Hello everyone,

On the last weeks I've been watching some Japanese sitcoms and I've realized I have trouble recognizing the kanjis. For example I can draw the kanji when the key word is given, but sometimes I can't recall the keyword when the kanji is written, I recognize the primitives and all, but I have troubles rememebering the key word. What do you think?

I was thinking on getting an ANKI deck of the Kanjis in RTK in order to reinforce the process of recognition. Is there any site where I can downlod an ANKI deck of RTK1?


Thanks in advance.

That's normal, I wouldn't worry about it.

And I wouldn't do anything to learn Kanji -> keyword.
What you really want to learn is Kanji -> kana. That is, you want to learn the real Japanese word, not the heisig keyword, which are sometimes not really related to the true meaning.
You will learn Kanji -> kana from Japanese sentences. Check out any of the threads regarding "2001 Kanji Odyssey" (sometimes called KO2001) on this forum.

What's a kanjeez? Did you mean kanji?
</peeve>

Kanji->keyword is a useless skill. Kanji->meaning is useful, but characters only really have meaning in the context of vocabulary. You'll gain that skill when you start doing vocab training and reading stuff.

In Anki, go to download option, select download decks. There's an RTK deck I loaded that has Keyword (and meaning and yomi) to Kanji, and Kanji to keyword (and meaning and yomi).

It's pretty big, at 6000 cards, so maybe export the RTK3 cards (to save for later) then delete them in your main deck. You can make it smaller by deleting the stories section (forgot to remove mine before I posted).

I find being able to do Kanji to Meaning to be useful. I'm not going to learn a word for every kanji, but when I see it in a new word I can still gleam knowledge from it without looking it up. YMMV.

Don't learn to recognize Kanji, learn to read them. In context. You'll be able to recognize their meaning (not keyword) in no time.

I don't see why people say Kanji > Keyword isn't useful. I find myself needing it all the time and heres why...

When you come across a new word and you want to be able to write it from memory it is much easier to do so if you break the kanji compound down into its separate meanings and get an idea of how the word comes to mean what it does. The words are so logical it's often very easy to do this but NOT if you can't remember the keyword in the first place.

Remembering how to read it in the context of real vocab is the ultimate goal but sometimes the keyword is necessary to facilitate in the construction of artificial memory for remembering how to write words.

I'm not outright disagreeing. I'm just saying as an aside, it is useful for that purpose so don't call it useless.

In the book, Heisig says that Kanji -> keyword comes with time and practice. I agree on this; of the Kanji I learnt earlier, that I've reviewed more, I can recognise the keyword very easily. But with the Kanji I learnt recently I have more trouble with that.

So don't worry about it and keep reviewing and practising, and it will come on its own.

Koos83 Wrote:In the book, Heisig says that Kanji -> keyword comes with time and practice. I agree on this; of the Kanji I learnt earlier, that I've reviewed more, I can recognise the keyword very easily. But with the Kanji I learnt recently I have more trouble with that.

So don't worry about it and keep reviewing and practising, and it will come on its own.

I have to agree. It's not an evil of course, just not necessary because it will come. Prof. H was also right that the stories kind of dissipate over time. So I'm not going to second guess the kanji-to-keyword caution. Just learn jukugo. And that means readings, which means sentences and practice. Without jukugo, you can't ever really learn Japanese.

Edit: You can learn elementary Japanese of course. But jukugo are essential to any in depth ability to communicate in Japanese.

mezbup Wrote:I don't see why people say Kanji > Keyword isn't useful. I find myself needing it all the time and heres why...

When you come across a new word and you want to be able to write it from memory it is much easier to do so if you break the kanji compound down into its separate meanings and get an idea of how the word comes to mean what it does. The words are so logical it's often very easy to do this but NOT if you can't remember the keyword in the first place.

Remembering how to read it in the context of real vocab is the ultimate goal but sometimes the keyword is necessary to facilitate in the construction of artificial memory for remembering how to write words.

I'm not outright disagreeing. I'm just saying as an aside, it is useful for that purpose so don't call it useless.

