I'm not anywhere close (in the 1100's, although technically still in the mid 800's after I stopped adding new kanji and started reviewing my failed column exclusively),.....

BUT...out of curiosity...

When do you consider yourself done? After you've added all RTK1 kanji? After you've gotten all your RTK1 kanji to the four or more reviews column? RTK3?

Good question. I can't see myself stopping using this site...ever! That's why I signed up for a monthly subscription as opposed to a one off payment thing. I'm doing a lot of my study away from the site, i.e. readings; grammar; example sentences and so on. But I still think that reviewing from Heisig keyword to kanji is a great way to keep the "meanings" fresh in your mind.

So even when you are technically finished RTK, would you consider stopping reviewing?

If you don't use it, you lose it. This is even true of those that grow up using kanji (or anything). I know a few people who used to speak one language as a child and now have a hard time even having conversation in that language.

So, you'll never be done. As soon as you think you're done, you've wasted all the time you spent getting there in the first place.

That said, my current goal is to finish RTK1 and 2, and let any other kanji I encounter be learned naturally. I don't see myself studying more, but maybe if I'm very comfortable with this set, then 3 is still there waiting. Either way, I hope this website is around for years to come.

synewave Wrote:I'm doing a lot of my study away from the site, i.e. readings; grammar; example sentences and so on. But I still think that reviewing from Heisig keyword to kanji is a great way to keep the "meanings" fresh in your mind.

So even when you are technically finished RTK, would you consider stopping reviewing?

Yeah, I see myself coming back but less and less frequently. I'm hoping that Fabrice comes up with an addition to this website that is dedicated to reading the kanji.

As far as using the RTK flashcards? Maybe once a week or less when I get all of RTK1 into box 4.

RTK 1 covers 2042, RTK 3 covers an extra 965, bringing us to 3007... great.. who could want more kanji?!

then I look at the 漢字検定1級.. hmm seems they want to go up to 6000漢字!!...

Who knows when it'll be over.. maybe my enthusiasm for kanji will die when I'm able to read practically everything I see in day to day life...

but I doubt it ..

It's never over. Lengooige is a lifelonng persuit. =D

I find a 20min RvTK at the beginning of every day before work is excellent. It's adding the new kanji that takes so much time.

Everyone's right. It's never over. I patted myself on the back for finally getting all 2042 cards into the system and emptying my failed pile, and I'm taking a 1 week break from new kanji information (It's not easy; I'm eager to start my kanji kentei level 5 review book), but I'm still reviewing every day and don't see any end in sight. And once things cool down in the first 3 piles, I'm going to start with RTK3. And I've started keeping track of non-RTK kanji that I come across in my day-to-day reading.

One does have to draw the line somewhere. We all have aspirations that don't directly involve kanji (especially the obscure ones). I will probably never attempt Kanken 1Q (but I'll be damned if I don't at least get to 2Q), but I think it's important to continue reviewing the kanji that I do know, especially since this site makes it so easy. With the addition of extra stacks, someone who's batting 1000 will eventually only have 8 reviews a day on average (12 including RTK3), and if Mr. Fabrice adds another stack some time in the future, then it'll be half that.

So as the others have said, there is no real end, but I think it is still important to set intermediate goals, and perhaps to give yourself a rest now and then when you reach them.

Actually, sometime ago, I remember reading of someone passing level 1 of the Kanji Kentei using the heisig method. They went through the other 3000 kanji and used the method to make their own stories. So maybe it might be nice if this site could make entries for those 3000 or so non-RTK Kanji and leave it to all of us to come up with stories for the primitives in Kanji. Or maybe we can try contacting this person. I wish I made note of where I found there forum posting, but I didn't.... :-(

In fact, I think one thing missing from this site is stories for primitives. If it could list primitives and allow people to attach stories that would be great. Of course, it'd be tough to display since no font carries these symbols, but you could improves with gif, jpg, or png pictures.

chamcham Wrote:Of course, it'd be tough to display since no font carries these symbols, but you could improves with gif, jpg, or png pictures.

No standard font has them. Let's not forget Pangolin's hard work.

It's really neat to hear that a Heisig disciple passed 1Q. I really am hoping that Mr. Fabrice eventually adds the functionality for non-RTK kanji.

I think maybe the hardest thing about getting to 6000 would be devising 3000 more unique keywords. Seems like you'd have to come up with all the keywords before you started learning the kanji (or at least the first person would, hehe). But Mr. Heisig supposedly did it without knowing anything about kanji beforehand, so it can surely be done.

True. The person did come up with their own keywords and made up their own primitives as well. Although there are 2 good options I can think of:

1)We as a community come up with keywords by consensus and there would be a moderator that would approve/disapprove keywords for each kanji

2)Just use the meanings from Jim Breen's WWWJDIC. It has many kanji from outside the Jouyou Kanji set. So I think many of the 1Q would already have entries in the dictionary.

