i'm not sure if anyone has experimented with this. i know it's similar to some other approaches, but i'm wondering if it might a radical new way to learn kanji. i'd like your opinion. i will spare you how i thought this up and get to the details.

#1) assign a meaning to every sound in the japanese syllabary plus long vowels and lengthened syllables (e.g. chou, hei, etc.) just like heisig does at the end of book II. (approx. 120 total)

#2) learn the readings of every kanji, in any order you like, by make mneumonic devices connecting the "sound-symbols" of #1 with the heisig keyword meaning.

example:
kanji: 後 (behind)
reading: あ?と
sound symbols employed: あ (someone opening their mouth wide and saying "ahhh"); と (a toe)
objective: connect the meaning of "behind" with "ahhh" and "toe"
story: a patient is in the dentist chair with his mouth open wide saying "ahh" waiting for a teeth cleaning. the dentist, a practical joker, sneaks up behind and sticks his toe in his mouth!

what this accomplishes:
if you can recall the heisig keyword "behind" when you see 後 you can then recall the story connected with that keyword which will contain the words "ahh" and "toe" which will conjure "あと".

potential objections:

#1)
objection: you have to know the heisig keyword when you see the kanji.

answer: that would be beneficial anyway for reading and trying to guess the meaning of the words. if you can't recall the keyword and thus the reading, you fail the card.

#2)
objection: some kanji have more than one reading so you have to have more than one story for each kanji.

answer: true. but you'll have to learn them anyway. if you're stories are concise and different enough to not overlap, you shouldn't confuse the different stories you have for a single kanji.


#3)
objection: this doesn't teach you which reading is used when you look at an unfamiliar word.

answer: true but instead of being completely in the dark at least you'll have a limited number of options to choose from. this isn't the end-all-be-all to learning kanji, but is rather just another tool in mastering them.

#4)
objection: what if i get my stories for readings confused with my stories for the writing.

answer: shouldn't be a problem if...
a) you're reviewing writing from keyword to kanji and reading from kanji to keyword.
b) your sound-symbols (which work like the "primitive elements" of readings) are different from the primitive elements you used in learning how to write kanji.
c) you've already finished RTK 1 and you're stories for the writing of the kanji are firmly enough placed in memory.

#5)
objection: many kanji have the same reading. won't i get confused?

answer: you'll be working with the same sound-symbols for those kanji, but the kanji keyword will be what distinguishes them. once you throw the kanji keyword into the story it should result in them being quite different.



i intend to start experimenting with this this week. i'm now on summer holiday and will be able to devote a large amount of time to this starting on monday.

what are you thoughts?

Is this for onyomi or kunyomi? Are you saying to do this while going through RTK? Or after?

The problem isn't associating the readings with the kanji, but rather learning the readings for all you learn in Heisig. Learning readings for a kanji aren't that hard.

this is for onyomi and kunyomi.

if a kanji has both on and kun readings then you will have on the question side of the card both the kanji in isolation (which will be the onyomi prompt or a prompt for any kunyomi it has in isolation from okurigana) and the kanji with it's okurigana it if has readings which are always followed by okurigana. there should be no objection to the inclusion of okurigana after the kanji because this is what you will encounter in real life.

i'm not sure what you mean by "the problem isn't associating the readings with the kanji, but rather learning the readings for all you learn in heisig".

I mean that it's fairly easy to associate a meaning with a kanji. If you know the meaning and kanji, it's not very hard to put them together. I believe the big objections to the methods out there for learning the readings are the slowness of them. And even if your method is more reliable, it would still be very slow.

If it was done during RTK, it would probably double the time needed to complete it. If done after, probably take the same amount of time as RTK took.

It's a really complicated system and a lot of effort for something that's actually pretty simple and even easy to do naturally. The fact of the matter is that associating a sound to a kanji (or particularly, to vocabulary, and working backward from there) just isn't that hard in a normal context. We don't actually need this kind of system for every level of language learning. Writing the kanji just happens to be a pretty exceptional case.

Am I the only one who wishes people would only post their ideas once these have been thoroughly field-tested?.. Whatever one may think about the AJATT guy, this is exactly what he did... And so did Heisig, by the way. Doing it any other way is just creating Distraction...

You know what's easier? Learning that あと　means "after"(not behind).

yukamina Wrote:You know what's easier? Learning that あと　means "after"(not behind).

