Hi – This is Schultz from Tokyo Damage Report. I hope this thread is the right place to post this. For two years, me and my Japanese friends have been making a free, DIY, online “how to learn kanji” textbook, and now it's finally up. Maybe it could help people who are trying to learn Japanese.

Our page tries to address what beginner students actually care about: “Do I really need this one? How can I tell this one apart from that one? What’s that little doohickey on the left side? Which particle goes with this verb?” and so on.

I’ve worked with 3 Japanese people to give 'usefulness ratings' to around 2,000 kanji – and each of the ‘example kanji words FOR those kanji– to make sure they’re all useful. A lot of dumb kanji got thrown out. I write advice on how to use the words correctly so you don’t sound like a noob. The textbook is structured so that the current kanji is always made out of radicals which you’ve already learned. I also have a system of mnemonics which helps you learn the pronunciation, the meaning, and all the radicals, in one English sentence. The mnemonic system is pretty much based on Yo Mama jokes.

Since I'm still developing it, I'm curious what people on this forum think of it - please try it and tell me what you think.

Thanks!

Schultz

kanji textbook is here:
http://www.hellodamage.com/kanjidicks/main.htm
kanji dictionary is here:
http://www.hellodamage.com/kanjidicks/main.htm

This looks really good. Seems like you have organized a lot of good information here. I like the writing style too.

Quote:To make matters even worse, if you're a drunk like me

haha

Just off the first chapter:

1. You pretty much describe the Heisig method. The exception is you used a different set of Kanji. No surprise there as some of us in this group do similar things such as the RTK Lite thread points out.

2. If the profanity isn't adding something to the quality, why is it in there?

3. Edit some mistakes. 風 is not country for example.

4. The big failure though is you want to use verbal mnemonics. We've been experiencing that the visual (Heisig) and spatial (kanji town, movie method) work better with kanji for a majority of them.

Aside from being a source of stories, which this site also has an abundance of, I'm not quite sure what your book will offer.

PS: While it's stupid to learn kanji by thematic elements, it is not stupid to learn vocabulary words from thematic elements. Take a peak at KO2001 to see how they pull it off.

Again, this is off a quick read of the first chapter. It's not an in depth review.

sorry to be a bother but the page where all the kanji are crashes my firefox
would you mind splitting them up into 20 pages of 100 kanji each or something?

re_> Nukemarine: the book to me, offers a slightly different perspective than this site so it would be a good place to browse through every now and then when im out of ideas;

danieldesu Wrote:This looks really good. Seems like you have organized a lot of good information here. I like the writing style too.

"I teach you the kanji real good"

It's an intellectual turn-off. It seems to be a pretty good place to get stories from, and I like that he mixes readings into his mnemonics. But, I don't like the "just learn enough to get by" attitude, and it seems to have been developed for just those type of people.

stehr Wrote:It's an intellectual turn-off. It seems to be a pretty good place to get stories from, and I like that he mixes readings into his mnemonics. But, I don't like the "just learn enough to get by" attitude, and it seems to have been developed for just those type of people.

It's raw. 気に入った。 I'd say the whole intro page linked to could be about 1/4 as long though. The kanji dictionary page, newframes.htm, needs cleaning up most. Split it into chapters at the very least. There are html optimizers out there that will help your server and your users' browsers.

I've got Heisig, and I watch anime and doramas and read manga and play video games. This method seems to fill minimal gaps in my study regime, I got excited about KANJI TAGS "(the big one!)". I wonder if I'll ever find out how helpful they are. I got to keep my nose to the RTK grindstone here.

I'll give this url to my friend who doesn't study Japanese, but lives in Japan. Maybe it'll spark his interest. He's getting by pretty well with no significant Japanese ability. There are some people who really do learn just enough to get by (I'd say this is way more), for all the reasons Schultz explains, basically cause some other people say gaijin can't learn Japanese. I reckon there's a subgroup there that might get sparked by this, and realize that Yes, We Can. Combine that with the "raw"ness of the mnemonics, and I think you've got another subgroup though... Anyway, I know one guy who would have loved this a few years ago, but he quit the japanese for good a few years ago.

Yeah, I stumbled on this site a while back. While the method was a little too unfocused (or perhaps, presented in too unfocused a way) for me to really use or anything, I thought it was pretty hilarious reading through it.

Nukemarine - #2, because it's funny. Seriously though, I think he's using profanity to make jokes, to make reading through it a little more fun than just a normal textbook. And also to provide an atmosphere showing you don't have to really be all too intellectual to get into learning Japanese. I think it sorta works, it's just the rest of the site is so unfocused that I couldn't handle following it.

I think that site is excellent. Thanks for sharing!

I stumbled apon this a while back too, ended up leaving it to continue with Heisig, but still remember most of the memoronics, somehow the stories stuck very well!

