Ha, then I we should all have PhD's. LOL

1700.

1069. Been at this for about 3-4 years. Been doing it seriously (again) for about 3 months, which has gotten me from ~500 to here. Key this time: staged rewards based on how many I get into the 3/4 boxes. Once that hits 1000, I'm getting a denshi jisho! Bribes every 100字 or so seems to keep the motivation up.

Rewards, ah. A good motivation; especially food. Keep it up. It you start to gain weight, it's a sure sign that you're on track, lol.

1725

I just hit 500! I started before a couple of months ago, did up to 323 but then lost motivation and stopped. I decided to start over a couple of weeks ago, aiming to do one chapter per day or at least 25 minimum kanji per day until I'm done. So far so good. I feel like there's a huge number left, which is a bit of a downer, but turning it around and saying there's 500 I actually know, feels like a big number too, so that makes me happy.

snispilbor Wrote:

canji Wrote:Here I am talking like a pro at #350.

Most accredited universities in the U.S. think 350 kanji is pro... or at least 4-year-degree worthy

u have no idea how good that made me feel to read that


#1514

Finishing this up by this sunday hopefully...

wouldn't you also need to know the japanese words for the 350 kanji? most of us do not know the japanese words for most of the kanji we're learning here, so i doubt we'd get that 4-year degree.

After only a couple of days, I have over a hundred kanji who's Japanese words I know. It really isn't that hard after completing RTK.

plumage Wrote:wouldn't you also need to know the japanese words for the 350 kanji? most of us do not know the japanese words for most of the kanji we're learning here, so i doubt we'd get that 4-year degree.

Yes, of course Forgive me if I wasn't clear... what I meant was that a typical 4-year program in Japanese, while including lots of other stuff besides kanji, will contain very few kanji. I think the program here at OSU does somewhere like 200 kanji, though I don't even remember where I heard that so it could be wrong.

EDIT: Of course, those 200 kanji are specially picked to be probably the most common 200 kanji in the world. So it's not AS bad as it sounds, but still nowhere near what you need to read the news.

snispilbor Wrote:Of course, those 200 kanji are specially picked to be probably the most common 200 kanji in the world. So it's not AS bad as it sounds, but still nowhere near what you need to read the news.

Not only the news. I seriously doubt you can read anything nontrivial, aimed at natives, knowing absolutely nothing about the remaining 1800 joyo kanji.

iSoron Wrote:

snispilbor Wrote:Of course, those 200 kanji are specially picked to be probably the most common 200 kanji in the world. So it's not AS bad as it sounds, but still nowhere near what you need to read the news.

Not only the news. I seriously doubt you can read anything nontrivial, aimed at natives, knowing absolutely nothing about the remaining 1800 joyo kanji.

But iSoran, you only need to know a thousand! The rest of the characters are botanical, archaic or specialist terms that are extremely rarely used...

***** college(nah it's awesome), not enough time to study kanji. I've had to abandon my fledgling sentences in Anki just to keep up with Heisig. Oh well, I will get done eventually as long as I keep my reviews up.

Urgh, I'm having to switch my learning heisig time to just after my reviews now. Ah well. I've been far too tired in the evenings to do it, no idea how I'm going to sort this out when the holidays are over.

Good look TheSpartan, I hope I'll be OK once I get to college!

alyks Wrote:But iSoran, you only need to know a thousand! The rest of the characters are botanical, archaic or specialist terms that are extremely rarely used...

I doubt this. My deck contain only the basic of the basic and it already has 30% of the joyo, 2.8% of jinmeiyou and 12 non-joyo kanji.

I still cant read anything without the dictionary.

Just did a 200 card review. Want to add moar. Must add moar.

*foams at mouth*

mentat_kgs Wrote:

alyks Wrote:But iSoran, you only need to know a thousand! The rest of the characters are botanical, archaic or specialist terms that are extremely rarely used...

I doubt this. My deck contain only the basic of the basic and it already has 30% of the joyo, 2.8% of jinmeiyou and 12 non-joyo kanji.

