I've gotten almost halfway through RtK vol. 1 using the regular strategy, in just about a month. I'm going to Japan in September, and I thought "hey, it might be useful to know all the kanji by the time I get there" (I'll be studying Japanese). However, I don't really know too much of the actual Japanese language, and I really want to work on that as my top priority so I can.. you know, communicate with people and stuff. Since I'm wasting quite a bit of time learning kanji without learning any Japanese, that kind of got me thinking... is there a different approach I can take to this perhaps?

What I'm thinking is, I can go through the whole book, and learn all of the primitives first. Then, I'll pretty much be able to learn any kanji as it comes up using Heisig's method, just not in the same order. I think there's only a hundred or so primitives left for me to learn (maybe a few hundred or so in the whole book), and with this I'll pretty much be able to remember any kanji that comes up. If I'm not too lazy, maybe I can even learn all the remaining kanji that are used as parts of other kanji. For example, how vessels is used in other kanji even though it's not marked as a primitive. I can just spend some time picking out all the kanji that are used in this way, and learn those too to have more to work with in making stories. I figure if I did this, in total it would be around 500 kanji to learn, and there wouldn't be any disadvantage compared to the regular method since you know all of the primitives used. But this would allow my kanji learning to become much more flexible, as I wouldn't have to strictly stick to Heisig's book.

Has anyone ever tried anything like this? what are your thoughts on it?

Do RTK lite instead.

If you do the radical/primitive approach, you may want to look at the movie method. That way you can toss on a onyomi pronunciation on top of learning what the kanji means and how to write it. Down side would be having to create a majority of your own stories.

Even better, try Movie Method with the Kanji from RTK Lite.

I can't come up with a compelling case that says that method wouldn't work. For example, the Movie Method separates out the primitives and lists them separately so that you can use them with a different ordering of the Kanji (by On-yomi). You're doing so well with RTK already that it seems like you should just keep doing what you're doing. You're not going to be fluent in the language by then anyhow. But how long are you going to be there? I can't really say what you should do without knowing why you're going, what you want to get out of it, how long you're staying, if you're going back later, etc. Assuming you want to do some conversation by the time you get there you could study conversation so that you can get by. How are you planning on studying the language after RTK?

I'm assuming you are moving to Japan and not just visiting, because altering your entire learning strategy just for a 2 week visit doesn't seem smart at all.

But even then, my advice is: Don't change anything. Finish RTK1, no matter your geographical location. It's supposed to be a basis for more learning, not an endpoint. Once you get through RTK, just studying kanji by themselves is kind of pointless, anyhow. After that, you're going to want to study entire words, or even sentences.

I don't think learning the readings (via Movie Method) would help you at this point. You might be able to guess at the reading for a compound, but you still won't know what it means, let alone all the connecting grammar.

What about just doing RTK -or RTK Lite-, but using Japanese keywords? -or prompts, or whatever you call them.

I know there is a list of Japanese words for each kanji in RTK somewhere there, and you can use the Substitute Keywords Greasemonkey script.

I think that a great alternative would be learning 1 Japanese word for each kanji -with kun'yomi whenever possible- and follow the RTK order. That way you wouldn't spend much more time that doing normal RTK, but you would learn about 2,000 Japanese words. Besides, you would manage to get the meaning for thousands of words, and could even try to define them in Japanese -even if not perfect Japanese.

For example, take 後悔:
後(あと)：after
悔やむ(くやむ)：regret

So, 後悔 roughly means "後になって悔やむ", or "To regret after (having done something)".

Once you know that, it isn't that hard to remember that 後悔 reads こうかい.

Actually, most compounds follow that kind of structure.

Though, I don't know what will happen to the script once the new version of this website starts working...

Milosd Wrote:What I'm thinking is, I can go through the whole book, and learn all of the primitives first. Then, I'll pretty much be able to learn any kanji as it comes up using Heisig's method, just not in the same order. I think there's only a hundred or so primitives left for me to learn (maybe a few hundred or so in the whole book), and with this I'll pretty much be able to remember any kanji that comes up.

