http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/鹿

This is an attempt to wikify some of the info about Kanji. I keep looking at stories and seeing the same basic stories repeated with minor corrections and additions. I tend to put a lot of info about Kanji in my 'stories' to help my with my study. They help me attach Kanji to words I already know, but they are not particularly helpful to other people who don't know the words and are just trying to memorize the Kanji.

What I would hope this results in is a wiki with all the Kanji from RTK1 and RTK3, and related Kanji. Hopefully this would allow people to edit in their slight changes to stories to come up with a perfected story for each memorization method, and also allow for the several versions of mnemonics to each be perfected.

Additionally, it would free the learning of related Kanji from the RTK order.

I have only done this one kanji, and only started to link out to the rest. Before I get too far into it, it seems like it would be a good idea for many minds to figure out what sort of info would be useful to have for each Kanji. If others interested in the same idea start with that one entry, we could come up with a standardized view of useful info.

I don't think it would be helpful to those trying to simply remember the Kanji without fairly complete handle on Japanese vocabulary, but it might be useful to allow the branching of several different strands:

1. Memorizing Kanji by Japanese meanings)

2. Organizing the different story ideas around several different ideas

3. Linking a number of shape related Kanji together without regard to the RTK traditional order (many Kanji are separated from nearly identical Kanji because the primitives/radicals have not been introduced in the standard RTK order.) I already know the standard radicals, and would tend to want to learn all the shape related Kanji together rather waiting for say the introduction of minor bits like the standard RHS bits (廴辶冫亻 ⺖卩⺭衤彳釒飠?) to learn the characters.

4. Pointing out which Kanji goes with which reading, for example つとめる, or すすめる which have several Kanji choices, with different meanings.

Seems like an awesome idea, but a lot of work.
It could help if the main site had links from each kanji to the wiki pages.

Have you looked at http://zhongwen.com/ ?

It doesn't do nearly all that you are trying to, but the tree might be very helpful in sorting out what primitives are necessary for each kanji to add to your idea of freeing people from needing to follow RTK order.

Hmmm what would I want to know...

1) variations in fonts/exceptions
2) words that use them

I think that's about it but I think a histor of a character would be neat but totally impractical. 頑張ってください！

Resistance is futile. You will be wikified!

[ファブリス]

kapalama Wrote:If others interested in the same idea start with that one entry, we could come up with a standardized view of useful info.

Yeah I think templates would be very useful for this.

We would need Mr Heisig's permission to use the primitive names in a Wiki setting. You could easily leave out the primitive name though, and use only the character.

While I'd love to cheer you up on this effort, my mind tells me this is going to be a gargantuan effort.. I'm not sure what it is exactly you're trying to do there, if there is a single need you can point out, it may be more productive to collect the data into a spreadsheet and it could either be displayed as a table in the wiki, or included in the website in one form or another.

I would guess that a part of this would be scriptable also, since we already have some spreadsheet with some of the details in it.

Down with sickness for a while....

Do we have any idea what the status of use of the RTK keywords in the wiki is?

Hi, a suggestion here. You wouldn't mind if I put in random etymological info that I find onto those pages? eg http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/%E9%A6%AC%E9%B9%BF for 馬鹿, I once searched japanese wikipedia to find out why a "馬鹿" means an idiot. And I think there are many forum posts which contains this sort of information.

zodiac Wrote:Hi, a suggestion here. You wouldn't mind if I put in random etymological info that I find onto those pages? eg http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/%E9%A6%AC%E9%B9%BF for 馬鹿, I once searched japanese wikipedia to find out why a "馬鹿" means an idiot. And I think there are many forum posts which contains this sort of information.

Errr, I see no etymological info on that page.
http://gogen-allguide.com/ha/baka.html

Yes, I was asking if putting it in would be a good idea.

Really I think that the page should just be deleted. The wiki doesn't need to be an (awful) user-created dictionary. EDICT and wiktionary are bad enough.

IMHO, Deleting pages is a bad idea. IMHO, Wikipedia has that completely wrong. If it's stupid, correct it if you want. But deleting info someone is offering is saying that nothing is better than something. When someone is learning a language, anything helps. If Nelson, Spahn, and Halpern were clickable, we would only need it for some stuff. But they are not.

I imagine anything should include a link to EDICT and Wiktionary as well.

Here's something that badly needs to be done:
1. Making the Joyo Kanji list link to the RevTK wiki for information, incomplete as it may be. I linked some random ones. This is the place for remembering Kanji via RTK, and that sort of info gets deleted from Wikipedia and Wiktionary. Also the individual pages could link over to the story section. That's kind of too much to put in the full Joyo list, but for me the idea of the RevTK wiki is to sort of massage the stories into the couple of best ideas that come from the long list of options. In the story threads, often the best version has few votes because it is the latest iteration, based on a great original idea, that is nonetheless incomplete.

