yo.
was thinking about the 十 needle and the 丁 street-primitives.

looking for an answer but can't find it.

since heisig (and users here) use the 丁 street primitive as a needle is some stories
i started to wonder if it's really a good idea, when they differ quite a lot.
i rather use 十 as a needle cus i'm having problems with implementing "Ten" in the stories...

i know i have tha capability, and memory, to say when i find myself writing wrong positions of primitives etc. as an example, "no no. i haven't seen this before so it can't be a 十 under the "roof" so the needle in the story has to be a 丁 ", und so weiter un sofort...

demo... douzo osakini :-D

::twincy

丁 is used for nail (and sometime spike, I think), not needle.

think of the top part of "needle" as being hammered down to make the "street" kanji (or if you want a "street sign"). The bend at the bottom is due to your excessive use of force with the hammer

ah. くそ...
true.
maybe i should go to sleep.
seems as if i can't concentrate on small details anymore today

thanx4answer

::twincy

hopefully i don't need to change all the "Large ST. Bernard shitting Strange Needles" to nails/spikes. i think i remember'em anyways.

You MUST keep the EXACT keywords assigned to each primitive. If you create your own instead of using Heisig's, either use the indexes in the book (both keywords and primitives), or put it in the search box on the site to see if another kanji uses it later. You simply cannot make a change to help you remember better since it will snowball and destroy later accumulation.

I'm at 1700 now and have hit the wall of word similarity. My mind is a gibbering mess. So many words and primitives become so similar at this point that it takes real concentration to keep them seperate. The only kanji I ever miss in review are ones I've confused and substituted for another. Those related to money and emotions are especially nasty since they're abstract concepts, not physical nouns i.e. profit, income, stipend, savings, earnings, stocks, bond, etc, etc. Or dreadful, fear, emotion, feelings, remorse, salvation, humility, etc, etc.

dingomick Wrote:The only kanji I ever miss in review are ones I've confused and substituted for another. Those related to money and emotions are especially nasty since they're abstract concepts, not physical nouns i.e. profit, income, stipend, savings, earnings, stocks, bond, etc, etc. Or dreadful, fear, emotion, feelings, remorse, salvation, humility, etc, etc.

I fight with these using short mnemonic phrases, like "fear the doctor", "emotions from heart", "request for salvation", "true humility", etc., so that separation becomes automatic.

[ファブリス]

Needles and nails are quite different concepts and bring different images. Nails can be associated with construction, while needles are typically associated with "syringes" (drugs, nurses, blood donations, anything like that). Or you could associate needles with sewing crafts, which is still easy to set appart from the nails used in construction.

As dingomick said, don't mix switch primitive images from story to story in an attempt to simplify story making. Eventually this will turn back against you. The primitives are really the foundation of the method, it's like a code, like say, morse code. You can change the code for yourself, but then you have to CONSISTENTLY use it in EVERY story of the book. This is a lot of work, often times you just need to spend a little more time to work out proper images for the primitives without altering Heisig's primitive names. The name itself is not so important. The exact image can be different from one person to another, not everyone will picture exactly the same "nail". You might picture a small one such as for hanging picture frames, or a big ones such as used in construction. Or even a nail-gun which isn't too far off.

RoboTact Wrote:I fight with these using short mnemonic phrases, like "fear the doctor", "emotions from heart", "request for salvation", "true humility", etc., so that separation becomes automatic.

I've been doing that a lot as well. You'll find that I provide short mnemonics that summarize the story in many of my stories, take my story for grains for example. I find that it's quicker and more convenient to recall a story by using a short mnemonic. It's mostly helpful for when you couldn't think of a straightforward, short rememberable plot. The mnemonic helps you review faster, you can recall all the images you had without trying to re-describe the entire story in your mind, while reviewing. The mnemonic is not meant to be grammatically correct or even readable, just as long as it means something to you. If it's catchy that's even better. ps: extra bonus points if your mnemonic lists primitives in the writing order

ファブリス Wrote:Needles and nails are quite different concepts and bring different images. Nails can be associated with construction, while needles are typically associated with "syringes" (drugs, nurses, blood donations, anything like that). Or you could associate needles with sewing crafts, which is still easy to set appart from the nails used in construction.

As dingomick said, don't mix switch primitive images from story to story in an attempt to simplify story making. Eventually this will turn back against you. The primitives are really the foundation of the method, it's like a code, like say, morse code. You can change the code for yourself, but then you have to CONSISTENTLY use it in EVERY story of the book.

Actually, I used to worry about it at first, but now I don't find that important. It's fine for me to have multiple keywords for a given primitive (even Heisig offers them at times, like flesh/moon), and in many cases where I invented my own keywords I retained Heisig keywords to use at times too and it worked fine.
Avoiding having the same keyword correspond to several primitives is probably more important.

Multiple keywords for single primitive is OK; multiple primitives having the same keyword isn't.

To stress my point about short mnemonics: their purpose is to help in associating a story (which is a self-sufficient entity) with keyword. Short mnemonics shouldn't describe all details/primitives, otherwise it's just <a story which happens to be short>.

RoboTact Wrote:Multiple keywords for single primitive is OK; multiple primitives having the same keyword isn't.

Exactly. That's why it's good to reference both the keyword AND primitive indexes before assigning a new keyword.