And thank you, Katsuo, for sharing your kanji name comparison chart. The listing of the Halpern entry numbers with the RTK kanji, in order, is saving me a HUGE amount of look-up time for the review process described in my previous post.

I am curious about the dictionary you refer to as the 'Kenkyusha: New Japanese-English Character Dictionary'. It's obviously the same dictionary I have that's called 'NTC New Japanese-English Character Dictionary', edited by Jack Halpern, published by NTC "in association with Kenkyusha". I'm guessing that Kenkyusha still publishes it in Japan as 'New Japanese-English Character Dictionary' (without the 'Kenkyusha's') to avoid confusion with that Other Dictionary.

Sorry to wander OT, but I'm a bit of a book freak, and I really am curious about this.

[Katsuo]

BJohnsen Wrote:And thank you, Katsuo, for sharing your kanji name comparison chart.

You're welcome. I'm pleased to hear someone is making use of it.

Quote:The listing of the Halpern entry numbers with the RTK kanji, in order, is saving me a HUGE amount of look-up time...

Yes, if you have several reference books it's handy to have a quick way to look up the kanji numbers. KANJIDIC can be useful for this: for myself, I've extracted all the reference numbers for the various books I own and stuck them in a database which is permanently open on my desktop.

In case anybody else should want to do something like that I've converted KANJIDIC to spreadsheet format here.

Quote:I am curious about the dictionary you refer to as the 'Kenkyusha: New Japanese-English Character Dictionary'.

Halpern's New Japanese-English
Character Dictionary, comes in two forms: NTC and Kenkyusha. The content is identical; only the paper quality and cover are different. I have owned both and personally prefer the Kenkyusha (it just looks and feels better to me).

Incidentally, the "Kanji Learner's Dictionary" is similar, but with abbreviated content. It is a later publication and does include English names for an extra 115 kanji.

Katsuo Wrote:You're welcome. I'm pleased to hear someone is making use of it.

While we're praising people, and if you're the same Katuso in the RTK application, I'd like to thank you for your good stories and the new "primitives" you created. For example, the combination "goods+tree" on the right of 燥 and 操 is described as "furniture" which fits perfectly for the kanjis who use it.

Thank you.

[Katsuo]

mypapa12 Wrote:[While we're praising people, and if you're the same Katuso in the RTK application, I'd like to thank you for your good stories and the new "primitives" you created. For example, the combination "goods+tree" on the right of 燥 and 操 is described as "furniture" which fits perfectly for the kanjis who use it.

Yes, that's me, thanks. I don't know if you've seen it, but I also made a table of things like that, i.e. combinations that aren't given names in the text. The idea is that people can see how many times a given combination appears and decide for themselves whether it's worth naming.

Sheesh, thank you Katsuo for putting all that work into making things easier for us!

In the meantime I'll just keep going with learning RTK as I've been doing, knowing that the keywords are mostly useful for learning the kanji fast, but not necessarily always be the main association for that particular kanji. I'm sure once I start learning more actual Japanese, that will come naturally.

[Katsuo]

Thora Wrote:It's been awhile since I've looked at the RTK book. Does Heisig indicate which of his keywords do not reflect any 'meaning' of the kanji, but are instead chosen only for memory purposes, etc?

I don't think he deliberately chose any completely arbitrary keywords; they are always related to actual usage in some way.

Primitives are another matter. Most of the primitive names are either the same as or derived from those used in Japanese, but there are also plenty of "originals". These newly-invented names mostly derive from the smaller elements they consist of, e.g. "kazoo is a sound you might hear at a festival (as in 識)". A smaller number are pictographic, e.g. "sparkler" (as in 塁).

Although it's often obvious from the text which primitive names are his own, it isn't stated explicitly.

I didn't mean he used completely arbitrary keywords. Rather, he sometimes uses pictographic meanings that are obsolete, extremely rare meanings b/c the common one was already taken, or inaccurate but memorable words, etc. I wondered whether he gave any indication in his descriptions in those cases.

