I am just asking this question without having searched this forum for similar threads. I am now learning Heisig Kanjis I and am below 500 kanjis. Right now it seems for me to just go through all kanjis without doing any repetition as most kanjis are Primitives in later kanjis and so will be seen again. I'd like to see a list of this Heisig kanjis who are not primitives in later kanjis. I am sure there is a list out there but I did not find it - I also did not search for it So far just going through kanjis is a fast progress for me and most important kanjis are primitives in later kanjis.

I recommend reviewing; you'll need to be able to recall those kanji by themselves anyway, so the review won't be wasted. Reviews go pretty quickly at your level too. As for the number of the first 500 that are primitives of later kanji, maybe 200 or so? Sorry, just guessing; I haven't seen a list either.

It'd be that cool to have a list of kanjis who never appear any more as primitives. That way you could concentrade repetition on these kanjis. For example the kanji for mouth: There is absolutely no need for making stories / put that kanji into repetition as it appears in other kanjis hundreds of times.

Many kanji are primitives, but still I'm pretty sure such kanji are in minority. So you can just never care about them and use spaced repetition system to get all bugs out no mater the cause.

As a first step, becoming familiar with all the heisig kanji can be very helpful. My daily studying is very light and very effective right now even though I'm doing ~50 kanji per day, because I took some time go through them all first. When I miss a kanji, refreshing my memory of it is almost instantaneous. The kanji just tend to look familiar.

However, to really know them, in the end, there will need to be some repeated reviewing component.

my opinion is that it's a waste of time going through all of this. Just finish Heisig and reap the benefits. People spend their whole lives "studying" Japanese and can't bearly handle kanji. So just finishing Heisig itself is a major achievment. Get Heisig does as soon as possible at a pace that you can handle.

Don't slow yourself down by trying to optimize so much along the way. It's really not a big deal. Learning all these kanji is only the beginning, although you will have fought the toughest battle for most kanji learners. There's still much more afterwards.

In fact, I might even argue that the usage of grammar used in spoken language (by this I mean real Japanese that people speak as opposed to textbooks) is just as complicated as Kanji. Understanding the grammar rules isn't hard. The difficulty comes in using it like a Japanese person would.

Anyway, good luck with your studies.

jokoto Wrote:I'd like to see a list of this Heisig kanjis who are not primitives in later kanjis.

The list of kanji that are primitives later on would be a much shorter list. Kanji aren't a bunch of Russian dolls; they don't stack endlessly into one giant kanji that contains all the others (and I know that you don't think that they do, but I'm using hyperbole to prove a point). The beginning of the book may seem easy to you because Heisig is doing all the thinking and giving you stories, but you will have to review sooner or later, and the sooner the better. Also, the idea that most kanji serve as primitives later on is only an illusion because the beginning of the book deals with structurally simple kanji. That doesn't continue on forever.

I am going to start rewiewing kanjis soon. Planing to use Palm program Twinkle.

In that case, I wish you the best of luck.

I was looking forward to buy palm and use Twinkle, but unfortunately you get nowhere with palm under Windows Vista. I have opened a thread in Leaning tools forum and hopefully there are programs for remembering the kanjis under modern windows mobile editions.