I have started RTK2 now after a month's break when I finished RTK1. But its hard. How do you do it?

I know you are supposed to review from compound to reading. Not just from kanji to reading. Im still struggling getting through the 60 first kana-derivating kanjis. I can't really remember the words.

The old RTK1 method doesn't seem to work here, so what have people done to try and crack RTK2? I need some inspiration.

I haven't been able to process it all because I'm tired from the school year and finishing RTK1, but in the process of trying to find out the meaning of "Valeant...." on the page after the last kanji... if found an on-line forum on Heisig and advanced students.

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/forum/m_328908/mpage_8

Yes I know, I come from there.

I recently bought Kanji in Context to try to move forward. I also own RTKII and I hope to incorporate it in some way (maybe memorizing the "pure" kanji groups), but I really feel that I might be better served by heading down a path where I can start reading the most common compounds. I'm planning to use Super Memo with KIC, if I can ever find a way to properly input the data.

As for those first kanji in RTKII, which show the etymology of the hiragana and katakana, I asked my wife, who is Japanese, if she thought it was necessary. She said it's not at all necessary and that she had no idea of the origin of most of them. So, I would suggest avoiding the frustration of that first chapter and move on to the second chapter if you're doing RTKII.

Hi john,

I think your wife is right.

I have dropped that approach. I will try KanjiTown method instead. This way I will be able to build upon my story skills developed with RTK1. KanjiTown is a memory palace kind of like the one Fabrice linked to in the Ricci essay.

Instead of a palace I imagine a town. I then use the onyomi kanjis to populate the town. Like ア. It includse 亜 ASIA and 阿 AFRICA. I then design a story about KanjiTowns Adult Area (A-sound) where naughty men can find cathouses with cats from ASIA or maybe go to AFRICA night club, the pinnacle of the Adult Area's where they can hang out.

Notice how I reinforced the AFRICA element by weaving the elements into the story, Pinnacle, Can.

Its easy, really. And fun, also. Some on-yomi will have 10 or more kanjis, so they require quite a solid stories, others are just a handful and therefore very easy. Ill post more stories later.

Ive created a lil blog of my experiences with kanjitown. If anyone is interested in knowing more, read it.


http://my.opera.com/Immacolata/blog/

just checked the blog. is there any chance you could show us the excel files that you are creating? would be useful to help me and others get a start on this method i think.

regards

I didn't create them, a guy name Leo Smith did. Its basically just fuaburisus list of onyomi indexed kanjis slabbed together with stories like the アン one. I think it is available at the Yahoo user's group Remembering the kanji.

(I dont know if I can put files there on the blog X.x

I just followed rtk 2 through like heisig tells you to by reviewing from the compound to reading and I am pretty much finished with the onyomi section of rtk2. It might not be as creative as rtk 1 but since in my opinion since the readings are easier to remember than the writing it doesn't really have to be.

This way also has the advantage of giving you a preset vocab list of over 2000 words.

Immacolata Wrote:I didn't create them, a guy name Leo Smith did. Its basically just fuaburisus list of onyomi indexed kanjis slabbed together with stories like the アン one. I think it is available at the Yahoo user's group Remembering the kanji.

(I dont know if I can put files there on the blog X.x

no problem. i found the list you are talking about in the group.

thanks

I found the presented method in RTK2 poor. So I followed LittleFish's kanjitown example. And it is SCARY how good it works, because you build with the building blocks you already created doing RTK1. You have to make new stories now, but you already know how to do that. These are just longer. And you must be sure that every kanji that shares the same onyomi are included. So some of them get to be a bit long, but thats not as bad as it seems at first.

I think Heisig dropped the ball on the methods of RTK2, but he did do a very nice listing job of the kanjis with compounds. So what I do is, I create my stories, but I also enter the corresponding compounds into SuperMemo and review those from there. But anyone considering doing RTK2 after RTK1 should NOT do it like Heisig says. Use kanjitown, or memory chains. You already created the tools and spent months honing your skills, now you just have to finish the job.

Hi. I am not exactly sure how to use the kanjitown method. So you create a different part of town for each on-yumi correct. Then do you remember the individual kanji that make that sound and put it there. What about when kanji has more than 1 onyumi sound? Do you arrange the kanji according to their onyumi pronunciation. I noticed Immacolata, in your example, that you used English to arrange your kanji. Confused.