I still cant read anything without the dictionary.

It's a joke, Mentat. A reference to Christine_tham's lunatic ravings.

Sorry, man. Sometimes it is hard to understand sarcasm in internet.

I'm at 360, up from 350, and 340 before that.

Do you have any idea how long it will take me if I continue to do 10 a day?

canji Wrote:I'm at 360, up from 350, and 340 before that.

Do you have any idea how long it will take me if I continue to do 10 a day?

1685 divided by 10

475 after 1 week. I think I need to feed moar kanji. MOAR. This feels like a hack and slash game where my long term memory is the main character with a huge effing sword just slashing away at the kanji monsters. I do hate when they poison me with Day of <75% curse though.

canji Wrote:I'm at 360, up from 350, and 340 before that.

Do you have any idea how long it will take me if I continue to do 10 a day?

Yeah... if you do 10 a day, you will finish somewhere around Valentine's Day 2009. Make it 20 a day, and you'll finish right around Thanksgiving 2008.

alyks Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:

alyks Wrote:But iSoran, you only need to know a thousand! The rest of the characters are botanical, archaic or specialist terms that are extremely rarely used...

I doubt this. My deck contain only the basic of the basic and it already has 30% of the joyo, 2.8% of jinmeiyou and 12 non-joyo kanji.

I still cant read anything without the dictionary.

It's a joke, Mentat. A reference to Christine_tham's lunatic ravings.

I had thought there was something insane about that post. Now I know.

Edit:

1808

Yeah, weird number. I'll finish and go to 1825 later tonight.

I got to 370 and stopped for the day.

Get it? Get it?

Kazelee, how do/did you learn 50 a day? Or is it just easier as you go along, or it maybe that I spend long then I have to on each kanji. I can only manage to do 20 a day, and I often forget half. I'm imagining stories... They just don't stick.

For the record I'm not doing 50 a day. I do 90-100 every other day. It's weird I know, but I'm a weird guy... sort of.

I make up a lot of my stories and I edit the stories of other people to fit myself better.

You could try throttling yourself. Do 50 a day for a week. Then when you go back to 20- it will seem much easier. Like how when you've been driving on a highway and go back onto a normal road every thing seems slower.

*massive info omitted because of uselessness*

The easiest stories to remember are the one's you make, with characters you are familiar with. And try to make them episodic.

As an example check out fiminor's story for land (1513). He/she creates a story for the kanji that overlaps an overall story for an entire group of kanji containing the rice seedling primitive. I tried this with the primitive for west and saw better results compared to the stories I made for west that weren't episodic.

The more personal to you the character and the story the better it will stick, most times.

Then there are stories that are just plays on stories/ideas you already know.

mcbainpc for example gave a play on "Unbreak My Heart" for the kanji for sad (1635). I heard this song so many times growing up that changing one word made this kanji stick instantly.

The kanji for endure - there have been so many movies about people who endure unrequited love (not to mention person experience) and coincidently the primitives are dagger and heart.

The keyword hard up, Story: A guy robbing somebody with a bow cause he's hard up for cash. I grew up in Detroit so this was easy to make stick.

I also welcome repetition; repetition of keywords/primitives in stories, looking for repetition of primitives as I review, repeating the story to myself out loud (my bro probably thinks I'm insane for that one).

And also I try not to question/understand anything. I become an airhead, and submit to my own brain.

If all we have to do to remember was imagine, we would never forget our nightly dreams. The one's we do remember are usually the one's that have the most emotions. Or the most familiar, yet obscurely placed ideas. There has to be some connection within you.


On a side note:

I liken this experience to when I first started studying piano. I began at 17 and people though I was a huge freak, because of my quick progress (though there were people far freakier). The truth is that it wasn't me being a freak that caused my progress, but the information I was studying, the recording I was listening to, pianist's I was watching. AKA Input.

Thanks for the response, I'll try and incorporate my own stories with more kanji and I guess one reason was, I try to remember them too much, I should just loosen up. Thanks for making me realise.