vosmiura Wrote:That means there's a clear advantage to prioritizing study of those 1110 that make up 90% of uses than the other kanji that make up about 10% of uses. It would allow to read more Japanese sooner, and reading more is very beneficial.

I personally don't trust those statistics at all, simply because I see Jouyou kanji everywhere. I mean that's like saying if you know the kanji used in money, bank and transfer you can read 90% of all money transfer notes. There's way too much variety in the jouyou kanji and in Japanese, there's no way 90% of all texts will stick to the same words.

Personally, I actively decided to stop reading any japanese until I had finished RtK because I found it detrimental. In the same sense, it would be detrimental to learn the 1100 most common ones and start reading since you will run into kanji you don't know all the time.

IMO, it's a better idea to simply sit down and put the time in to learn all the jouyou kanji because then, your butt is covered, you know ALL the officially recognized kanji used. If a kanji you don't know shows up, chances are many Japanese wouldn't understand it either. Same can't be said if you skip half of RtK and start reading prematurely.

I think it means that on average you'd be able to read 90% of each text, not 100% of 90% of texts.

"IMO, it's a better idea to simply sit down and put the time in to learn all the jouyou kanji because then, your butt is covered, you know ALL the officially recognized kanji used. If a kanji you don't know shows up, chances are many Japanese wouldn't understand it either. Same can't be said if you skip half of RtK and start reading prematurely."

You won't understand much of anything anyway until you learn to read the words too, and that takes a long time. Longer than RTK.

At the end of the day one still has to be selective and prioritize what words to learn from reading. If it's not a kanji you recognize then maybe it can wait, or maybe if you really want to learn that vocab then you can RTK the kanji at the same time as learning that vocab.

Oh boy.

Tobberoth Wrote:Personally, I actively decided to stop reading any japanese until I had finished RtK because I found it detrimental. In the same sense, it would be detrimental to learn the 1100 most common ones and start reading since you will run into kanji you don't know all the time.

How in any way could reading be detrimental? To me it sounds like closing your eyes as tight as you can while shouting "what I don't know can't hurt me!". Being exposed to new words and kanji, even if you don't know the readings, is never a bad thing.

Quote:IMO, it's a better idea to simply sit down and put the time in to learn all the jouyou kanji because then, your butt is covered, you know ALL the officially recognized kanji used.

Knowing all of the "offically recognized" kanji doesn't mean anything. The only thing it might give you is a sense of self satisfaction. Case in point: go to any Japanese resturaunt and try reading/understanding a menu. Pick up any novel or book not written in the past few decades. Tell me what 嘘 means (it's certainly not a jouyou kanji, but you'll never see furigana next to it).

Quote:If a kanji you don't know shows up, chances are many Japanese wouldn't understand it either.

No, chances are they will understand it. They've been exposed to kanji used in names, foods, plants, animals, etc their entire life. I don't know how valid the number is, but the average adult can read upwards to 3500 kanji, and honestly it doesn't seem all that far fetched. They know kanji that they never conciously learned.

Quote:Same can't be said if you skip half of RtK and start reading prematurely.

Again, "reading prematurely" is just utterly ridiculous. This infers that something "bad" is going to happen if you dare pick up a book with kanji you don't know. RTK shouldn't be shortened by any means, but it's never too early to start exposing yourself to the language.

Feel free to rebute this post all you want; I'm not going to get in a long drawn out argument with. I just had to make sure other readers weren't taking your fallacious views to heart.

Knowing 1100 kanji is a great springboard to start reading. Though I highly doubt you can read 90% of documents as vosmiura stated, you can definitely pick up a novel or manga and have a decent understanding of what is going on.

Don't close your eyes to things you don't know or understand.

I know from experience that learning words before you know the kanji can be detrimental.

I learned 800 kanji in Japan and had to relearn every single one using Heisig, talk about a huge waste of time. Everytime you learn a kanji from just reading a word in a book, you will learn it wrong. Maybe if you've already learned 1100 Heisig way you know how to split them up etc and that's a great start, other people won't. And even if you do, you might simply not know the radicals used, make up your own ones and then when they show up in the heisig method, you have to relearn them.

You are wasting time, and wasting time is detrimental to the effectiveness of learning since effectiveness in learning a language is based on how long it takes to learn it.

Saying that it's worth it because you can pick up a manga is wrong as well because simply knowing a kanji from Heisig doesn't help that way anyway, you need to know the words (like you said yourself) and learning words composed of kanji you don't know is where the trouble starts. I basically have to relearn most of the words I learned in Japan because I know what まじめ means, I just have no idea which kanjis are used because I didn't know them when I learned the word, so I have to spend all the time connecting the word to the kanji after I've learned both. Again, complete waste of time.