Found the post! It's in one of the reviews on Amazon.com for RTK 1.
Here it is:

"This is the best book for learning Kanji!!, April 5, 2004

Reviewer: danieru (Nagoya Japan) - See all my reviews

I started learning Japanese when I was 15 in the University and they used the repetition method for learning Kanji, so then I decided not to learn Kanji. But when I came to Nagoya, I realized that I needed to know how to read Kanji so I tried with a lot of methods. But one friend recommended me this series of books. The first thing that I saw was that there wasn't compounds or Japanese pronunciations and that it gave just one meaning (Keyword), my friend saw that I was losing interest and he told me to read the introduction and then I begun studying with this method.

That was about two years ago and now, using this books as a base, I have passed the JLPT and the Kanken both at level 1.

I used the same method for learning the other 2903 kanji not included in this book in order to pass the Level one Kanken (you need to read and write 6000 Kanji to pass).I just have to say Thank you Heisig for making this series of books, you make learning Kanji so easy!!"

Neat. I wonder if we can get in touch with him and ask if he would share his keywords. If not, I might be interested in designing an interface that would let us start hammering out keywords as a group.

Wow, it'd be nice to have his input for the site. Maybe we can work a special interview with him!

There also should be order so that primitives come first and other kanji come in groups by primitive. And if it's not whole level one, set of kanji is smaller, but also requires order. So it should be multiple sets, each divided on groups by primitives.

Yeah, I didn't even realize that. We'd need to reorganize the primitives and kanji in a manner similar to what Heisig did. In a way, I think it might be better to first focus on ordering the primitives. After that happens, we'd just need to drop the kanji in the right place.

Also, it'd be really nice if someone had a Kanken Level 1 book with them.
Note that Heisig also cleverly grouped Kanji by theme in certain chapters.

That sounds like a community effort project. I'd recommend a wiki or cvs-esque system where anyone can make changes. They keywords would also have to be chosen wisely. It'd be a nice thing to accomplish though and give to the RTKers out there, though I personally never see myself getting so far.

How about creating a wiki on some free wiki host (editthis.info ?) Original content is all kanji on several pages, divided on sets by level (like RtK1 and RtK3, but excluding them and up to level 1, that is 6000). Next step is selecting primitives in separate subtitles on the same pages (so that they have a link with bookmark) and grouping kanji around them. At the same time you can add keywords to kanji. It all should be supported in standard format, so that can be processed by script to make sure no kanji is missing and no keywords coincide with any other (including heisig's).

So what we need to start is lists of kanji by level.

I could specially design an online interface for this project with dropdown boxes and stuff like that. Only problem is, I just learned that PHP isn't too friendly with Unicode (i.e. Japanese) text. How does one get around that problem?

JimmySeal Wrote:I could specially design an online interface for this project with dropdown boxes and stuff like that. Only problem is, I just learned that PHP isn't too friendly with Unicode (i.e. Japanese) text. How does one get around that problem?

I think wiki would be better. It already has version control, for one.

To answer JimmySeal's question, you have to specifically set the character encoding to "UTF-8".

Could someone with better understanding of Japanese dig out kanji lists by kanken level from http://www.kanken.or.jp or somewhere else?　Quick search on google didn't give any results.

RoboTact Wrote:Could someone with better understanding of Japanese dig out kanji lists by kanken level from http://www.kanken.or.jp or somewhere else?　Quick search on google didn't give any results.

Well this should have all the approx. 6000 kanji for level 1. The most likely candidates for non-RTK kanji are between sections 48 and 84 but bear in mind that Heisig did not strictly pick kanji from JIS第一水準:
http://ash.jp/code/codetbl2.htm

chamcham Wrote:To answer JimmySeal's question, you have to specifically set the character encoding to "UTF-8".

That helped. Thanks. Actually the problem was that I wasn't saving the file in utf-8. Looks like I'm going to be getting well acquainted with notepad.

So they are already sorted by radicals.
http://www.rikai.com/library/kanjitables...sjis.shtml

Text about evolution of character sets:
http://www.jbrowse.com/text/unij.html

Anyway kanjidic is content source, if not correct list.
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/kanjidic.html

If anyone's interested, I created said wiki, for now without kanji lists:
http://kanji.editthis.info

I for one would favor a quick solution rather than waiting for 3000 kanji keywords to be filled in by hand on a wiki. For example, Jim Breen often has several English meanings for each kanji. You could take the first meaning that isn't already a keyword and probably get 2000 kanji added immediately. You could even use kun yomi-- after all, only advanced students of Japanese are going to bother learning these kanji. I'm coming across a lot of non-RTK kanji in my reading but haven't seen any that aren't on Jim Breen's site. Putting the kanji into a logical order and identifying useful primitives would take a lot of work-- basically it's like making RTK4 and RTK5 with another 3000 kanji. A quick and dirty method might be to use stroke counts/radicals. People could share hints on primitives within the stories. My guess is that a lot of people would learn non-RTK kanji one at a time as they come up in reading rather than in order like RTK1 anyway.

Of course all of this depends on Fabrice's willingness to put non-RTK kanji on the site. It probably isn't a priority for most of the people using the site. I could make flashcards to store the non-RTK kanji myself but it would be much more convenient to have them on this site.