This post does not really have anything to do with creating mnemonics with organic elements. It has to do with a process that I've kind of discovered while studying new kanji. I hate coming up with stories because I hate to just sit and imagine. I get antsy. I've noticed that most kanji in RTK1 usually have quite a few stories available, and I never know which one to choose. For the most part they're all very weird and personal, and so it's tough for me to like any of them.

I realized accidently with some kanji I passed over for mnemonic creation that I ended up using one story or another without consciously picking it. Something just stuck in my head, and that's how I remember that kanji.

So my proposed method is to read carefully every submitted story for a kanji. Then drill cold in iFlash and see what sticks in my mind. Have any of you tried a method similar to this? It's sort of a Drowning/SinkOrSwim method for mnemonic creation.

Yes, erlog, I know what you mean. I've sometimes thought of a mnemonic for a particular kanji only to find that a different one pops into my head when I drill myself on it, often one that someone else made up (e.g., for me, "riot", "inherit"). Also some kanji just stick by seeing them once (e.g., 江 [kana]e[kana] "inlet, bay", 寸 [kana]sun[/kana] "0.0995 feet", 競 "rival"), so regardless what Dr Heisig suggests, that's the way I know them.

Just like Heisig's method is a systematization to take advantage of one psychological phenomenon to facilitate the learning of kanji, you're suggesting to take advantage of another one. Maybe you can read through a kanji dictionary as well as read through other's mnemonics and what sticks automatically you learn very quickly. The others you have to learn by hard work. Great idea!

i had problems of making a good story for the kanji 頁 (page) , though a lot of different users here made up some (- i just can't get it to fit!), so i actually made myself a mail account with the name PAGEHEAD (Page and the primitive for it - Head) and an avatar with the kanji. seeing it every day while reading my mails, i'd probably nail it in notime.

for other hard kanjis i used the keywords in song names for my bands.
why not name your dog after a kanji? (if he looks like a "freakish *shellfish* with only one eye and two legs", u can give him the name Shellfish... haha).

::twincy

Sounds like you're just looking for a shortcut to something that invariably
needs time. But if you discover anything that proves to be really helpful,
please share it with us. Though I think it would be more productive to just think instead of "thinking about thinking"....lol..... Just go on with the Heisig method and if you happen to remember kanji randomly, then so be it.

I've actually seen a lot of people get so bogged down with figuring out how to study kanji that they never actually get around to studying Kanji !

I know the feeling of seeing something like 1000+ more kanji to go, the slow progress towards the middle portion of the book, and thinking that you'll never finish the book.
If you can't memorize as much kanji as you'd like to in a day, then accept that fact and move at a pace that you're capable of. It's more about steady progress and dedication, then flying through the book. It'll take long, but you'll be rewarded if you're dedicated enough and make it to the end.

Another possibility is that you don't bother with your idea until AFTER you've finished Heisig. And then just concentrate on Kanji that you miss during your reviews. Which makes sense, since predicting whether or not you'll remember a kanji well with reasonable accuracy on your first run is near impossible.

Anyway, don't be a rabbit. Slow and steady is how you'll win the race...... :-)

chamcham Wrote:Though I think it would be more productive to just think instead of "thinking about thinking"....lol..... Just go on with the Heisig method and if you happen to remember kanji randomly, then so be it.
I've actually seen a lot of people get so bogged down with figuring out how to study kanji that they never actually get around to studying Kanji !

oh. i'm one of THOSE for sure...

speaking of methods to remember things:
just like with my old grandmother (r.i.p)...
in her flat i had to put post-its on things - the telephone, on the fridge and so on cus she was old and forgetting things. i'm doing the same thing for my own nihongo-getting-old-disease

it's kinda fun to see peoples reactions when they see "a kanji here and a kanji there" when they pay me a visit. (おてあらい ;-) )

i use furigana on kanjis at first and erase it after i know the kanji well.
as for word i know only with kana, i try to put as much of kanjis when i know them.

