Hi! I'll make it quick: 石 (stone / rock) according to sources like those online kanji dictionaries, (I used jisho.org) shows that this has 3 onyomi readings... コク, シャク, セキ

When I looked up this kanji from the RTK1 cross-reference, it told me to go to frame 1732 of RTK2, and I found that only one onyomi, セキ, is listed.

Q1. Does this mean that this will be the only onyomi that Heisig will teach for this kanji?

Q2. If so, is knowing only this one good enough for fluent Japanese? Or will I come across another compound, use the wrong onyomi, and sound like an idiot, and have to spend hours relearning things / "deleting mistakes from my brain"?

Thanks a ton! I'm asking this before I buy my own copy of RTK2 from UH Press, or go with something else.

The other readings are very uncommon, you shouldn't have to worry about them. Fluent or not, that depends on what you mean by fluent. If you ask a Japanese person for on'yomi for 石 they will in all probability say セキ and not list the others even if they know them because they are so uncommon.

If you search by common words only on jisho.org, you get ONE word with another on'yomi usage: 磁石 (jishaku), meaning compass.

EDIT: Actually, there's two. There's 石神 (shakujin) as well, meaning holy stone or something like that.

You should never be sure on on'yomi anyway, don't use words out loud without looking them up properly, there's tons of kanji which have on'yomi you barely see ever, you should never trust the readings you know.

A1: No. If you go to Frame 1732, you will see references to frames 2018 and 2196 next to the reading of セキ. Frame 2018 is 磁石 (じしゃく), with the シャク reading, and frame 2196 is 一石 (いっこく), with the コク reading.

It's a function of the cross-reference being shoddy. It only refers to the first occurrence of the kanji in RTK2, instead of referring to all frames that the kanji shows up in.

Heisig is pretty thorough about on-yomi, even if the book is a bit of a mess with all of the various numbers he throws at you. Everything has a frame, and then there are the RTK1 frames, and it all starts to dance in your head after a while.

What irks me the most are the errors. There aren't many, but there shouldn't be errors in this book after all this time. Make sure you download the errata. Someone posted it here a few days ago.

Thank you both so much.

rich_f: when you said it's a shame that there are errors... do you mean there are more AFTER one has corrected in their own copy of RTK2, the ones listed in the current errata... that should concern us? Please elaborate. This is starting to be a good thread.

EDIT: For others, all erratas can be found for all his work at this base URL:

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publ..._Kanji.htm

No, I haven't found any substantive errors in RTK2 other than the ones in the errata... but the book has been around for a long time, and RTK3 has quite a few errors in it as well.

I'm not sure if it's a function of UH Press making mistakes, or the book coming to them with mistakes and the editor UH not doing a good job of cleaning it up. Either way, the books have been around for a long time, and it's not like it's rocket science to clean them up so they're accurate.

RTK3 is such a hash that the editor for that book should be fired. From a cannon. At something spiky. It's inexcusable that I have to download a rather large file and go through pages and pages of corrections in my book with a pencil because the editor couldn't be bothered to do his/her job. If that person doesn't know Japanese, then that person shouldn't be editing a book on it.

There are a few errors in the RTK1-RTK2 cross-reference indexing in the back of RTK2, but I can't remember what they were. The version in the UH Press version of RTK2 is greatly improved over the old version, but it could stand a great deal of improvement to be made more useful. Listing only the first frame the kanji appears in RTK2 is just annoying, so instead of one hop straight to the frame, you have to do 2 hops. Sloppy.

rich_f Wrote:RTK3 is such a hash that the editor for that book should be fired. From a cannon. At something spiky.

Amen to that.

smujohnson, for what it's worth , the book Kanji in Context also includes 磁石（じしゃく）　and ～石　（こく）　as fairly common vocab/readings worth knowing.

Since you're considering what books to purchase, I recommend KIC if you're at least early intermediate level. I think you can comfortably rely on their kanji order (by usefulness and ease of learning) and their selection of readings and vocab (~10,000). There are phrases and sentences for context. See also thread on Kanji Odyssey, I think it's similar but perhaps aimed at high beginner level? RTK2 serves a very limited purpose IMO, but I'm sure you've read the comments.

To me it's all a question of "What do you want to do with it?"

I'm going through RTK2 as an exercise in setting up cards in such a way as to totally replace my English Heisig RTK1 deck. Reviewing English keywords 9 months out from finishing RTK1 is keeping them all in my head, but it would be nice to start tagging them, even if they aren't in any sort of context. But it's a slow, low-priority exercise for me, mostly because I learn more useful vocab more easily from Kanji Odyssey.

That said, the groups Heisig uses in RTK2 are seductive in their own right.

You could also learn a ton of vocab from Kanji in Context as well, or iKnow, or the UNICOM 2級 vocab book. (Which I always thought was pretty cool.)

[Katsuo]

rich_f Wrote:RTK3 is such a hash that the editor for that book should be fired. From a cannon. At something spiky. It's inexcusable that I have to download a rather large file and go through pages and pages of corrections in my book with a pencil because the editor couldn't be bothered to do his/her job. If that person doesn't know Japanese, then that person shouldn't be editing a book on it.

I have some sympathy for the editor.

The majority of the errors I found in RTK3 were related to the primitives. It would be very difficult for someone who has not learned kanji via the Heisig method to spot them.

I suppose, but there really are a LOT of mistakes in RTK3... you should know, Katsuo, you helped find a lot of them.

For some reason I'm reminded of an old Monty Python sketch about bogus English phrasebooks now...

[Katsuo]

rich_f Wrote:For some reason I'm reminded of an old Monty Python sketch about bogus English phrasebooks now...

Hovercrafts and eels?

rich_f Wrote:I suppose, but there really are a LOT of mistakes in RTK3... you should know, Katsuo, you helped find a lot of them.

I can agree with you there buddy. I mean, as someone pointed out, these books are as old as time itself... and it was released as the UH Press edition with damn near 90 corrections? If I was the publishers that released this, I'd hang my head in shame for printing and selling so error-ridden. I would probably have a free recall done where people can mail in their book and get a free 2nd printing with the errors corrected.

Even though it would take a Heisig-student to correct them... the book is old! Heisig himself could have had a look over it himself personally, after this long...

Katsuo Wrote:

rich_f Wrote:For some reason I'm reminded of an old Monty Python sketch about bogus English phrasebooks now...

Hovercrafts and eels?