Of course, I use the english Remembering the Kanji, so it is just natural that I continue using the english keywords.

Again, you take the list of all kanjis with onyomi アン. It happens that the list reveals 4 that are part of the first 2042 (there are some more, but they are from RTK3 so we ignore them now)

First I create a name for the story, AN. So Ann or Anne is a female name. The story therefore begins with AN. I chose that because there are two kanjis in this story where the element woman is included. RELAX and PLAN. So it felt natural to use some upper class women of KanjiTowns rich people district as my leitmotif. Then I incorporate each kanji that has the onyomi AN in the story, but I write their name, like RELAX. When I meet the kanji in a text, I think of the story about the ANs that RELAX. The whole story comes to me, it works quite wonderfully, because in my story I made sure to use the elements and ministories I invented doing RTK1. That means I build my kanjitown long chains of stories from elements already vivid in my imagination.

In another story for I イI put it in a village I call Little ITALY. If you check RTK1 for Italy you will see that it is named so because it has that sound, I. Then in that story ALL kanjis that have onyomi イ are build in. Its a long one, therefore I posted the AN story of only 4 kanjis.

So it is really simple, you connect the kanjis you already made little stories for into a long chain, always sorted after their common onyomi. When I meet a kanji with several Onyomi, I simply include them in each story where they are needed. It isnt complicated. The idea about a whole KANJITOWN is that you are going to have many many stories that each have to take place in some location you can imagine. Tying them up together mentally in a large town with districts, rural areas etc helps you keep things ordered in your mind.

The guy who inspired me, LittleFish, said that he first sat down and found locations in his head for ALL the readings, some 300. I can't do that. I make up my stories by first looking at the elements and figure out where they could be place. Then later I figure out how to connect them into the larger KanjiTown picture. Its a bit like playing simcity in your mind If you are good at planning out your entire city layout way ahead, then you can do that with kanjitown too. But I can't. I sort of go about it organically and let it grow as I work my way through each different onyomi.

I am not sure its entirely necessary to have a completely contiguous town connected to each other. For long stories with many many kanjis in, they are powerful enough to stand alone. Like the Italy story. Therefore I put that in its own little rural toscan village. But there are lots of 1 or 2 yomi stories, where they are not powerful enough to stand entirely alone. Those are the ones that you benefit the most from having mentally place in relation to other stories . I think. Im new to it yet. But it works VERY well so far.

seems like a sound idea to get the on-yomi readings learnt based on the technique honed during RTK1. i will be giving it a try whrn i complete the first book.

just looking at the on-yomi's, i think the reading コウ will be a real challenge!

A fun one, however. Long stories are kind of fun, because you impress yourself with how much you can remember. I was intimidated at first, but nothing prevents you from making as much as you can and forget the rest first time around.

To my surprise, the stories are quite flexible. As long as you can imaginatively fit in the extra elements in your mental vision of the place they take place, it is really easy. Ive also shuffled around elements when I thought they would make more sense elsewhere.

This also bodes well for the day when you are ready to tackle RTK3. This book is a RTK1+2 together, just for an additional 1000 kanji. So here you get the readings together with the kanjis and can build them into your existing memory palace. Which is why it is VERY important that you write your chained stories down somewhere!

I think I get the picture. I started making my kanjitown last night. I tried using the New York City area as the basis for my town. But yeah, there are 300 sounds. I'm also using the blue kanji box on the side to drill words individually. I like making stories because it gives me something to peg knew words on to, but it seems like this city might be too huge. I also have to watch myself. I can get addicted to making cards and neglect grammar and Pimsleur study. I did kanjitown last night because it was fun to begin creating kanji chain stories.

One good thing to do would be to print out Fuaburisu's list of onyumi in the April 2006 archive. That way you can start designing your "Kanjitown" with pencil and paper first. Making the kanjitown story seems like a good way to test how you can go from kanji to Heisig English reading. Though my memory is not so great I'm noticing it's a lot quicker for me to find the meanings of kanji I don't quite remember because I have more a vocabulary of primitives. When I first started before Heisig, it would take me half an hour to find a kanji in my paperback kanji dictionary.