Thora Wrote:I didn't mean he used completely arbitrary keywords. Rather, he sometimes uses pictographic meanings that are obsolete, extremely rare meanings b/c the common one was already taken, or inaccurate but memorable words, etc. I wondered whether he gave any indication in his descriptions in those cases.

I can't recall him doing that. Mind you, I have a quite old edition, perhaps he edited that in in the later editions.

Amazing spread sheet Katsuo! Thank you for taking the time to make that ^_^ I know it will be extremely useful!

Katsuo, I am utterly in awe of your lists and spreadsheets--especially the spreadsheets! Amazing work. I've bookmarked the link to the List of Lists and been happily (and gratefully) browsing through them in my spare moments.

I do have the Kodansha/Halpern Kanji Learner's Dictionary but I haven't used it much, largely out of habit (I've had the NJECD much longer), but also because sometimes it doesn't have what I'm looking for. But now I'm thinking I should try using it for my kanji review project (in conjunction with RTK) because it's much easier to read, has that helpful radical index in the margins, has more up to date frequency rankings, and the NJECD is probably a lot more comprehensive than I need for my current purposes. Only downside is that I won't be able to use the name comparison chart for the Halpern entry numbers.

Good to know about the Kenkyushu Halpern; I'm looking forward to checking it out the next time I'm in Tokyo.

[Katsuo]

BJohnsen Wrote:Only downside is that I won't be able to use the name comparison chart for the Halpern entry numbers.

OK, I added numbers for the Kenkyusha Kanji Learner's Dictionary to this spreadsheet.

Hahaha I just have to laugh every time you come up with new spreadsheets. It's like you have one for everything. XD It makes me want to ask really weird, random things and I bet you'll have a spreadsheet for that as well.

All in a good way though, I'm thoroughly impressed!

What Koos83 said!

Katsuo, how do you DO that? Once again, thank you; I've switched to reviewing with the KALD and it's infinitely more user-friendly and efficient, the more so because of your list of entry numbers.

What's the KALD? Did I miss something? XD

Having briefly returned here after succesfully finishing the Heisig method, just to get some helpers for JLPT2, I'll have to say the following:

1. Heisig words are some times accurate, but not always. The more accurate, the easier and faster is to acquire (or guess) vocabulary later. So using better meanings for kanji is always better! Download Firefox and Woelpad's greasemonkey script that allows you to change keywords now.
2. Heisig's idea of having only one keyword for each kanji is definitely not better than having two or more keywords. In fact, the more keywords you add, the better. Helps differenciate between kanji and you learn all meanings at once. Again, Woelpad's greasemonkey script to the rescue.
3. If a radical's keyword doesn't work for you (and there are plenty of radicals in RtK I found awful), change it. You'll have more success if you previously look at every kanji that uses it and think of something they all have in common.
4. RtKII is mostly useless (but not completely useless), and I've had more luck learning ON sounds from vocabulary.
5. RtK is still the best method to learn kanji I've seen so far, specially if you make the above suggested changes. After a year (or two?) without reviewing, I still recognize most kanji and can write a lot from memory.

Edit: If you change a meaning, check the remaining keywords to make sure you don't pick one that is used later! This include synonyms.

Thanks DrJones. It would be nice to add other meanings, if I had them. Also, since I'm kind of on a schedule, I think I'll stick to just learning RTK as fast as I can now (which isn't so fast) and start focusing on learning some sentences and vocabulary before my trip to Japan next summer. It's more important to me right now to get people to understand me there (and me understanding them) than to know 'perfect' Japanese. But I don't want to quit RTK half way through so I'll finish that first and it will help me a lot, I think, in learning more later on. When I get back from my trip, I can go into the language deeper and learn more kanji meanings, for example.

Koos83 Wrote:What's the KALD? Did I miss something? XD

Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary edited by Jack Halpern. It's a less-comprehensive paperback version of the hardcover NTC (US)/Kenkyusha (Japan) New Japanese-English Character Dictionary, also edited by Halpern, and easier to use on the basis of weight alone.