Hi!

If there's any "Kanji Gods" out there, I have a few questions about RTK2. I have flipped through the book so I have a modest idea of what the book can do...

1. Is RTK2 actually practical for learning the Onyomi's? The reason I ask this is because from what I've seen, RTK2 only gives 1 onyomi reading. A lot of the kanji I look up on, say, jisho.org, shows more than 1 onyomi readings for a kanji, sometimes even up to 3. If there are 3 readings for a kanji, is remembering only 1 going to be practical?

2. The above question, for the kunyomi's too... Sometimes you can see upwards of 8 kun readings for a kanji.

3. Another question on Kun-yomis... There are 10 or 11 chapters on Onyomis, and only 1 chapters on Kunyomis. How is one susposed to learn all the kunyomis? I don't quite understand... albeit I only flipped through the book and didn't read the entire chapter. For someone who has, is Heisig's method practical?

The reason I ask all this is to either learn the readings by 1) doing the AJATT method and learning readings only from sentences in context, or 2) with KiC or KO.

Please comment... thanks.

Hi smujohnson. There are kanji gods in this forum but I'm not one of them. I'm in the same position as you, but maybe a bit ahead.

First you have to know that there are 2 classes of words. Mundane and erudite.

Erudite are words that are not as oftenly used, so grammar has a bigger weight on them, in english a few examples would be: Music, Responsibiliy, Universe.

Mundane words are the everyday use words, so they change a lot over the time: Eye, Hand, Mouth, Food, Month, Day, Sun, and so on.

0) Having the idea behind the book might be the best part of it. What I think it is most important of RTK2 is to know how to identify the fonetic primitive of the kanji. You need do know that it will be mostly on the right, but sometimes not. Knowing some examples is good too.

1) Yes it is. But there might be better ways. The movie method by alyks also seems to be a nice alternative. But it can be picked up trought the sentences. I'm doing a mix of the movie method and the picking up in the sentences. It is going well.

Notice that even if you knew all the on readings, 2 more skills are also needed:
- While reading, you need to be able to identify the reading you need.
- While writing, you need to chose the right kanjis.

For erudite words, it is easy. Most of the times, the man on-yomi will be used. For mundane words, you will have to rely only on experience.

2) Same thing. I'd risk to say that mundane words allmost allways only use kun-readings. So there is little sense to memorize all the kun-yomi. It would be better to memorize the words.

3) One should learn kun-yomi by practice. AJATT does it by drilling sentences. It works really well.

4) I dont know much about KiC or KO, but I think people here in the forum are using them as source of sentences for the AJATT method. The sentences method is very effective.

You are welcome.

[Katsuo]

jisho.org uses KANJIDIC as its data source.

KANJIDIC is quite comprehensive, but as a result includes a lot of very rare readings. This is useful for reference purposes, but it would make no sense to learn all those readings.

If you wish to learn the more common readings of a kanji, then check the Joyo Kanji Hyo (常用漢字表). This is a list of 1,945 kanji and their readings published by the Japanese Ministry of Education in 1981.

Many text books use the 常用漢字表 as their basic reference. For an online list see:
Wikipedia Joyo Kanji (English)
Wikipedia 常用漢字 (Japanese)

Also, here is a page where someone has sorted the Joyo Kanji according to how many ON and kun readings they have. E.g. 666 kanji have one ON and zero kun readings.

1. Characters with multiple on-yomi appear in multiple frames cross-referenced to each other.
2. The kun-yomi index at the end of the book lists all "important" kun-yomi for each character. Read the introduction to know what is meant by "important" (the same applies to on-yomi).
3. The last chapter explains the method (mnemonics again as in RTK1) by which you could tackle the kun-yomi, or at least those you can't assimilate easily. The kun-yomi themselves are given in the index.

Thanks d00dz