Oh, also.. I actually think a lot of the information is great. I suppose there may be some mistakes, but it's really, really helpful to have things pointed out very blunted. "This Kanji is only used in like two compounds" or "This word is often used by new learners in a wrong way."

Anecdotes like that are fantastic and incredibly interesting. I just wish the presentation was easier to deal with.

Ben_Nielson Wrote:Nukemarine - #2, because it's funny. Seriously though, I think he's using profanity to make jokes, to make reading through it a little more fun than just a normal textbook. And also to provide an atmosphere showing you don't have to really be all too intellectual to get into learning Japanese. I think it sorta works, it's just the rest of the site is so unfocused that I couldn't handle following it.

Yeah, it got a laugh out of me too.

stehr Wrote:"I teach you the kanji real good"

It's an intellectual turn-off.

Sometimes turning off the intellect can be healthy for wholistic development.

Quote:It seems to be a pretty good place to get stories from, and I like that he mixes readings into his mnemonics. But, I don't like the "just learn enough to get by" attitude, and it seems to have been developed for just those type of people.

I think it more of a "cut out the unnecessary" sort of attitude. It's almost akin to removing ballet from the martial art, or wasteful gestures from piano technique.... almost.

Interestingly, I have not yet finished the introduction and I'm learning from this site.

the site Wrote:That approach makes sense if you're teaching German or Swahili or Thai, but for kanji? HELLS NAW!

LOL.

Quote:Moving on to synonyms: all languages have synonyms. Some people say that synonyms lend variety and shades of nuance to a language, keeping it colorful and alive. I am not one of those people.

*Falls to floor*

Quote:Well, if you have never studied kanji before, you should definitely concentrate on recognizing and remembering ndividual kanji

Is this a mistake or was it done for emphatic purposes?

I personally hate that style of writing, but it isn't as bad as that AJATT guy. I scratch my eyes reading through his rubbish, and that's just on the surface of his writing style, that is not a big problem compared to his level of logic on things; e.g the non-existence of grammar *Forgive me God it was for examples sake*

I've got an idea. Why don't we keep the AJATT guy out of this discussion? It's just a suggestion though.

Yo mama such a troll, she can't keep the AJATT guy out of any conversation!

~J

kazelee Wrote:Sometimes turning off the intellect can be healthy for wholistic development.

True... But it doesn't help much with his credibility. I think if RTK had been titled: "Teachn' you knaji real good her," then I would have passed on. It is funny, but it's just too funny to devote "over a year" to it. I agree that any style of English can be used within a mnemonic, but outside of his mnemonics, there needs to be some evidence that this guy has graduated from high school before he decides to become a teacher. The method is great; Heisig-style radical breakdown, with incremental learning, paired with mnemonics for the sounds, and for the characters. But, Heisig is a professional researcher, writer, speaker... And as far as I can tell, (sorry kdamage) kdamage might be a squatter. I think that a more clearly written introduction and title, with less jokes, save for the mnemonics, would be more appealing, and boost his credibility.

Quote:特徴：DUH , PN　（ｈｅｒｅ　ｉｓ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｆｉｒｓｔ　example of a ＰＮ－　a Ｐｒｏｐｅｒ　Ｎｏｕｎ　ｋａｎｊｉ．

Wrong, the first example was the first kanji you listed. 一 is a common given name, usually pronounced はじめ. Every kanji can be used in a proper noun in theory (and every jouyou+jinmeiyou in practice) anyways...

Why is it a random mix of full and halfwidth chars?

Like liosama, the dictionary crashes my Safari (4.0 public beta) too. It worked the first time I went to the page though :/

It looks like it might become a useful resource though. It's nice to see the English Japanese learning community come up with something that isn't just another goddamn EDICT/JMDict parser for once.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

nukemarine: "it's stupid to learn kanji by thematic elements" - what is a thematic element? You mean, it's stupid to learn kanji based on what the kanji look like?

and the profanity is there because people get frustrated and cuss when we study a foreign language and can't understand it.

liosama: yeah, it would be better if the pages were smaller. I agree,but I don't know how to split the pages while preserving the anchor tags (i.e. the links between each kanji and its radicals)

chully: thanks for telling your friend! The intro could be shorter? I guess that if the intro was for people who already knew what kanji was, and just wanted to learn the method, it could be shorter, but I wanted to write an intro for total beginners. Maybe I should split it into two parts!

ben: thanks for trying it, and I hope I can make it more focused. But by 'unfocused' do you mean that the method is wack or that the presentation is confusing?

kazelee: to answer your question,

"Well, if you have never studied kanji before, you should definitely concentrate on recognizing and remembering individual kanji"
Is this a mistake or was it done for emphatic purposes?