It also seems like the Joyo Kanji list should be one entry, and the page on Joyo Kanji another. Do we have a page of just the 1006 Education list?

Joyo Kanji at RevTK
http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Joyo_Kanji

Jarvik7 Wrote:Really I think that the page should just be deleted. The wiki doesn't need to be an (awful) user-created dictionary. EDICT and wiktionary are bad enough.

But wait, you linked to an all Japanese page page that explains baka. It's great if you already can read all that, but people in the process of learning Japanese surely cannot do anything with that. Nor would people who can read that have much use for any of the stuff here.

I'm in a weird place because I can read a fair bit, but I cannot write.

If someone read that page, and then rephrased it in English, that would be extremely useful. That exists nowhere in English on the web.

Well, explanations of Baka might exist in English, but certainly explanations of most things (like 4 character compounds) do not exist. Gogen is great for people who can read kanji. But for people just trying to just watch typical batsu game TV, there is no place where, for instance, the word ビリ is explained. (in english, that is).

Japanese explanation of biri: http://gogen-allguide.com/hi/biri.html

The problem is, most etymology I've seen in English on the internet is flat out incorrect/folk-etymology. Wiktionary is also mostly incorrect from what I've seen (even worse than EDICT).

I say leave etymology until you're at a point where you can read Japanese references. It's better than relying on unreliable second/third-hand information.

Jarvik7 Wrote:The problem is, most etymology I've seen in English on the internet is flat out incorrect/folk-etymology. Wiktionary is also mostly incorrect from what I've seen (even worse than EDICT).

I say leave etymology until you're at a point where you can read Japanese references. It's better than relying on unreliable second/third-hand information.

I see what you are saying, but....

Folk etymology relies on what we know to explain what we don't. In other words, it helps the learning process by turning unclassifiable knowledge in to classifiable knowledge.

The example I linked of the actual ビリ etymology is a case in point. Nothing in the correct story allows me to hang on to the meaning of ビリ. Where any silly made up folk etymology would. The actual etymology leaves me with more things to hold on to with fewer handles, rather than more handles.

It is the exact same thing as the entire RTK system: come up with a story that lets you grab hold of the meaning of an arbitrary shape by attaching the handles where you need to, rather than trusting that the handles are already attached in places that you can grab ahold of.

[ファブリス]

kapalama Wrote:Do we have any idea what the status of use of the RTK keywords in the wiki is?

Yes, same as for the main site. RTK keywords are allowed.

Pages about RTK primitives as indexed by James Heisig should not be created, and are succeptible to deletion if I receive any complaints. I would highly recommend to use the traditional japanese radicals instead, with their japanese names. This would add more value seeing as that is not covered on the main site.

There needs to be a concerted effort for this "wikification" of the RTK or Jouyou kanji. You will have to create a template, and learn about it if needed. There are many examples on Wikimedia. For example look at the Amethyst page, edit it, and you will see a usage of Template:Infoxbox.

With a template, after you have added hundreds of kanji, you can change the layout of all of them all at once.

ファブリス Wrote:There needs to be a concerted effort for this "wikification" of the RTK or Jouyou kanji. You will have to create a template, and learn about it if needed. There are many examples on Wikimedia. For example look at the Amethyst page, edit it, and you will see a usage of Template:Infoxbox.

With a template, after you have added hundreds of kanji, you can change the layout of all of them all at once.

This is frankly beyond me. I have no ability to do something, or even learn how to do something, that I only need to do once. I need repetition or I cannot learn.

I am more than happy to do the grunt work, as I go, of filling in and collating info on characters as I go. But learning the meta-skill of editing Wikipedia templates is the sort of thing I never successfully do.

I keep beating on the 鹿 entry as things occur to me, but someone with wiki skills, and an eye for layout should be doing that. I would just end up cutting and pasting the entire 鹿 page and substituting in information. Clearly that is what template are designed to eliminate, but wiki stuff is beyond me. As is layout.

I actually started to paste in copied 鹿 page, for example:
http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/%E4%B8%80
But if someone with wiki and layout skills fixed up a template it would be much, much better. And eliminate lots of scutwork.

I slowly editing the [[]] links into the
http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Joyo_Kanji
page to make that page link outwards once the destination pages exist. That too seems like something that some clever person with wikipedia skills might be able to do in ine pass.

ファブリス Wrote:Yes, same as for the main site. RTK keywords are allowed.

Pages about RTK primitives as indexed by James Heisig should not be created, and are succeptible to deletion if I receive any complaints. I would highly recommend to use the traditional japanese radicals instead, with their japanese names. This would add more value seeing as that is not covered on the main site.