Complete RtK in 3 months, read books for 3 months... or study RtK while reading, taking 6 months to complete RtK, what's the most effective approach? The first one, without a doubt. Instead of wasting time reading before you're ready, put that effort into getting ready quicker.

Just, I hope it is clear that "knowing" the kanji from RTK does not mean you can understand them.

For example the section I recently finished in KO has the following vocab: 調べる、調査、調子、調整、調節. I don't think the meanings of any of them can be guessed correctly just from RTK keywords, never mind the readings.

Lots of things need to be learned post RTK1, and that's going to take some time, at least it's taken me plenty of time, so it takes quite a while before "knowing" all of the kanji is useful.

I should add this to my previous post before samesong posts:

I probably used the word detrimental wrong. Like you, I don't think it's bad to see kanji outside of your reviews. Using a Japanese site isn't bad just because it contains kanji you don't know.

What I'm talking about is actively trying to learn Japanese composed of kanji you don't know, either by learning the word and ignoring the kanji, or learning the kanji out of order because it happened to come up.

And I don't mean detrimental as in that it destroys what you already know. I mean that it wastes time and make proper learning later harder in some situations.

vosmiura Wrote:@erlog, I don't know if it's correct to say the jouyou kanji list solves the issue of frequency; the jouyou kanji list is not for infomation only - it's a prescriptive list. Ofcourse the jouyou kanji are by far the most used today - because they're the prescribed kanji for common use. Before the jouyou list was created and imposed on textbooks and public media, I doubt there was such a clear boundary in kanji use frequency.

Listen, I used to hold your same opinions. Then I did a bunch of research work, and you need to trust me that the Joyou list holds up to scrutiny. There's no clear boundary, as you say, on any documents because the list is just a guideline. As well, just because a kanji isn't on the list doesn't mean it isn't used. It means that it's used with furigana. If you open up any novel you'll see many such words.

If you don't believe me then do your own research. I went in with the goal of debunking the Joyou list and came out the other side appreciating the wisdom and knowledge that went into its creation.

There are probably a few kanji that shouldn't be on the list along with a few others that should be there, but as a guideline, which is what it is, it works fine.

The reason working by frequency doesn't make sense to me is because it doesn't seem like knowing the most common words helps you in any significant way in understanding. You'll be able to understand 毎日 every time it comes up, but if you study by frequency then you might not be able to understand just what is going on everyday.

There is a basic level of vocabulary and grammar one needs in order to begin to interact with native Japanese. Anything below that level, and there will be much confusion. It doesn't work well to try to micromanage things within the required basic understanding because you truly need to use all of it to understand most common things.

Take the passive structure for instance. It's used often, but not as often as the more direct structure. This doesn't mean it's not as important because without working knowledge of the passive structure most written material would be impossible to understand in a detailed way. Until you know both direct and passive structure, it's hard to break in. Kanji are like that. You need a working number of around 1300 before it starts becoming really useful. Before that, there will be things you encounter with shocking regularity that impede understanding significantly.

Frequency isn't a measure of importance, and you could actually make the argument that frequency and importance are inversely proportional. Most of the sentences I haven't understood are specifically because of some infrequent, but very important thing, like grammar or kanji.

As a person at a high enough level of Japanese to read novels, it bothers me when people start trying to micromanage the nuts and bolts when the truth is that they're going to need the entire toolbox.

I mostly blame beginner level textbooks for lying to students about their ability. If you look at intermediate and advanced books they are labeled very clearly as to their level, but when you get into the beginner ones these labels are almost always absent. People spend years running through Genki or Nakama in beginner, middle, and high level Japanese classes only to find themselves firmly still at beginner level in the grand scheme of things. This isn't a dig at people who are that level, but kind of a wake up call to those people that they still have a lot of work to do.

That's why it doesn't do to micromanage things within the beginner level. The only objective at that point should be getting to true intermediate level where everything at the beginner level is solid.

The same reason you don't micromanage the bricks in the foundation of a house is the same reason you shouldn't do it when learning a language. For the house, and for language, all the bricks are necessary before significant construction can begin.

I agree that all the bricks for the foundation are needed, but what I'm not convinced on is where to draw the line for the foundation, as far as the learning process. I don't think all jouyou kanji must be known before reading can become useful to the learning process.

To speaking/reading a language fluently everything is needed, but to the learner what is needed is to get up to a level where learning can start to snowball.

Like you said, before 1300 maybe its not very useful. I don't know where to draw the line, but there is some line where the kanji become useful, and the best target for a learner is to get to that point I think, because from there learning can snowball.