In context, that means, "study the kanji at first THEN a year later try studying the compound words made from kanji."

stehr: There's already plenty of academic books out there, so I deliberately tried something in a different style. And just because something has an academic, 'official, I know everything' STYLE does not mean that the SUBSTANCE is useful, and vice versa.

Jarvik: sorry about the mistake! I guess I should have been more specific about what the PN tag means. What if PN was defined as: "this is a kanji that might not look so useful at first glance but is used in proper names often enough to make learning it worthwhile."

kdamage Wrote:Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

nukemarine: "it's stupid to learn kanji by thematic elements" - what is a thematic element? You mean, it's stupid to learn kanji based on what the kanji look like?

It's that part in the beginning how you talked about learning kanji where they showed Water, Earth, Fire, Wood and Gold. Problem would be the kanji's themselves do not relate to each other in how they are drawn. So Themes are bad to teach kanji, but themes are great when teach words that use the kanji.

Now, teaching the kanji by elements of radicals or primitives is cool as we here mainly do that with RTK. Another user actually learned by elements of on-yomi (dubbed it the Movie Method) which seemed to work great for him.

Anyway, that's what a meant. You wrote how you hated that books used themes to teach kanji. I was agreeing with you.

Reviving this thread to let people know that Schultz recently posted the new version of kanjidamage on his blog:

here

(Or just go directly to the site kanjidamage.com)

I don't know if anyone else on these forums used this instead of Heisig, but I did and I thought it actually made the process pretty enjoyable. Has tons of interesting/funny commentary, and it's completely free. I'd encourage anyone starting out with RTK to consider this as well.

I've been using this as a supplement to my Heisig studies for about a month now. I use an Anki deck, and when I fail a kanji I will search for it on Kanji Damage as part of the review. Also, if I remember a kanji, but want to know a bit more about it (like something I see on the train a lot), I'll check out the Kanji Damage page. Overall, my progress has slowed a little bit, but I'm learning a bit more relevant things. And I laugh at least once during every 10 minute study burst. I find Schultz's writing pretty humorous.

Another note, I will NEVER use stories from this site again. Seems way too often the word is misconstrued. For example, 件, affair. A lot of the stories here talk about people having sexual affairs with cows, which is easy to remember, but not really the meaning.

Added bonus, many of the words have links to relevant and interesting stories. But a lot of it is controversy type stuff, and it seems like a lot of people on this site are overly conservative in that sense.

Screech,

To be fair, part of the problem was Heisig only included the Keyword with no further description of the Kanji for a large number of entries. This has been noted by a few people in critiques of RTK.

Part of the effort to compensate for that were people giving a better meaning to the kanji at the beginning of their actual story. However, that only helps if you find that story.

Another solution, should the RevTK open source work, is allow a user option when studying new cards or reviewing older cards is to show common English meanings underneath the Keyword. Such a source is available from spreadsheets that Katsuo posts.

screeech Wrote:I've been using this as a supplement to my Heisig studies for about a month now. I use an Anki deck, and when I fail a kanji I will search for it on Kanji Damage as part of the review. Also, if I remember a kanji, but want to know a bit more about it (like something I see on the train a lot), I'll check out the Kanji Damage page. Overall, my progress has slowed a little bit, but I'm learning a bit more relevant things. And I laugh at least once during every 10 minute study burst. I find Schultz's writing pretty humorous.

Another note, I will NEVER use stories from this site again. Seems way too often the word is misconstrued. For example, 件, affair. A lot of the stories here talk about people having sexual affairs with cows, which is easy to remember, but not really the meaning.

Added bonus, many of the words have links to relevant and interesting stories. But a lot of it is controversy type stuff, and it seems like a lot of people on this site are overly conservative in that sense.

For real, someone reported my story once, and I even quit RTK! Also, one time someone used a story and the English keyword didn't exactly match the meaning of the individual kanji and I quit again! Even though that doesn't actually matter. Why aren't people perfect and synchronized with my mindset??

I want to see some more discussion about this method. In particular, I'm wondering about the accuracy of the information provided.

The main reason I started with this method is because I can dispense with the mnemonics and make use of the logical order the kanji are listed in. I've been learning 10-15 a day and am up to almost 400, drilling myself with the keyword and then writing the kanji over ond over on scrap paper. On my first run-through I'm getting down the on readings pretty well, and plan on doing the kun readings on the next round. As this is an unpopular method, I guess my main concern is how accurate the keywords are, but I really do like the tidbits of information provided along the way.

So aside from the mnemonics, what are some opinions of this method?

[Katsuo]

baxter Wrote:I guess my main concern is how accurate the keywords are

In this spreadsheet you can compare the keywords from different sources.

Katsuo Wrote:this spreadsheet you can compare the keywords from different sources.

Ugh, do you have another way i can get that spreadsheet? Google is making me jump through hoops to view it.