You should be bashing Heisig there, mate. 後 is listed as "behind" in the book.

Interesting idea. I wouldn't use it myself, and here's why: you pretty much have to learn compounds anyway, and learning compounds automatically gives you kanji readings. I guess if you learned the readings first, it might make the compounds a little easier, but not that much. You still gotta learn the compound meanings, plus which kanji readings to use. From your original post it sounds like multi-reading kanji are few and far between. I could just be really unlucky so far, but almost all the kanji I've encountered have at least two readings and a lot have more.

If you do this method on your own, it would sure be very interesting to read about how it goes. Keep a journal and give us field reports

Edit: By "compound" I don't mean just two-or-more-kanji compounds. I basically mean "non-kana word". So 猫 is a "compound", while 警 is not, since it's not a word by itself.

Snispilbor, I wanna comment on this.

Knowing the on'yomi readings are awesome, because it makes it a ton easier to remember compounds. If you don't have to remember 警 is pronounced ケイ and that 察 is pronounced サツ, then all you have to do is put "Guard" and "inspect" together. The pronunciation can serve to help your memory, instead of the opposite.

If you know that 泳 also has the reading of エイ and 水 has the reading of スイ, then you can put them together and form 水泳 (すいえい) - swimming. I'm beginning to notice how all the onyomi and kanji are all interconnected, it's really cool.

With that said, I still would still follow what you say over what the main poster says. The only way learning readings separately would help, would be if it was fast and easy.

alyks Wrote:

yukamina Wrote:You know what's easier? Learning that あと　means "after"(not behind).

You should be bashing Heisig there, mate. 後 is listed as "behind" in the book.

Not that I'm a huge fan of many of Heisig's choices, but 後ろ is pretty common, even if it isn't an isolated character. It seems a reasonable choice, even if it did lead the OP astray.

~J

It'd be fair anyway. 後 means 'after' a time, but 'behind' an object, which is also why 後ろ means behind something, and 午後 means after noon, and etc. A more accurate keyword might be 'past' something, but that'd be a bit confusing as well - especially since it has FUTURE connotations, and 'past' is a word in English that...
You see how this goes. The ideas are just thought of slightly differently in Japanese, which is only natural, because ideas of before/after are really based on which direction you're looking at something from. 前 is different too, but it's more compatible with our native English ideas.

There's nothing wrong with 後　having the keyword "behind", since the word 後ろ（うしろ） means behind. But you can't forget that not every word using a certain kanji has the same meaning. あと　means after, not behind. うしろ means behind, not after. So the keywords serve as a guide line, but you have to learn the meaning of each individual word anyway.

I was also thinking about what the OP posted about idly, and I think they are completely right. You could probably associate all the possible readings if there are 120 like you say in 1-2 days. Double that if you want to have seperate symbols for on/kun so you don't get them confused. Perhaps you could play a trick somehow by introducing an element into your on stories to get the kun readings to cut down the work....

Wizard Wrote:I was also thinking about what the OP posted about idly, and I think they are completely right. You could probably associate all the possible readings if there are 120 like you say in 1-2 days. Double that if you want to have seperate symbols for on/kun so you don't get them confused. Perhaps you could play a trick somehow by introducing an element into your on stories to get the kun readings to cut down the work....

Has been discussed before, check it out:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1511&page=5

Toward the bottom, Dragg made this long post, and I replied with my thoughts.

I suggest you just learn the readings as they come. For me, I just brute forced it. You'll see that after a while, you'll be able to guess the readings of new kanji's based on the characters within the kanji. It takes me very little effort now.

http://www.kanjisoft.com/chirp.html

Check this out.

I've been trying to use a Heisig-style method for remembering readings.

For example, I suppose many of us have noticed that the counter for footwear is 足（そく）, pretty apt for counting socks.

However, it's not just English-Japanese coincidences that you can take advantage of. How about Japanese-Japanese coincidences...

懐（なつ）かしい = missed, desired. I think of it as なつ+かし+い, and my story is that I miss that sweet summer that I remember.

愛（いと）しい = beloved, dear. Of course いと suggests the threads that tie you with your loved ones.

What about coincidences involving other languages...

重（かさ）ねる = pile up. In Greek, kasa means box, so I think of piling up boxes. Of course boxes are heavy, hence the use of that kanji for the purpose. (Not quite sure what to do with the ね bit. And don't confuse with Italian casa = house.)