If you use WAKAN you can simply enter the definition of the kanji in the find characters box and about 95% of them appear Thats what I enjoy most about having completed RTK1, it takes NO TIME to look up kanji I know now.

As for Fuaburisus chain, I would recommend you to get the RTK2 list, since it isn't complete. He left out several onyomis, like 行 in the アン story. The idea is that you must try to include _ALL_ onyomis for each kanji. Even obscure ones like　the reading エ for 回. The compound 回心 reads えじん　and Microsoft IME chokes on it. But one day, you run across it with that onyomi. So learn it, now that you're at it anyways.

The idea about kanjitown, or kanjichains, is that you sort of pull the entire chain out of your head link by link. So any "weak links" so to speak, are connected in several places with other links.

As I am progressing now I am not sure I will stick to doing a congruent kanjitown system. It seems to work fine so far with just defining discrete areas. I just made stories for エイ, and I found it natural to have this take place in England, London. This has nothing to do with KanjiTown right now. But I am leaving hooks behind me so that I can connect it into kanjitown at some future point. I have no idea how it works with 300 stories, whether it will help to have them sorted spatially or it is irrelevant.

I have a feeling that it will, though. KanjiTown is one guys systematic approach to it, and it might just not work for another guy. But it MUST be taking place in some location that you can recall in greatest detail, which is why it helps to tie into real locations or make a sort of imaginary place based on known elements.

I think a good test of how good your location is would be to talk a mental stroll through it and see if you can see all elements of it clearly. Try taking a stroll the other way around, beginning at the end. IF you hang onto the location and do not "Get lost" so to speak, it works.

I see the 'how' of kanjitown but I'm still a little confused on the 'why'. I'm trying to understand the motivation for learning all the readings. I haven't gotten into the readings yet so I may not have a clue what I'm talking about but... Let's say you can remember all the reading for every kanji. What can you do with this knowledge? If you find a new compound, don't you need to look it up anyway to know how it's pronounced (as well as it's meaning of course)? Is there a certain reading that is used 95% of the time and if you know that one you're pretty much set? I know there's a chinese reading and at least 1 japanese reading but beyond that I'm clue challenged.

[ファブリス]

Immacolata Wrote:As I am progressing now I am not sure I will stick to doing a congruent kanjitown system. It seems to work fine so far with just defining discrete areas.

I did anotger group of 21 kanji yesterday, and that's my experience as well. I added the reamining kanji to the JOU group that I started through RTK I.

Quote:I think a good test of how good your location is would be to talk a mental stroll through it and see if you can see all elements of it clearly.

I do that too. Only I have to remember the kanji count for the chain otherwise I may eventually forget a small part of the chain. I only need the count now to check myself, for reviewing I write down the kanjis on paper, as some kind of map. I recall the keywords and write down each kanji.

I also use various locations, and I dont fit them into a town. I guess the town is one larger, encompassing chain that helps tie up the groups so they dont fall out of memory.

Chains are incredibly strong. I do 20-30 kanji one evening and the next day I have no trouble to rewrite it all down on paper from memory. I can still recall 95% of the chains of 20+ kanji I did months ago, which I review very seldom.

For now I haven't written down any of the "chains". I don't really elaborate much. I just sometimes come up with small explanations for why such and such kanji are related. For example I inspired myself over "Howl's Moving Castle" anime for completing my "JOU" chain, so I had a "steam-powered castle, all above the Jou island, which produced all it's steam from just twigs, the steam-castle is conducted by a superfluous guy (whose weather-vane crown is quite useful to check the winds and steer his steam-castle), who took away the daughter of the brew-man, thus upsetting the status-quo on the island. There is a special location on the island which is always clean where the steam-castle docks. The gates of the steam-castle are guarded by a magic lock. Etc etc. It's like a story, but I put much more effort into clearly visualising each kanji in a space on the island, I don't want anything abstract. For asbtract keywords such as "location", or "clean" I can include the primtives from the kanji stories built in RTK I to get clearer images.

