Hi all,

First of all, *incredible* and useful site! Couldn't ask for a better tool to help me through Volume 1.

I have a stupid question, though, to which I haven't been able to find a conclusive answer. If I finish this book, and suddenly decide I want to learn Chinese instead of Japanese (with my flighty, inconsistent way of pursuing of languages, that just may happen ), how would I fare? Basically, what I'm asking is, do most of the Chinese characters mean the same thing as the book teaches, or is a lot of it specific to how the Japanese use them? If I decided to learn Mandarin and graft that knowledge over my knowledge of the characters, would that work decently? Do the characters mostly share universal meaning throughout the cultures that use them?

Hopefully I'm making sense. I'll restate the question in different words, just in case I'm not: do the Chinese characters largely retain the same meanings in Chinese as in Japanese? I'm aware about the "on" readings and whatnot, but I still haven't been able to find a proper answer. I've always assumed yes, so I thought Heisig's course would be excellent, since I wouldn't be tying my knowledge of the characters to specific spoken words immediately.

Thank you!

Well, if you really do think you will go for Chinese in the future, then I would go through RTH if it had all the RTK characters in it or Zhongwen's dictionary.

The meanings can differ, but it really doesn't matter. The assigned English meanings are more of tags to refer to the characters. As you learn the language you learn accurately the meanings in the language itself.

http://forum.koohii.com/search.php?search_id=532907837

Hi alyks, thanks for the quick reply!

So, basically then, if I make it through this volume and suddenly decide to learn Chinese instead, the stuff I learned can be applied to the meanings of the characters in Chinese with not much adaptation? Especially if I haven't started learning the grammar and pronunciation. If I were aware of RTH's existence before I bought RTK, I might have changed my mind, but it's too late for that. By the end of RTK, I should know enough to figure out the *meanings* of quite a few Chinese characters, whether they being written from China or Japan, right? Like, after I finished RTK I, if I decided to pick up RTH II when it comes out, would I be totally lost?


And liosama, thanks for the reply, but your link doesn't work for me.

CrazedEwok Wrote:Hi alyks, thanks for the quick reply!

So, basically then, if I make it through this volume and suddenly decide to learn Chinese instead, the stuff I learned can be applied to the meanings of the characters in Chinese with not much adaptation? Especially if I haven't started learning the grammar and pronunciation. If I were aware of RTH's existence before I bought RTK, I might have changed my mind, but it's too late for that. By the end of RTK, I should know enough to figure out the *meanings* of quite a few Chinese characters, whether they being written from China or Japan, right? Like, after I finished RTK I, if I decided to pick up RTH II when it comes out, would I be totally lost?


And liosama, thanks for the reply, but your link doesn't work for me.

I've never been through RTK or seen RTH, but I don't think it works that way. You wouldn't be able to pick up RTH 2 and learn from it if you've done RTK. Also, finishing RTK doesn't give you the ability to figure out the meanings of unknown characters, if that's what you're getting at.

I'm going to emphasis that the meanings are not what you should be concerned about, it should be the ability to write them. Heisig presents the kanji in a specific order specifically for this purpose and this order is different for RTH and RTK, I believe.

Also, if you are asking this question just in case you might study Chinese later, then don't worry and just finish RTK, you can learn more later without too much trouble. If you seriously think you will study Chinese, then I would recommend you look into methods to teach both Chinese characters and Japanese characters now.

I'm just worried that if I decide Chinese is more practical for me to learn, the time put into RTK would be wasted. I'm pretty much just seeking clarification on that; whether or not a lot of the knowledge can be carried over and easily convertered.

You'll be fine.

Also, see this thread:
http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?t=9127

Ah, that thread was very enlightening... kind of puts some fear to rest. I understand learning the *pronunciations* would probably make learning the equivalents in the other language harder, but it's nice to know that the characters at least correspond.

Thanks!

Hi CrazedEwok!
I finished heisig in august and from october I started traditional kanji from zhongwen and I'm at 1700,would finish the book within the end of march without hurry
I have to tell that rtk help me a lot in studying the hanzi,because I knew a lot,lot of components
The problem is input all the data in to the srs...it's a pain in the...and I'm doing all the stories myself...
however doing rtk you will not wast your time,in a way or another it will help you

Excellent, thanks a ton for the input.