Do you guys ever notice when you get two kanji mixed up for each other? Or have a hard time remembering a particular Kanji?

I personally get 如 (Likeness) and 肖 (resemblance) mixed up. And for some reason, I get 了 (complete) wrong more times than is reasonable.

And no matter what stories or keywords I associate with these Kanji, I usually get them wrong. Any similar experiences?

Wow thats actually quite creepy- I JUST came online to write a post about getting 如 (Likeness) and 肖 (resemblance) mixed up and saw this!! Spooky.

So yes- does it matter? The keywords are virtually identical, so is it important to separate the kanji in the mind, and if so how would you do this with such similar keywords?

I've found that when it comes to Kanji that have similar meanings and no matter what I do to try to tell them apart i.e. change my story etc, and still get them mixed up after a while of them showing up in the SRS they eventually just seem to click and I don't get them mixed up any more granted this could be because of the repetition of seeing them and getting them wrong but its worked for many of the similar Kanji

I find if the keyword is more a feeling or idea is sometimes hard to remember. But I also struggle with words I ended up looking up like admonish, I always get this confused with awe. I think because its not fixed as an English word in my head.

Ok, I think I finally figured out a small mnemonic to figure out how to distinguish between likeness and resemblance. I know I can't post the Hseig story up, but my recommendation is to use a different story than what Hseig provides, if just for those two characters.

Another solution is to download the greasemonkey script allowing you to change up the keyword. Then, change "Resemblance" to "Resemblance (not 如)" and "Likeness" to "Likeness (not 肖)".

Remember, these keywords were designed to facilitate. Plus, there are synonym kanji (any of you know the Japanese term for kanji with similar meaning?), so the keywords are going to be similar.

Nukemarine Wrote:Another solution is to download the greasemonkey script allowing you to change up the keyword. Then, change "Resemblance" to "Resemblance (not 如)" and "Likeness" to "Likeness (not 肖)".

I use the name of a primitive for disambiguation when the kanji are true synonyms.
Eg: 捜す to search (monkey); 探す to search (tree).

Nukemarine Wrote:Any of you know the Japanese term for kanji with similar meaning?

同訓異字?

Nukemarine Wrote:Another solution is to download the greasemonkey script allowing you to change up the keyword. Then, change "Resemblance" to "Resemblance (not 如)" and "Likeness" to "Likeness (not 肖)".

That's a really good point. I keep losing sight, sometimes, what the actual objective of RtK is.

iSoron Wrote:I use the name of a primitive for disambiguation when the kanji are true synonyms.
Eg: 捜す to search (monkey); 探す to search (tree).

Those aren't true synonyms, they mean different things. Search for something lost vs search for something desired. They are homonyms though :o

But yeah, as far as kanji review, I never put any particular effort into disambiguation. It doesn't really matter until they're part of vocabulary, and then you know what they mean specifically anyway.

I just check Halpern (Kanji Learner's Dictionary) and see what he uses as a keyword to help differentiate them, and try to graft that feeling onto the kanji somehow.

As for "Likeness," it's really similar to frame 99 (which I learned before I started RTK as "suki"="like") which Heisig calls "fond". "Likeness" has the same left side as "like."

QuackingShoe Wrote:Those aren't true synonyms, they mean different things. Search for something lost vs search for something desired. They are homonyms though

Ops. Yeah, you're right.
「なくした物を捜す」,「目的の物を探す」.

Thanks for the correction.

On a slightly different tangent, I find that 塾 is hard to write proportionately because it's hard to write 享 so small.

haha yes i've had those problems on those kanjis too often. Also complete made me come up with a mindblank all the time. Simply because i've reviewed it so often have i been able to remember it now. I don't know it as a story now I just remember it =) So just keep reviewing and you'll get there eventually ^^

QuackingShoe Wrote:Those aren't true synonyms, they mean different things. Search for something lost vs search for something desired. They are homonyms though :o

While we all go crazy from the thousands of kanji Japanese has, Japanese learning English are probably going crazy over English not having thousands of kanji:

# bow - To bend forward at the waist in respect (e.g. "bow down")
# bow - the front of the ship (e.g. "bow and stern")
# bow - the weapon which shoots arrows (e.g. "bow and arrow")
# bow - a kind of tied ribbon (e.g. bow on a present, a bowtie)
# bow - to bend outward at the sides (e.g. a "bow-legged" cowboy)

(stolen from wikipedia)

I recommend looking up the actual meaning in a dictionary :|
肖 is 'closer' to its meaning as it means 'be similar to' [somebody]
appears in juko like
shouzo [portrait, likeness, image]
shouzouga - portrait
etc etc

where as 如 has a much more 'technical' meaning;
如く　（ごとく） - as though, as if, like,
如く（しく） - to be equal
and in compounds it seems to be used in a much more technical manner as a suffix modifier, interrogative words, ("ikaga", a famous one you'll learn when asking how much something is, )


I can't believe you people don't even check the meaning of the kanji or its uses, that's the first thing i do.
So you can tell these two are completely different in meaning and what not. And this is by simply e-dicting their possible compounds/uses.


Let me be frank, i forgot the stories for those two characters, but i could write them out easily if tested .

Ah yeah story just popped out now, different sparkling things resemble each other and there's a likeness between all womens' mouths that we seek

I usually don't check the exact meaning because associating the kanji with the keyword isn't as important as knowing the Kanji's shape. When we start sentence mining and whatnot, my understanding is that the discrepancies will become more apparent as we study the language.

Besides, in my (limited) experience, a lot of Japanese words do not have direct translations.