What I wonder is how best to create those "mind maps". The one I made for SEI is fairly complex as it is not a chain, but more like a spiderweb, with various branches leading to sub-groups, each centered on a primtive such as "life" (star, surname, sex, animal sacrifice), "blue" (pure, clear up, refined, quiet, solicit) and "correct" (politics, subjugate, organize). Now I try to recall a chain like that to test myself it can be a bit tricky to navigate and make sure I've got them all. But assuming I only need to test the reading of each character separately, like when sight-reading, or using flashcards, then I am not trying to navigate the whole chain, and its layout may not matter. In fact I thinm in some ways making a "spiderweb" kind of layout is better to cross link the kanji thatn making one long chain. In the one long chain with a weak link you can forget a bunch of kanji.

Quote:I see the 'how' of kanjitown but I'm still a little confused on the 'why'.

Making chains is incredibly easy, really. And it's a good second pass over RTK I, it can help really nail down those kanji that are in the red stack. Like yesterday I jused fixed one in my chain, remade the kanji story directly to be included in the chain, visualising the elements, rather than rework the story as a previous step.

But is it really better or faster than rote memorisation I can't say, it probably depends on the person and their imagination. For me it's very interesting to do, it's also very refreshing as it's pure concentration, in a calm place, for about half an hour.

I think it should go along with a compound word as in RTK II. You can make chains and also choose one exemplary compound to write on your paper cards. Or use a flashcard program. I'd like to add this possibility to the site eventually. So you get to learn 2000+ compounds which is good, and give "real" practice for the readings, rather than memorising the readings all alone.

If I put a reviewing section for the readings, members can memorise the readings however they like, the original RTK II way, or using mind maps. But personally I find that creating a web-based mind map tool where members could share like "tags" for the various groups could be very interesting to do.

One good reason I see for learning systematically the readings is to look up compounds. Often I see compounds that I want to look up but unless there is furigana or I hear the word spoken, I need to enter the kanji into a program such as JWPce to look up the compound and it's soooo slow.

Quote:What I wonder is how best to create those "mind maps". The one I made for SEI is fairly complex as it is not a chain, but more like a spiderweb, with various branches leading to sub-groups, each centered on a primtive such as "life" (star, surname, sex, animal sacrifice), "blue" (pure, clear up, refined, quiet, solicit) and "correct" (politics, subjugate, organize). Now I try to recall a chain like that to test myself it can be a bit tricky to navigate and make sure I've got them all. But assuming I only need to test the reading of each character separately, like when sight-reading, or using flashcards, then I am not trying to navigate the whole chain, and its layout may not matter. In fact I thinm in some ways making a "spiderweb" kind of layout is better to cross link the kanji thatn making one long chain. In the one long chain with a weak link you can forget a bunch of kanji.

My preliminary opinion on this is: If you can walk a tour in your memory place and chose the direction you go, and not forget the details on your way, then yes, it works. The whole idea with the memory palace is also that you can always locate your knowledge, simply because you know you left that SPOON next to where HE sits, you know, Samson that was tied down to the columns in the temple of the philistines.

Quote:But is it really better or faster than rote memorisation I can't say, it probably depends on the person and their imagination. For me it's very interesting to do, it's also very refreshing as it's pure concentration, in a calm place, for about half an hour.

You are joking right? A guy that devotes an entire web site to RTK1 starts questioning the merits of avoiding rote memorization

Quote:I think it should go along with a compound word as in RTK II. You can make chains and also choose one exemplary compound to write on your paper cards. Or use a flashcard program. I'd like to add this possibility to the site eventually. So you get to learn 2000+ compounds which is good, and give "real" practice for the readings, rather than memorising the readings all alone.

What I do is to write down the jukugo presented in RTK2 and import them to SuperMemo 2004. Then I gradually introduce them here, and already now I see that many words I read aloud first. Then I got "WTF?" What does that mean? I then press the reveal answer. And damn, I read it correct, even if I had no clue to what it meant because I forgot it. But I could read it, damnit! Previously, staring at a jukugo usually meant despair. Both its meaning and its sound completely eluded me.

Quote:One good reason I see for learning systematically the readings is to look up compounds. Often I see compounds that I want to look up but unless there is furigana or I hear the word spoken, I need to enter the kanji into a program such as JWPce to look up the compound and it's soooo slow.