And my original point wasn't against learning all the jouyou kanji. It was that RTK1 could be done in more than one part.

My point of view is from someone who has relatively little time for Japanese compared to some around here, ie. not living in Japan, full time work that I can't study during, family, kid to spend time with, etc. So anyhow, even though I study Japanese seriously, learning all the kanji will take a while.

In fact in one year after RTK1 I learned to read about 1000 kanji to various degrees, and the other RTK1 kanji, not at all. The time spent learning and juggling all of them for a year was quite costly, but only half were useful during this year. Hopefully next year I'll use the other half.

If I could have known which ~1000 kanji I would need first, I would have done RTK for those first. Ofcourse the problem is not knowing which ones those will be ahead of time. If you study in an ad hock fashion or as in AJATT then it's not going to be possible to prioritize RTK study, but if you focus on a structured list like KO or KiC then you'd know exactly what you need to RTK first.

Frankly if you think all need to be learned and order is not so important, then doing them in a systematic order can be no worse than random order, right? I like systematic approaches.

Yeah, K.O. will give you about 90 percent recognition of kanji and the ability to phonetically read them (although not being able to necessarily understand them all in every vocab word) in just about any general text. As Vosmiura pointed out, a lot of people seem confused into thinking it means 100 percent of 90 percent of materials. K.O. is very useful because it shows the various kanji readings through vocab in context, and by the end of it, I felt pretty comfortable at being able to at least make a good guess when looking words up in a paper dictionary. In this regard, it is trying to help you achieve a similar goal as RTK 2 but with the added bonus of exposing you to a significant amount of high-frequency vocab and intermediate grammar structures along the way. And so if you have a good grasp of basic grammar already, K.O. pretty much gives you all the tools you need to start learning independently through reading on your own.

vosmiura Wrote:Frankly if you think all need to be learned and order is not so important, then doing them in a systematic order can be no worse than random order, right? I like systematic approaches.

I think most people agree that the order is important, that's why I decided to relearn all the kanji using the Heisig method instead of skipping the ones I already knew. Every new kanji builds on the knowledge of previous ones. Learning "omou" before you learn "tanbo" and "kokoro" is not only a lot harder, it's downright bad since you will probably not give fitting meanings to the two parts, eventually giving you trouble with other kanji including those radicals. Going through RtK1 teaches you pretty much every single radical, so the problem disappears once you're done which is why going with RtK3 isn't AS important.

(Sorry for the romaji, I'm on a school computer)

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1770

when I was too poor to afford Heisig, I printed off every single page of the ebook on word processor and put it into a folder. Its massive and walking around with it at school makes me look hella smart.

And learning kanji by frequency is probably not a good idea. I learned my kana that way and I still forget them and can't write them down, you forget them easily even if you have seen them a thousand times. This will be worse if you do it with kanji.

Kana by frequency??

Kana are few and much more frequent than kanji, so just through reading practice you should be able to internalize them easily, and read them at a fast pace. And for writing that won't fall out of thin air - you need some writing practice.

I don't understand what kana-by-frequency is either. I thought maybe it's a joke...

Tobberoth Wrote:If a kanji you don't know shows up, chances are many Japanese wouldn't understand it either.

I'm not going to get into a long argument with you, so don't expect a follow-up post, and I won't try to change your mind, but you keep making this type of comment and I can't let it sit any longer.

If you want to read fluently in Japanese you will have to know hundreds if not 1,000+ more kanji outside the jouyou list.

Why the jouyou list is there, whether or not it's the best list, how to study after RTK1, etc., etc., all these points are moot. You WILL learn more kanji after RTK1. And probably the day you start reading the same material Japanese people read. (誰、嘘　。。。）

To suggest the jouyou list is somehow complete, like the kana or the English alphabet is, to be blunt, simply incorrect. You will NOT know every kanji you need to know when you finish RTK1. It is only an official benchmark, good, bad or otherwise.

To repeatedly suggest that you can disregard anything outside the jouyou list is, with all respect, bad advice.

vosmiura Wrote:Frankly if you think all need to be learned and order is not so important, then doing them in a systematic order can be no worse than random order, right? I like systematic approaches.

I never said systematic approaches were not the way to go. I simply said that breaking down the most common kanji by frequency probably won't net noticeable results for the amount of work it would take. It's a diminishing returns problem. The Joyou list has already solved the problem of frequency for the most part. The remaining part would be too costly in terms of time and effort to justify the benefit.

I would also like to clarify that before someone passes beginner level they might be able to read native Japanese text, but it will take a much larger amount of time than if that person had spent the energy finishing beginner level first.