I was going to put this into stories request, but maybe there's more to it than stories. I'm on Lesson 11 and there are some primitives that are just going to be TROUBLE!

First, I do not get the "pack of dogs" primitive for 238 Dog. There is nothing in this primitive that makes me think of the Dog kanji. I prefer a concrete image to hook my memory on and this won't do. What do you do with this primitive? Is it actually connected with this kanji?

Next, I love mameha1977's story idea for 235 Portent because there's obviously human legs in the strokes:

Quote:When your wife's LEGs get huge hairs on them it is surely a bad portent for things to come.

But I don't like the half a turtle for the "primitive" version. If I switch the primitive to hairy legs (which will work great for the peach tree kanji) does anyone foresee major problems later on?

Then, there's 245 Cow. I can't bring myself to use "cow" as a primitive image for 先 (248 Before) because I already know this Kanji and it's meaning as part of words like 先生 (teacher) or せんぱい (senior). What do you do when you already know a Kanji or it's meaning and the keyword or primitives don't come close to matching?

Thanks.

hm. but 牛乳　（ぎゅにゅう）　and 牛肉　（ぎゅうにく）　also have the cow primitive.. which makes sense for a words like cow's milk and cow meat..

I sometimes wonder about other primitives too.. I would hope that most of these have a similar meaning in a japanese understanding as well.


As for 犬　.. the pack of wild dogs kind of looks like the dog kanji, but slouched over.. perhaps even roughed up a little bit.. Which helps in the association with 'wild dog'.


I didn't have so much difficulty in that lesson.. But Lesson 16 or perhaps it's 17.. is just terrible for me.. Thanksgiving, fiesta, march, parade.. I don't care for these at all.

The "pack of wild dogs" primitive gets a separate image from the normal dog primitive specifically because it doesn't bear much resemblance to it. Heisig does it fairly often throughout the book when a primitive takes vastly different forms depending on where it's placed, and in my experience it's best to just think of them as two entirely different (but related) primitives.

There's usually no problem with changing primitives, so long as you make sure to check the index and see that you aren't changing it to something Heisig has already used. The only downside is that you can't be lazy like me and just lift stories directly from this site.

I don't really understand what problem you have with using cow for 先 though, since the primitives have nothing to do with the actual meaning of a kanji. They're just there to help you construct the kanji. I mean, I'm pretty sure that 新 doesn't have anything to do with red-pepper plants.

I'd say just suck it up and get used to it for now. Many more primitives will undergo transformations as you get farther in the book, and many more difficult words like "before" will be popping up. By then you should have a system down for mastering them.

*I often switched the *wild dog* primitive with *cat*, as it's used in cat and also in reed (cattail).

You can try assigning several keywords (as seen above) to one primitive. Then you can choose the primitive keyword that best fits your story as you go along. This has worked well for me, but only for certain primitives and with a limit of 2 keywords. For example: Sun or Day = 日.

The "pack of wild dogs" primitive occurs a lot, so you'll definitely have no problem remembering what it means.

Myself, I completely forgot that "cow" was a primitive for 先. I mean, I know how to write it and I see the cow now that it's pointed out, obviously, but I too already had that one well memorized. Despite Heisig's advice, I often just skip over kanji if I already know them and any possible story for them would seem too contrived.

- Kef

Yeah although it goes 'against' Heisig's advice there is nothing you can do about it, so many radicals(perhaps all) are stored in my visual memory (as opposed to imaginary which is what the aim is) despite it being against Heisigs 'rule'.
So i call his rule of complete imaginary memory bullshit because there is no way you can recall a radical by raw imagination, without having SEEN it and STORING IT in your visual memory in the first place.


So anyway moving away from Heisig's cute, but raw arrogance your question on wild dogs

I see why he called them wild dogs because looking at this http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=10114&rendTypeId=4
slim racing dog, (imagine him being wild and having teeth) and compare it to the normal 'dog' radical even though they are much different stroke-wise (dog has the extra drop while this is kinda like a retarded version of big).