and everywhere i go i draw the kanji in my palm and try to say the words i know.
(i'm now leaving my home, tram, tramstop, "hi!", "gotta hurry", "cya!", i'll take bus number X, etc :-) )

::twincy

If a different story from the story you use works better for you, so be it. I found that giving shellfish a name and a personality helped immensely. Check my stories on Eddy the Freaking Clam, so hardcore he defeats his enemies, pierces his nipples, bribes the Vatican police and gets taxes paid to him. I also completely eschewed the "Ivy" primitive for the true meaning of Square Jewel. It is easier to remember a seal as a square jewel glued to a piece of paper, or the horizon line being the jeweled edge of the world, where the water flows off.

After going through the five-hundred or so (or maybe sooner), I started to pay attention to the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the keyword, and then I would build my story from there. If it was still just not possible to match the elements with the first thing that came to my mind, I would go to the forums or try to remake the image in my mind. In other words I would make a practical effort to change the reality from what comes to mind. Anyway, a lot of times just by paying attention to what comes to mind, I can save myself some heartache later.

By the way, I think chamcham is right. I only go through about 10 kanji a day now. I tried to burn through 30 a day, and it just wasn't staying. I go slower now, but I hardly forget any of them. And it feels more relaxed. Hopefully, I'll finish in late April or May. A lot of people say that they finish in a month, but seriously, do they know this stuff or do they only think they know it? Sure, Heisig said he finished in a month, but as Fabrice said in another forum, Heisig probably had experience using mneumonics before RTK.

Ganbatte!

ericshun Wrote:After going through the five-hundred or so (or maybe sooner), I started to pay attention to the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the keyword, and then I would build my story from there.

This is good advice. Many of the keywords are ambiguous, (It's a verb. It's a noun! No, it's an adjective!) that the first impression you get of the english word should be the same one you get when reviewing it.

It was a bit late... but I figured out that when imagining the story, conjuring the story within the confines of an actual place that you've been helps out a lot. Like, for station (駅), I imagine the primitives of the trojan horse and Raymond (the retard) around my actual local train station. This is fortunate because Raymond is a real person and his daycare centre is actually right next to the station too!

These are stories that aren't of much use to everyone else but are quite vivid within my own mind simply because of the location that the story takes place. A story about Grand Central Station may be of more use to everyone, if you've not been there then it's just another picture on the front of a postcard. The personal or emotional attachment isn't there.

Just something to consider.

ericshun Wrote:A lot of people say that they finish in a month, but seriously, do they know this stuff or do they only think they know it? Sure, Heisig said he finished in a month, but as Fabrice said in another forum, Heisig probably had experience using mneumonics before RTK.

I'm actually doing this now at a pace that's in the 6-7 week range, and you are right that you do get diminishing memory returns at that pace. However, if you have a lot of free time it actually works really well as long as you do the properly spaced reviews also. I actually do know the characters. I strive for 75 kanji per day and sometimes I meet it, and sometimes I don't, but I usually get around 50-60 new kanji per day.

erlog Wrote:I'm actually doing this now at a pace that's in the 6-7 week range, and you are right that you do get diminishing memory returns at that pace. However, if you have a lot of free time it actually works really well as long as you do the properly spaced reviews also.

I think I just might be slow.. Anyone else felt like they had to slow down? Or speed up??

I found out well into Book 1, that the ambiguity of the keyword was giving me problems. I started checking them against My Halpern dictionary and just quickly glance over the vocab. and I get the general nuance, but usually keep the Heisig keyword. For example, one of the easiest kanji out there 泊　is overnight. But, if you didn't have any Japanese before approaching this one, the ambiguity of "overnight" would leave a lot of room for extraneous concepts to creep in. Slow and easy does it.

Yeah, this relates to the "Multiple Meanings" topic that I started. Try to get the true meaning of the kanji while still using the Heisig keyword.