Hello guys,

I am currently studying RTK1, around 1200ish Kanji learnt and as I was having a glance at the next ones, I saw a new Kanji (& primitive) appear.
穴 (hole) = House + eight

According to Heisig, when hole is used as a primitive, "eight" is replaced by "human legs". At first, I thought ... uhm why not, but a couple of seconds later I realized that this "hole" primitive was really familiar. Indeed, it reminded my of "window".
窓 (window) = House + Human legs !!!!! + elbow + heart

What do you think ? Am I going insane, or is it a mistake made by Heisig ?

He has a couple of things out of order, yeah. He also adds in random religious characters that I will never use and excludes common kanji simply because they are not on the jouyou list and cannot be used as primitives. None of these things have caused me any major problems.

I don't worry about it. I actually think that the window character is easier to learn without the "hole" primitive.

Plus, if you´re on ＃１２００ or so, then you already KNOW the kanji, right?

The "hole" primitive isn't an actual character, and I don't think that it is a radical either, so it is merely an aid to the imagination in learning a set of 20 or so 漢字 using Heisig's method. If you already know the character for window, don't go back and mess with it.

I don't think it's a mistake, there are lots of radicals not included in RtK. However yes, that is the 穴 primitive in 窓.

Thx for the answers.

Yeah, I perfectly remember 窓 (using my previous story). I was just a little bit puzzled by the fact that, to me, the top part of "window" looks exactly as "hole" when used as a primitive, but it is not mentioned by Heisig.

What "random religious characters"?

I don't want to answer for him/her, but i think heriticalrants probably means characters in the sense of people, as opposed to Chinese characters. For example, Saint Boniface is invoked in 994 , "fell."

[Katsuo]

Here is a thread on the same topic. Check reply #11 for a list of similar (debatably) out-of-order characters.

穴 is actually the main radical of 窓, so I don't know what Heisig was getting at with this one, but maybe he thought the combination of (animal) legs+elbow+heart (all body parts) with house would make an easier story than hole+elbow+heart.

when 穴 (hole) appears at the top as the 部首 it's called 穴冠　（あなかんむり）　冠 is like a crown or a cap sort of thing and when it's part of the naming convention for radicals that appear at the top. Such as ウ冠、竹冠、ワ冠.

hereticalrants Wrote:The "hole" primitive isn't an actual character, and I don't think that it is a radical either, so it is merely an aid to the imagination in learning a set of 20 or so 漢字 using Heisig's method.

Since when is 穴 not an actual character? It's even a word all by itself: あな(hole).

I'm curious about the 'religious characters" too.

yukamina Wrote:

hereticalrants Wrote:The "hole" primitive isn't an actual character, and I don't think that it is a radical either, so it is merely an aid to the imagination in learning a set of 20 or so 漢字 using Heisig's method.

Since when is 穴 not an actual character? It's even a word all by itself: あな(hole).

and a radical to boot.

Quote:I'm curious about the 'religious characters" too.

Me too.

Think what he meant by "religious characters" was just that Heisig uses alot of religious figures/places/etc. in his stories. Which, obviously, is completely useless for anyone who doesn't practice said religion.

Not sure why you'd bring it up as a complaint as it's just as easy to make your own story without his religious suggestions interfering. I'm an atheist so whenever I came upon one of his religious stories, I just ignored it and came up with something of my own.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. In that case, I, too, would like to know what religious characters you mean xD

Actually, I have no idea what I was talking about in my last post.

All I really meant to say was, "Don´t worry about it."

EOF

Offshore Wrote:Think what he meant by "religious characters" was just that Heisig uses alot of religious figures/places/etc. in his stories. Which, obviously, is completely useless for anyone who doesn't practice said religion.

Not sure why you'd bring it up as a complaint as it's just as easy to make your own story without his religious suggestions interfering. I'm an atheist so whenever I came upon one of his religious stories, I just ignored it and came up with something of my own.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. In that case, I, too, would like to know what religious characters you mean xD

I actually wiki/read up on most stories where people reference something which everyone else seems to know, yet not I. E.g his King Solomon story on Judgement (about cutting a baby in two?) I had no idea he was a King. All I know about Solomon is that he was a prophet in Islam who could talk to animals, so he was my favourite prophet back when I was young. I tried talking to cats and ants after I found out about him, but didn't work, damn bullshit it was. I cried, and cursed god and asked him why I wasn't a prophet with special powers. T'was a huge turning point in my life.

Basically, god hates you. Everyone but you can talk to animals.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Basically, god hates you. Everyone but you can talk to animals.

But only the chosen few have the animals talk back to you.

On topic, I find the "hole" primitive works better than my "Baba Yaga" primitive even though an house on chicken legs makes for an interesting visual.

liosama Wrote:I actually wiki/read up on most stories where people reference something which everyone else seems to know, yet not I. E.g his King Solomon story on Judgement (about cutting a baby in two?) I had no idea he was a King. All I know about Solomon is that he was a prophet in Islam who could talk to animals, so he was my favourite prophet back when I was young. I tried talking to cats and ants after I found out about him, but didn't work, damn bullshit it was. I cried, and cursed god and asked him why I wasn't a prophet with special powers. T'was a huge turning point in my life.

I thought St. Francis was the one who could talk to animals. My mum always called me Francisca as a kid, because I was always talking to animals.

You know, cats understand you perfectly. They just choose to ignore you.

Oh I am well aware of that. They only understand you when there's food in it for them.

My cats USED to understand me, but they only understands English, so...

basically, they think I'm the crazy guy who doesn't talk like anyone else.

I'm sure that my cats will be trilingual soon enough, however.

Damn, I went ahead and remembered that "window" character's (House + Human legs) primitive as "Mallet" (mallets are good for smashing windows ect...). Mabey I can have it mean "hole" or "mallet" depending on which fits better...