Because putting effort into something that will need to be taken down is something I want to avoid, I would really like to get clarification about this.

I am not sure what this means: 'pages about RTK primitives as indexed by Heisig should not be created'.

Does this mean that creating a page about, say, 'shredder' in which we list all the kanji that contain the primitive 'shredder' is something bad?

A further question: Is using the Heisig names for these OK? For instance on a page about a Kanji, can we then use the name that Heisig has assigned for it?

I understand that using his stories is definitely out of bounds.

[ファブリス]

You can use Heisig's keywords. Any page linking kanji and "primitives" as named by James Heisig is succeptible to deletion, hence you should use the radicals, or contact Dr. Heisig if you feel that's really worth the effort. That means practically you should remove "Parts: " or use something else than the Heisig primitives.

Primitives are allowed on the website as part of stories, and that's it. Dr. Heisig never gave express permission to index the primitives, or hyperlink kanji and primitives.

Let me me blunt: this is a waste of time. Are you seriously going to enter 3000+ kanji in there? With or without Wikimedia wizardy I think it makes no sense, as most of this information is readily available in many applications out there which are often based on KANJIDIC. Other possibly far more complete sources would also be websites from Japan, many have been posted on this forum in the past.

I applaud your efforts, and I know editing Wikimedia is fun, but I think you could redirect this energy onto other pages. Articles about software, input methods and so on. Data as such is mostly already available out there, and a wiki is not a great way for users to interact with this type of data.

The reason I thought to wikify what little I know about Kanji here, as opposed to somewhere else, is because of the focus at this website on the relation of Kanji to each other for the purposes of memorizing them, and its focus on the RTK system. Wiktionary would likely take down any sort of RTK type info, because for most people it would not be relevant. 'This kanji looks like this other kanji because both contain this bit' is information useful to learning Kanji. But it is useful if, and only if, the reader takes the organization of the RTK system seriously.

If using the primitives to link the kanji is out of bounds on the RevTK wiki, then wikifying here is, as you say, a waste of time (at least for my learning process). This is because, at least for me, the radicals are essentially peripheral to learning Kanji the RTK way. It's a great way to organize them in a Japanese dictionary for Japanese people, but radicals (for me) are immaterial to learning Kanji. Heisig's great insight (again, for me) was to see that for the most part, it is the part of the Kanji that is not the radical that is hard to get a hold of. I learned how to write all the standard radicals way back when, when I learned to write kana. But I could get nowhere with learning Kanji until I stumbled upon the RTK way. I think I must have bought every book (except, obviously RTK) way back when, and I just gave up on ever learning to read and write Japanese because I could not get anywhere learning Kanji. Until I was offered the chance to go to grad school in Japan, with the catch being the reading and writing would be in Japanese, and in desperation I bought a few more books about Japanese. One of these later purchases was RTK luckily.

Non-RTKers have no interest in the fact that 痩せる and 捜す look like each other, because they do not share a radical. Japanese people react with surprise when these connections are made. Once I learned about the RTK way, I have learned to drastically increase my reading by learning 20 kanji at a time rather than one, by organizing them by the non-radical part.

I have written a bunch of stuff about 2000 or more kanji locally, on my computer, so the answer to your question is "Yes I was seriously going to enter 3000+ kanji in the wiki", in the process of my learning. I was hoping that a wiki would be useful to making it interactive for me, and of course to others. Plus the whole 'maybe if I did some, others would do some others and I wouldn't have to enter all the info on all the Kanji myself'. But because I have to learn to read and write for grad school in Japan, I have to do this anyway. RTK, for me, is the means of getting to grad school level fluency reading and writing. I am going to be doing the studying, connecting the dots between what I already know in a way that (I hope) makes grad school in Japan about learning the subject and not learning the writing system.

However, it sounds like you don't want me to do it here (which is obviously fine). Sorry to have bothered you about this, but it is better to know ahead of time. I definitely appreciate the site, and I do not want to cause you headaches. I will just do all this wikification locally on my computer. Thanks for taking the time explain.

[ファブリス]

AFAIK, the greater part of James Heisig's "primitives" directly correspond to radicals. Heisig simply added a building blocks approach, and created new "combination" radicals to simplify the process of making stories for complex characters.

I think you're getting outside of the boundaries of the topic. Put it simply, Heisig and his publishers don't want a wikification of their system. A "hyperlinked" database of RTK kanji was explicitly refused by the German edition author, with consent of James Heisig. That was at least a couple years ago but I have no reasons to believe they have changed their minds since, seeing as creating such a database or "wikification" would majorly step on their toes and essentially render their work open source. AFAIK, RTK is not "open source" material, because the royalties goes to fund part of the university where Heisig works..