i have real problems remembering the trees. such as 松　楠　杉　桂 etc.

anyone else have this problem or have a good tip to make them easier to remember?

yorkii

I think you need to use a bit of imagination to create a mental tag between the other primitive and the type of tree.

I remember pine because when I was a kid we used to go to Botany Bay and the public areas all had pine trees. Oak is easy because Professor Oak wears a white lab coat. Peach I remember because the story of [kana]momotarou[/kana] (peach boy) has been recited a trillion times, etc.

If you follow my method, you need to come up with some link that is personal to you. That makes it harder to forget.

yorkii Wrote:i have real problems remembering the trees. such as 松　楠　杉　桂 etc.

anyone else have this problem or have a good tip to make them easier to remember?

yorkii

I'm sure you have no problem remembering the tree primative! But regarding the right hand side, do you get muddled up or are you just getting a complete blank?

Or are you talking about going from kanji to keyword?

Personally I like trees coz you've really only got one part to remember. Not that I have a particularly good tip, but for me it just comes down to getting the story clear in my head.

Looking at the list of trees in your quote, I haven't studied the middle two (I hope!) but the first one I am sure means pine the fourth one made me think of my story (well, Heisig's story) about the ivy used to hang people but I had to look up the keyword. That said, the third one is すぎ which, as I believe you work at a school you probably get to see loads. Where I am anyway the amount of 杉山s and 杉本s is outrageous! Don't know what the primative on the right is but the 杉 tree is responsible for everyone's hayfever in before Golden Week.

One that I was acutally just speaking to my wife about last night is 梓 Don't think this is a 常用漢字 She said she wasn't really sure what it meant but said it doesn't come up much other than in girls' names. 梓（あずさ） has that ridiculous keyword (which is appartently incorrect, not Heisig, but the word itself, see wikipedia). Perhaps what works for me is the images I have for the various trees which is not always particularly strongly linked to the Heisig keyword even though I think I "Dartmouth" the kanji.

Sorry for the ramble that this post has turned into...

Hi, you might find it helpful to read my stories for "chestnut" and "camphor" trees. I did some research and found that these trees actually grow most abundantly in Japan in the regions depicted in the kanji; west and south respectively. The pine tree is known as the "public" tree here perhaps because it grows abundantly on public lands. Hope this helps.

Pine trees were grown along the Tokkaido, the road between Edo and Kyoto in the old days. It was the "public" road. I would bet a 1000 bucks that the kanji is much older than that road but its a great way to remember. As for the rest of the them, umm, I dont bother. I know I know, its horrible. But the only time I ever had to do hard core biological translation the Japanese plant names weren't used. Conversation was in Japanese and plant names/fertilizers etc. were in english. If you can point at a tree and say its name in Japanese, well thats enough for me. Incidentally fish are like that for me too. I know lots of Japanese fish but am originally from ohio, no ocean fish there. I figure if I can order at a sushi bar it doesnt matter if I know that english word. Im lazy though.

[ファブリス]

yorkii Wrote:i have real problems remembering the trees. such as 松　楠　杉　桂 etc.

I sometimes used "wood/wooden" for the tree primitive, as akind of material. Or even a wooden stick (avoid similarity with tree branches since that comes later). For example in "authority" I have Cartman from Southpark animated series riding a *wooden pegasus*. The material in itself seems more abstract than the image of a tree, but it works well. Probably because we know the texture of wood, its color, even smell (like cedar).

Or maybe use the idea of "bio" (ecologically grown plants and food), extending the tree image to the idea of "mother nature"... just ideas.

yes, i have no difficulty remembering 木, i just get the trees mixed up..

for example

if this keyword pops up: camphor i have to think, ok, is this the tree from the south? or the tree that's spicy? or the tree that my friend (the ミみたいなprimative as seen in 顔　参　杉 etc...) is in?

i just get them muddled. maybe i have to make the keyword and story fit together a bit more.

I just came up with an easy story for "pine tree". Check it out!

Well, if you have trouble mixing up trees now, wait till you get to RTK3 (if ever of course). I just finished the tree chapter there and it contains more than 60 kanji with the tree primitive - most of them indeed some sort of tree (many of which I'd never even heard of. Isn't wikipedia a great resource...). I'll tell you the flower chapter wasn't easy either

As I can't picture many of these trees, I just try to make a link between keyword and the set of primitives as best as I can and I agree they are not easy to learn. But to be honest, that goes for any language I ever learned. I consider myself very proficient in English, but if you ask me to list trees, flowers and vegetables in English, the results would be not be very good.