And as for turtle, i use what some have suggested here, as Back, I've used it so far for all my kanji. But i still know(and note down mentally) that Heisig uses it as turtle, so wherever it is beneficial to use as turtle I'll use it, but it hasn't come across so far.


And the before radical screws me up too because i didn't really know that the cow radical was used for it[i learned it from sensei first like you too], but i couldn't care less, if more of these come up ill just going to go with how i learned them first, it wouldn't hurt to store a few hundred or so in there

I would recommend keeping wild dogs as wild dogs and portent as turtle.

They are the only part of the book that uses visual memory, but they barely use it. The turtle does look a bit like a turtle shell, the pack of wild dogs could be construed as 犬 stretched a bit, imagine the top part is the dogs head, and imagine a pack of wild dogs sniffing the ground... invert the head and rotate it 90 degrees and you got something that looks like it...

I don't see the problem anyway, you will use them so often you'll soon remember them, and whats learning the handful of primatives that dont have a story attached explaining how to draw them, that you will use over and over and soon remember compared to memorising 200 kanji?

Thanks for the replies. I've been trying to work on this lesson using other people's stories too.

Mcjon01 Wrote:The "pack of wild dogs" primitive gets a separate image from the normal dog primitive specifically because it doesn't bear much resemblance to it.

That's my point. Why bother trying to connect them at all instead of just making a separate primitive? Is this barbed hook going to get the same reading as the kanji for dog?

If it's going to come up a lot then I guess I can just memorize it by brute force but there's nothing in it to help. For example, the 大 big kanji --> St. Bernard (big dog) has some logic or linguistic help.

On visual vs. imagination, for me my imagination works best when I can get a concrete image in my head of what the primitive/kanji is supposed to represent. Otherwise, it's just an abstract symbol attached to a word. For example, I was stuck on "sword" and related kanjis because I couldn't connect the word to the squiggles until someone explained how it was supposed to look like a sword handle. Then the kanjis came easily.

As for 先 my problem with using cow my concern is that it's going to mess up my existing knowledge of the kanji.

I'll try tacking on an asterisk to 先 for cow and the kanji using turtle the same way we have to with square jewel and ivy.

Cirion Wrote:On visual vs. imagination, for me my imagination works best when I can get a concrete image in my head of what the primitive/kanji is supposed to represent. Otherwise, it's just an abstract symbol attached to a word. For example, I was stuck on "sword" and related kanjis because I couldn't connect the word to the squiggles until someone explained how it was supposed to look like a sword handle. Then the kanjis came easily.

The "picture" in 刀 is a pretty big stretch, I've never been able to see it. So, maybe you could repeat the trick for all the kanji. Just imagine a way that the pack of dogs primitive looks like a pack of dogs (maybe each line is a separate dog and the bottom part is the longer leader of the pack?). That's pretty ridiculous, but IMHO not that much more ridiculous than 刀 looking like a sword handle.

Cirion Wrote:As for 先 my problem with using cow my concern is that it's going to mess up my existing knowledge of the kanji.

I'll try tacking on an asterisk to 先 for cow and the kanji using turtle the same way we have to with square jewel and ivy.

If you took a native Japanese speaker and told them that 先 has a cow in it, would they:

A) Get so confused that their whole knowledge of Japanese collapses
B) Note it as a very minor trivia point and move on

Now why should it be any different for you or me?

liosama Wrote:And as for turtle, i use what some have suggested here, as Back, I've used it so far for all my kanji. But i still know(and note down mentally) that Heisig uses it as turtle, so wherever it is beneficial to use as turtle I'll use it, but it hasn't come across so far.

The turtle meaning is useful for me in 桃. "Tree" + "Turtle" = "Peach" is very easy if you've ever played the Mario games. "Tree" + "Portent" = "Peach", not so much, and this is one of those semi-ambiguous words you have to differentiate from pear and plum.

cerulean Wrote:I didn't have so much difficulty in that lesson.. But Lesson 16 or perhaps it's 17.. is just terrible for me.. Thanksgiving, fiesta, march, parade.. I don't care for these at all.