What you're saying is true, but it's not the keyword that you need, it's the general meaning.

When you see 今週, you only have to think of "the present + monday to sunday" (or sunday to saturday), you don't have to think of the exact keywords used. Even more so, you want to use japanese words as often as possible. If you can think "いま + 週間", that's the best thing. Of course, complete beginners can't really expect to do this since they don't have the vocabulary, but it comes with time, and going kanji -> keyword in an SRS won't help with that process at all.

Tobberoth Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:I don't see why people say Kanji > Keyword isn't useful. I find myself needing it all the time and heres why...

When you come across a new word and you want to be able to write it from memory it is much easier to do so if you break the kanji compound down into its separate meanings and get an idea of how the word comes to mean what it does. The words are so logical it's often very easy to do this but NOT if you can't remember the keyword in the first place.

Remembering how to read it in the context of real vocab is the ultimate goal but sometimes the keyword is necessary to facilitate in the construction of artificial memory for remembering how to write words.

I'm not outright disagreeing. I'm just saying as an aside, it is useful for that purpose so don't call it useless.

What you're saying is true, but it's not the keyword that you need, it's the general meaning.

When you see 今週, you only have to think of "the present + monday to sunday" (or sunday to saturday), you don't have to think of the exact keywords used. Even more so, you want to use japanese words as often as possible. If you can think "いま + 週間", that's the best thing. Of course, complete beginners can't really expect to do this since they don't have the vocabulary, but it comes with time, and going kanji -> keyword in an SRS won't help with that process at all.

I agree completely here.

Some kanji i've forgotten heisigs exact keyword but I just feel the general sense of meaning for it and that's perfectly good enough. Any kanji I know the Japanese word for I always think of it in terms of the words its used in usually... And it's great when you become super familiar with a kanji you know loads of different words its used in. And yes, the stories do dissapear after a while and you really are just left with the kanji itself at the end of the day. I guess it's designed to work that way though... although I think in this respect RTK lends itself to a fast pace much more so than a slow one, which I did it at. If done over a quick period of time, when you dive in to real Japanese all of your kanji knowledge is on a much more even playing field. Personally I feel mines kinda lopsided a little now because the stuff I learnt really early on, some of it I've seen so much now it's just second nature, and other stuff that I learned all the way back then but still havent encountered yet has just become a bit too stale to be immediately useable and a big of a refresh is required.

Whenever I need to remember though, I just open up kotoba on my Iphone, look up the word in question and it gives the heisig keywords of the kanji as well as all the other information you could possibly want. So handy. I'm generally finding this sufficient for now but I guess I would just like to not have to do it and It's kinda dissapointing I do after all the hard work I put in for RTK I just assumed it'd come naturally... but that doesn't necessarily always follow. I guess that's just part of it though...

I can still write 90% of them given the keyword I guess.

So long as I read, read, read, i'll eventually replace all of the heisig foundational info with the real Japanese info. KO2001 is helping a lot with this

End of the day, I don't think Kanji to keyword would hurt as a quick refresher course for people in my situation.

mezbup Wrote:Personally I feel mines kinda lopsided a little now because the stuff I learnt really early on, some of it I've seen so much now it's just second nature, and other stuff that I learned all the way back then but still havent encountered yet has just become a bit too stale to be immediately useable and a big of a refresh is required.

Whenever I need to remember though, I just open up kotoba on my Iphone, look up the word in question and it gives the heisig keywords of the kanji as well as all the other information you could possibly want. So handy. I'm generally finding this sufficient for now but I guess I would just like to not have to do it and It's kinda dissapointing I do after all the hard work I put in for RTK I just assumed it'd come naturally... but that doesn't necessarily always follow. I guess that's just part of it though

Same goes for everything; if you don't use it, you forget it. It's easier to get it back than learning it right from the beginning, but it still goes to the 'not used too much' part of the brain. No matter how much work you put in for RTK, if you don't use some of the stuff, you forget. That's just the way it is. Can't do anything about it but regular reviewing.