Hello everyone,

I'm new here so I apologize if this has already been covered in another thread but-- I just started RTK, and though I'm only about 200 or so in, I find that I'm having trouble with the order of the primitives. That is, I can see the keyword and recall the story and the primitive components of that story, but when it comes down to how to write the Kanji itself, I forget how to order the primitives. For example with "spit," I'll place "soil" before "mouth" or "soil" on top of "mouth" or an any old order, really.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to solidify the arrangement of the primitives in my memory? I realize that this problem works itself out when I see Kanji first and then move to keywords, but this problem is messing with my study flow.

Thanks in advance for the help.

You will find after a while that most primatives will have a spot(s) that they normally reside in. It will all sink in on it's own for the most part, but you can order the kanji in your stories to make it easier to remember. For example picture a mouth spitting out soil. If you get it wrong just fail it, don't worry too much about it as your SRS will make you learn it.

Hope that helps.

Yeah, I'll have to agree with RisuMiso, for the most part you won't need to worry about it that much. The kanji and primitives will generally fall into place. But for those tricky ones that never seem to work just change your story up so you order the primitives. Usually it doesn't take that long, and the shared stories on the website usually do order the primitives.

Sometimes I incorporate it in my story, like 'the strong rock' (appears as the strong element) or, 'it makes my heart feel like it's beating in the right side of my chest'.

You'll also find that with practice, you'll learn soon enough where the primitives go.

Koos83 Wrote:Sometimes I incorporate it in my story, like 'the strong rock' (appears as the strong element) or, 'it makes my heart feel like it's beating in the right side of my chest'.

You'll also find that with practice, you'll learn soon enough where the primitives go.

I second this. Sometimes I worked it into my story using the word "strong" to indicate that a primitive is in it's position it's most commonly found in. Heisig mentions this in RTK. You'll also find that reviews will highlight where you're having trouble and often subsequent reviews will make you get it right until you've just got the hang of it. Can be tricky sometimes and it happens to the best of us. Keep up the good work.

As others have said, many primitives are typically found at one position (exceptions usually happen when two primitives favour the same placement or lack of space). This thread tries to find rules for positioning the primitives.

I remember asking the same question when I was about the same place as you. One thing I did was, in the few times when there was a question, I tried to make my story so that the left side was primarily associated with the story. For example, in DISTURB http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/disturb I used to mix up the left and right side. So I came up with an additional part of the story: First the original story was something along the lines of a woman who disturbs a compass. Then I thought of the song "disturbia"

(lots of words, if I only think of the word itself, make me think of any strong expression that someone says using that word) and thought of a woman singer, and so I knew that woman was primary (left side). However, now that I look at it, I'm pretty sure the direction (compass) is never on the left (banner is different) and woman is never on the right. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I pretty much ignore the issue; if I end up putting the primitives in the wrong place, I just click "hard" in Anki but otherwise move on. Primitive placement (beyond the standard rules) is something I leave up to visual memory, and I trust that at some point (at the latest when I'm actively using the kanji) it'll just stick.

Well I guess that's an issue we all faced at the beginning. I did for sure. As the other have said, using hints in your story, (or just putting them in the right sequence) often helped me a bit. But it got really tricky with the coat and especially with the heart primitive. When the shape changes on the position. As noted above, over time it will just sink in. I wouldn't worry about those fine grained issues too much at the beginning, the more you see the character, the more it will just feel *right* or *wrong*, with the right or wrong placement.

Koos83 Wrote:Sometimes I incorporate it in my story, like 'the strong rock' (appears as the strong element) or, 'it makes my heart feel like it's beating in the right side of my chest'.

I do the same thing, I create a story and place my objects according to the place they are in the kanji.

For example with spit, I picture some guy spitting from the left, to the right (like the spitting contest in Monkey Island 2 )

angerman Wrote:But it got really tricky with the coat and especially with the heart primitive. When the shape changes on the position. .

I didn't have a problem with that, because when heart changes shape, it also changes what Heisig names it. So it turns to 'state of mind' if it's put on the right. And 'Valentine' when it changes shape another way.

Anyway, usually if it changes shape dramatically, Heisig comes up with a different name for the primitive.

Sorry for this incoherent post; I haven't slept much these past few nights and I've just studied 35 kanji after a busy day at work. :S

Koos83 Wrote:

angerman Wrote:But it got really tricky with the coat and especially with the heart primitive. When the shape changes on the position. .

I didn't have a problem with that, because when heart changes shape, it also changes what Heisig names it. So it turns to 'state of mind' if it's put on the right. And 'Valentine' when it changes shape another way.

Anyway, usually if it changes shape dramatically, Heisig comes up with a different name for the primitive.

Sorry for this incoherent post; I haven't slept much these past few nights and I've just studied 35 kanji after a busy day at work. :S

That's right. But, I adapted some of the shared stories here. So that added to the confusion I guess. There are some stories which are highly problematic, those where other take the wrong primitives

An actual primitive, 部首, can only be in one spot of a kanji, ever. While it looks like the primitive for soil is in different positions in 地方 and 圧, it's actually two different primitives.

You don't need to memorize this, but it's a good thing to know in the back of your head.

Thanks everyone for the help, I really appreciate it--

I'm going to press on and from now on try to incorperate the primitive order into my story. The idea of visualizing it (i.e. spitting from left to right) is an interesting one. I'm also considering just ordering the narative of the story from left to right, as in "when your MOUTH is full of DIRT you spit," rather than "when you get DIRT in your MOUTH you spit." Of course this is non-visual so maybe that's a bad idea.

I do that too, have the primitives come up in the order in which they are written, and Heisig does it too. It is a very good idea to do this; some kanji stories are so abstract they are hard to visualise but easy to remember.

What's the common denominator here?
吐 (mouth, dirt): spit
噴 (mouth, haystack, shellfish): erupt
嘔 (mouth, ward (traditional-form)): retch
嘘 (mouth, void): fib
噛 (mouth, tooth): chew

口 is the left-most element. They're all things you do with a mouth, at least metaphorically. Some other characters with 口 on the left have the keywords: peck-at, whisper, gossip, ingest, curse, derision, and so on. A primitive in a certain position that hints at the meaning of a characters is a "determinative" or "signific."

Some other determinatives are 氵 on the left (water things), 金 on the left (metal things), and 刂 on the right (cutting, craftwork). If you're curious about the etymology of a character, you can copy-paste it at http://www.chineseetymology.org .

If you know that 口 on the left means "something done with the mouth" and 土 on the left "a region of land, something done with the land," it's obvious which one takes the left position. If you learn a lot of characters, that knowledge comes naturally.

Like others have said, you really only have to fail characters you get wrong for the order to stick.

Re: visualizing stories, if you can visualize a story that's a good thing, meaning it's almost-certainly vivid enough to stick. However, it's not required to visualize--for the most part, I don't. The main thing is that you be able to re-tell the story well enough to write the character. As you get better at writing, you may lose parts or even the whole story. That's okay as long as you can still write it.

If you forget the writing, though, I recommend re-learning the story as well.