Somehow I just breezed through these. Now, snares on the other hand..... Maybe different people each have their own little trouble primitives. Hmm, Cirion, if your two predestined "trouble primitives" are pack of wild dogs and cow, then you're pretty lucky

Cirion Wrote:On visual vs. imagination, for me my imagination works best when I can get a concrete image in my head of what the primitive/kanji is supposed to represent. Otherwise, it's just an abstract symbol attached to a word. For example, I was stuck on "sword" and related kanjis because I couldn't connect the word to the squiggles until someone explained how it was supposed to look like a sword handle. Then the kanjis came easily.

Wait, I don't understand. Are you saying you can't recall a primitive unless it has a pictographic connection to it's keyword? If that's the case, you definitely need to find a way to work around that, because the number of kanji where that works is an extreme minority. Most of them look like nothing. You should be able to turn the keywords into concrete images without any need for the kanji to look like those concrete images. I mean, I can imagine swords all day without thinking of the sword primitive as a sword handle, and when one of those swords shows up in my stories I know that the kanji I'm recalling has the sword primitive stuck in it somewhere.

snispilbor Wrote:The "picture" in 刀 is a pretty big stretch, I've never been able to see it. So, maybe you could repeat the trick for all the kanji. Just imagine a way that the pack of dogs primitive looks like a pack of dogs (maybe each line is a separate dog and the bottom part is the longer leader of the pack?). That's pretty ridiculous, but IMHO not that much more ridiculous than 刀 looking like a sword handle.

I pictured it like the end of a wrap on the handle.
Something like this:

You might find this diagram helpful:



It's like musketeer swords!
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=...a=N&tab=wi

Dude just rote learn these easy primitives.. You have to anyway because they come across so often in kanji that perfecting these (in writing) will aid in your speed of writing kanji overall, your neatness etc. Example, I drew the 'road' primitive about 300ish times till I got it looking nice, and even now i randomly practice a few primitives by rote, because Heisigs method is absolute bullshit (for primitives). Although they do look a little like 'a road' or 'a turtles back' you'll find yourself trying to perfect them that by the time you're on the 100th writing you go "oh shit this is rote learning isnt it"

Somethings have to be learned by rote (primitives) and what I don't like about Heisig is that he doesn't admit it himself.

[ファブリス]

snispilbor Wrote:刀 looking like a sword handle

Sometimes we have different images in our memory so something is obvious for one person, not for another.

If you can rotate this picture 90 degrees clockwise in your mind (or tilt your head left ), you can see the first stroke ends with the protection for the hand, the second stroke is actually the handle itself. The blade is imagined in this character to extend vertically upwards.

EDIT: Aah, what alyks said

I somewhat have no trouble to remember primitives. My problem is allways composing so I dont get this post at all.
My advice would be the one stehr did: Suck it up. Weirder and weirder primitives will show up.
Anyway. Keep the keyword for the kanjis separate from the primitives. This way you'll never get confused about the keywords.
For instance:
Storehouse and warehouse.
I noticed I was confusing then, so I build a mental memo: "in stores you sell stuff. selling slaves is wrong". This way I could allways identify storehouse from warehouse.

snispilbor Wrote:The "picture" in 刀 is a pretty big stretch, I've never been able to see it.

Others have said it already but Katsuo linked to a picture in this thread in stories request that looks like Alyks's drawing and that helped alot.

Mcjon01 Wrote:Wait, I don't understand. Are you saying you can't recall a primitive unless it has a pictographic connection to it's keyword?

No, I mean I have to imagine a concrete image not try to remember the abstract shape or just the word. If I can't imagine something than seeing something can help.

Anyway, I think I'm good going forward with the dual meaning of hairy legs asterisked as turtle and I'll just asterisk the kanji I already know with Heisig's keyword.

Thanks everyone.

I never focus on abstract shapes or pictographs. I allways focus in the actual traces of the primitive. It takes 1-2 reviews in the first 10 minutes to sink, but it sinks.