reading.

Here some examples of what I mean:

For お風呂 the mnemonic would be the visualization of an old woman who's spine is bent by age. She wanders to the nearby hotspring that is situated in a beautiful spot. Since the hotspring is an outside hotspring a refreshing wind is blowing, helping to keep a cool head. When she leaves the hotspring again, her spine is not as badly bent as before and she has a youthful swing to her step. (So this would help me to connect meaning with compound, but if I didn't know that お風呂 is read as おふろ or that hotspring is おふろ I still wouldn't know the reading.)

With sound-mnemonics I remember 政府 (せいふ) government, with connecting せいふ with "Seife" (soap), and imagining a government that is thoroughly cleaned with soap. Or at least their mouths. This does however not give me any clue on what kanji are used in the compound since soap and government have no real connection.
雲 (くも) "cloud", has some sound-similarity to "cumulus", which is a certain type of cloud. So here the sound-mnemonic has some real connection to the kanji, but this is for a single kanji and I guess you can rarely find this for compounds.

Yeah it can be difficult to remember both at the same time. I'd say there are two kinds of compound words: those that make sense immediately thanks to their kanji (you already know how they are pronounced and the compound is very logical and it "clicks" right away in your mind).

And there are those that are not so obvious, because we are not familiar enough with the kanji or the compound is weird. I think in that case, it's probably best to wait until we know the word to learn how it's written (well at least write once but don't really expect it to stick)

Now once the word is more familiar it's easier. For example, if you had just asked me how to say government, I wouldn't have known. But now that I have seen the word, I remember hearing it over and over while watching One Piece. So I can easily concentrate on how to write it and make it part of my vocabulary. (Off course, I'll probably forget it again, but that's normal and part of the learning process)

I guess the moral of this story is that watching anime is better than mnemonics anyway

Yeah, reading Japanese language stuff that contains your target vocab will help you remember that stuff. The more often you see it, the better. That's also why I wouldn't rely on just one sentence for a new vocab word, either. If it gives you trouble, you need to add more sentences with it in there, just to reinforce the idea to your brain that "Hey, this is important. I need to actually *remember* this." That's the main reason I prefer sentences to individual words on flashcards, too. It gives my brain more context to play with.

Biene Wrote:For お風呂 the mnemonic would be the visualization of an old woman who's spine is bent by age. She wanders to the nearby hotspring that is situated in a beautiful spot. Since the hotspring is an outside hotspring a refreshing wind is blowing, helping to keep a cool head. When she leaves the hotspring again, her spine is not as badly bent as before and she has a youthful swing to her step. (So this would help me to connect meaning with compound, but if I didn't know that お風呂 is read as おふろ or that hotspring is おふろ I still wouldn't know the reading.)

Try learning compounds after you already know the individual kanji. In 風呂, the 風's on'yomi is 'ふ' and the 呂's on'yomi is 'ろ'. If you already know the on'yomi for both, you don't have to try to remember the reading of the compound, just the two kanji that make it up. It's the same as in 政府. If you know 政　has a reading of 'せい' and 府 is 'ふ', you won't have to worry about the reading.

Thanks for the input everyone. There are lots of varied opinions it seems. I think I will probably just try to learn vocab by rote, and then go with mnemonics for ones that I have trouble with.

alyks, but the whole point of RTK2 is to learn the on-yomi of kanji by learning them in example compounds.
政府 is one example of these compounds, 風呂 hadn't come up yet. You're supposed to e.g. learn 付与,　政府，符号,　附近，and　豆腐 together, since all the kanji in RTK1 that have 付 in them can be read as ふ.

I'll see how it'll go. Anime have come in handy once or twice, but I guess there is no way round real vocab-learning. Though I like to pretend that watching anime will improve my Japnese. ;P And as for sentences... well, I don't have the confidence yet to decide on good sentences.

For learning words for use in speech, mnemonics probably aren't worth the effort. For recognizing the word written in kanji, a mnemonic doesn't seem like a bad idea; I'd rather be able to take a few seconds to recall a story than to reach for a dictionary. But mnemonics do seem very useful to me in writing words. How many of you can actually write the things you say in Japanese? I know I can't, and that's the main reason I did RTK. Maybe you don't care about writing, but I feel it should be anyone's goal who is serious about the language. In this case, spending a few seconds to recall a story in order to write the word isn't a problem; the bottleneck is probably writing all the strokes anyway. Without mnemonics or stories, I think it's hard to recall which kanji are used in a word unless they're very common and you see that word all the time. I'm talking about being able to write every word in one's vocabulary.

Unfortunately my pile of RTK reviews is keeping me from working on this more. Any advice from those who've tried?

It doesn't seem like anyone has mentioned this but one of the biggest problems with using mnemonics for learning words is that they might conflict with kanji mnemonics. More mnemonics = more confusion. That's why the first 100 kanji are easier than the last 100 kanji when doing RTK.

That being said, I don't see anything bad in using *some* mnemonics for learning words, especially if they occur to you naturally. When I see 風呂, I just think of a nice breeze going down my spine in a japanese bath. I think we all use mnemonics when learning new compounds, even if it's somewhat unconscious. ためいき　doesn't mean anything to me, but 溜息　is easy to learn because I can think of 溜まった息, as in accumulated breath. A sigh is basically releasing accumulated breath.

Yukamina, you said that it's better to forget the Heisig keywords as soon as possible. I think that would work fine for reading, but try writing something. That's when the Heisig stories come in handy. They allow you to write words without messing up the kanji. ふろ　= wind + spine. Then recall the stories for each kanji. Japanese themselves makes tons of mistakes when writing kanji.