Has anyone ever tried anything like this? what are your thoughts on it?

Look you're already half way so you already know quite a bit. Since you're going to Japan soon, get started on actual Japanese.

I was up to about 1200 before I started Japanese this semester (2nd year level). For kanji that I didn't know in my nakama text book I learnt by simply learning the respective lessons for the character I didn't know. It turned out to half work, the only reason it didn't work was because I did 0 SRS, it was a once-off thing as I didn't really spend any time on Japanese at university as I my ego level was too high

I think with proper effort it will work, but I don't see the point of you doing it now. You can still do some very little RTK now but start on important stuff, skim through Tae Kim, start on nakama or genki or minna no nihongo and be on your way.

I personally think it's a good idea to take a break from RTK because when you get back you see a lot of flaws in your story methods; you will see your retention rates lowering more than they ought to which tells you that you may need to work on your stories.

Overall it will have a positive effect on you, as it had on me. Writers, Artists, Engineers, mathematicians always have to take a step back and look at their work before they realise there is something wrong with it.

Consider your situation. You're leaving for Japan in a month, so what do you do? You know that we say everybody should learn the kanji first, but you're leaving for Japan and you want to focus on the language so you can communicate.

So, again, what do you do? Can you do both? Kanji and Japanese? If you can, problem solved. If you can't, you have do make the decision:

Start learning Japanese to communicate when in Japan, putting off you kanji learning while maintaining what you already know.

or

Spend all your time learning kanji so that when you're there you can make full use of your immersion once there.

You're not going to shortcut your way out of this, just pick one and stop wasting time.

Most important thing is to review your kanjis anyway, it should not take too much time - maybe a maximum of one hour a day.

You want to complete your kanjis studies? I'd suggest you take a look at RTK LITE. It is the subset of all jlpt 2 kanjis (1.000 most used kanjis) plus needed primitives (around 100). So you just need to learn 500 more kanjis (for RTK LITE) which will take you around two weeks and you are done.

Do some pimsleur audio tapes while doing your kanji studies. They do not interfere with each other.

Thanks for all the replies. I'll be studying Japanese in Japan from September to July, so almost a full year, and I'll be taking a near full course load. I've already started learning Japanese (including Pimsleur!), I was just hoping to kinda increase my rate of progress.

I've got a few questions regarding the replies. First of all.. how do I do RTK lite? And how do I use Anki to do RtK? Also, I don't really get how those scripts work, are they for this site or for Anki?

I think I'm going to first go ahead and learn all the primitives, just so that I feel confident enough to be able to learn any new kanji that I have to. Then, I'll check out RtK lite and either do that or just go ahead and try to finish RtK, but maybe slow it down a bit.

Milosd, I am also going to Japan in September, and I live in Campbell River, Vancouver Island

About RTK-lite, if you use Firefox, you can install the greasemonkey plugin, and then go to http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/23374 and install that script. Then when you use the online RTK web app at http://kanji.koohii.com/ you can go into the profile and enable RevTK-lite.

I also made a file that has the RTK lite list: http://pastie.org/520946.txt You can save this file and import it into Anki as a CSV file.

scuda Wrote:Milosd, I am also going to Japan in September, and I live in Campbell River, Vancouver Island

I pity you, my parents live in that area (Courtenay).

Jarvik7 Wrote:

scuda Wrote:Milosd, I am also going to Japan in September, and I live in Campbell River, Vancouver Island

I pity you, my parents live in that area (Courtenay).

Nice, actually I'm from Calgary, visiting my parents for the summer. Then off to Japan in Sept

Sweet, thanks for the file. I just started using Anki and I like it a lot because of the flexibility (and it it forces you to review more). I think I'm gonna go ahead and give this a shot, and then if I finish it soon maybe I'll just carry on with the full RtK.

Also, are you going to Japan for school or something else? I'll be doing the Japanese language program at Waseda in Tokyo.. looking forward to it.