Bingo. You have just climbed the singlemost big hindrance for japanese literacy: the damn kanji. The language is now more transparent since you tore down the chinese wall of kanji. They are now just representatives of sound, as well as meaning. This means that you can actually read aloud a japanese text and proclaim you haven't got a clue to what you've just said. I think thats a rarity in japanese studies.

It means you can look up words superfast in electric dictionaries, because you just enter them phonetically. So reading a book is no more a trial that tortures you. Also, you now are one step closer to connecting spoken japanese with reading it.

Thats the big why. Imagine trying to learn french or german or what ever other language you were taught at school without being able to read anything, not even make the sounds come out of your mouth. If you forgot already it is exactly what Heisig proclaims is his reason for doing RTK at the beginning of volume 1.

So you're saying once you've learned the readings then you can pronounce unfamilar compounds correctly. But how do you know which reading to use? It it something that just makes sense the more you do it, i.e. educated guesses "Everytime I've seen this kanji come first it's pronounced '...' so it is probably '...' this time", or are there certain rules i.e. "if this kanji comes first it's pronounced '...' ", or is it just a crap shoot? What about 回心 that reads えじん. Is that how you would have thought it was read? Do you usually need to look up several readings before you actually come across the right one for the compound?

Hmm, I guess this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Readings answers some of my questions. Only to be replaced by new ones :/

Relax, the method is very solid. You will be forced into guessing and second guessing onyomis and kunyomis no matter how you learn kanji, because thats what the japanese do when they encounter new compounds. And don't get started on proper names, because there are NO RULES when it comes to them. Any reading is fair game.

Now, I looked up compounds made by 回 beginning with エ, and I found two. One was えじん　the other えこう 回向, a buddhistic ritual apparantly. So the chances are that you will get confused are so small compared to the tower of BENEFIT you will reap following this approach.


Camman, man. Give it a try if you already did RTK1.

[ファブリス]

scottamus: Interestingly, 回心 appears twice in JWPce dictionary, both times with the same meaning :
回心 【えじん】
回心 【かいしん】

But I suppose that yes, if you include all the readings like Immacolata does, you don't have that many guesses to get the correct reading. As for しん becoming じん it looks like you can get a feel for it fairly easily, the syllables are often 'hardened' when they are in the middle of compounds so たbecomes だ, ふ becomes ぶ , etc.

Another interesting aspect, is that when you hear words in spoken Japanese, you may guess at how they are written, assuming you have a vague idea of what they mean, in context. With kanji chains you can navigate your mind map and look for the kanji that are pronunced 'kan' for example. Based on some idea of the meaning of the compound word, you could pick some kanji that fit this meaning with their primitive, and come pretty close. Just an idea.

Immacolata Wrote:So the chances are that you will get confused are so small compared to the tower of BENEFIT you will reap following this approach.

Camman, man. Give it a try if you already did RTK1.

I'm not worried so much about begin confused as by reading something to a nihonjin and mispronouncing "the art of flower arrangement" as "a challange of honor to the death because I think your anscestors smell funny".

I will give it a try but I'm only 76.1% finished with RTK I.

I've found reading about this kanji town method very interesting. It seems to me that an enormous amount of effort is being put into the receptive and comprehension side of learning a language. However, I'm concerned that there is a serious imbalance with the productive side of language learning. For example, we can now all read 回心 and it has been discussed in a number of posts. If it came up in something we read, we may be able to apply the Jim Breen translation of 'conversion' and see what it means in the sentence. However, can anyone make their own example sentence or paragraph using 回心? I see very little point in expending a lot of effort to learn the exceptional readings for 回心 and other compounds when you can't use that knowledge productively afterwards.

I guess that if you just want to learn Japanese in order to read manga or novels, then this kind of approach would be ideal. However if you're looking to communicate in written or spoken form, then I think that the amount of time you put into an on-yomi reading chain method would have to be balanced with the amount of time you spend studying how to be productive.

Learning exceptional readings can be fun if you already know the word. I'm sure that many people will know the word 海豚 (イルカ) when they hear it, but they may not have been aware that the above kanji can be attached.

Immacolata: I think it's great that this method works for you when learning readings (and I may try it myself), but I would be interested to know what methods you use for learning how to use the words whose readings you have learnt.