I get asked about RTK quite often, and I can never really explain what I got from it. I know I wouldn't be able to do japanese like am doing right now if it weren't for RTK, but it's a little hard to explain to people that have never done it.

I mean, you don't really learn their "meaning" because the keywords aren't meanings.
(not to mention each kanji doesn't really have a set meaning)

You don't learn to "understand" them because you go from keyword to kanji and not the other way around.

You don't learn to read them either....

You learn to write them and to get yourself familiar with them, so that then when you see them, they look familiar and don't look scary. That's my best explanation... =/
Someone this doesn't sound convincing when I say it to people.

Can anyone sum it up for me in a more convincing way?
What was the point of RTK?

学びやすくなるのだ

It's similar to learning the letters of the alphabet. You learn to write them, recognize them and you give them a name. That's not enough to know what sounds those letters will make together or what the words mean but that's a necessary step towards that goal.

You could try to learn just a, b, c, d, e and then learn the words you can write with just those 5 letters. But that's just more difficult and you'll be very limited by all the letters you still don't know. It just makes more sense to have an overview of the whole alphabet before you start reading, even if there is still going to be a lot to learn about those letters.

RTK is the kanji equivalent of doing things that way.

Saying that the keywords aren't meaning isn't true, either. The keywords were created based on how the kanji is used... In most cases, if you know the keyword for a kanji, you know what the word means even if you can't pronounce it.

So you can get away with treating the keywords like meaning most of the time, just like you can get away with just memorizing 1 pronunciation of a kanji (the most common one) and get away with that most of the time, when you have to guess a new word's pronunciation. It's not 100%, but it's good enough to make things -way- easier.

[ファブリス]

Admin: no need to start new endless debates about keyword meanings and so on each time this question is posted.

Please check out the sticky What's the point of RtK (Remembering the Kanji) ?.

Please stay on topic on that sticky, and add to the discussion if you have something valuable to add.

Topic closed because duplicate.