So I'm at that chapter with all of the heart kanji and really abstract words... stories aren't really sticking. Any tips? How'd you guys get past it? Any strategies for remembering abstract words in this chapter and future chapters?
2010-04-14, 10:14 am
if you have trouble getting a feel for a kanji, you might want to look the kanji up in a dictionary and read a list of words containing it. You'll probably be able to figure out why that particular keyword was chosen.
2010-04-14, 10:18 am
My state of mind is empathy. 
Translation: I feel your pain!
My advice is pretty much in line with Heisig's -- to try to attach a concrete mental image to the keyword, always working from keyword to kanji. The suggestions by users at Reviewing the Kanji can be very helpful -- people often think of associations I miss. But be sure to pick just one good story; better one good one than three.
For example, for "emotion," someone suggested: "Emotion is a march of mouths inside your heart telling you what to feel." That's nice and short, and it presents the four important words (emotion-march-mouths-heart) in correct stroke order, in a nice short sentence, and a concrete image. I try to think of some mouths marching their way through my heart.
That said, sometimes I do find that I just can't get the keyword to trigger the story in my mind. When that happens, I try to evaluate what I think of first when the keyword comes to mind. Then I'll try to work in that "first impression" into my story. I have no trouble remembering the details of my stories; for me, the hardest thing is getting the keyword to trigger the story in the first place. In these cases, it can be helpful to think about the keyword without looking at the kanji, thinking about what image the keyword conjures up, and seeing if that helps you create a useful story.
Finally, I do find that it gets easier as I review stories a few times. The spaced-review method of Reviewing the Kanji is a great methodology.
Translation: I feel your pain!My advice is pretty much in line with Heisig's -- to try to attach a concrete mental image to the keyword, always working from keyword to kanji. The suggestions by users at Reviewing the Kanji can be very helpful -- people often think of associations I miss. But be sure to pick just one good story; better one good one than three.
For example, for "emotion," someone suggested: "Emotion is a march of mouths inside your heart telling you what to feel." That's nice and short, and it presents the four important words (emotion-march-mouths-heart) in correct stroke order, in a nice short sentence, and a concrete image. I try to think of some mouths marching their way through my heart.
That said, sometimes I do find that I just can't get the keyword to trigger the story in my mind. When that happens, I try to evaluate what I think of first when the keyword comes to mind. Then I'll try to work in that "first impression" into my story. I have no trouble remembering the details of my stories; for me, the hardest thing is getting the keyword to trigger the story in the first place. In these cases, it can be helpful to think about the keyword without looking at the kanji, thinking about what image the keyword conjures up, and seeing if that helps you create a useful story.
Finally, I do find that it gets easier as I review stories a few times. The spaced-review method of Reviewing the Kanji is a great methodology.
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2010-04-15, 9:54 am
I changed the "state of mind" primitive into a fictional character that I liked. It helped that she was a bit high-strung, and a bit of a drama queen. It made all of the stories a WHOLE lot more interesting for me than boring ol' "State of Mind." Ugh. Pick your own favorite person/place/thing for it. Don't use someone else's, unless it resonates with you.
That was my bailout for a lot of the primitives that were duller than dirt, and threatened to make me want to toss the book into the trash. Thread became another fictional character from another book, who was a bit of a lecher. She's fun.
Person became Mr. T, because Mr. T, although a bit overused by other people, is still cool. The A-Team was awesome. Ahh... Anyway, it's a tool to be used. Use it as you need to.
Heisig has already tossed linguistic purity aside, so you might as well just throw it all out the window and just roll with the quick and dirty beauty that is RTK. Makes it a hell of a lot easier to remember if you actually care about the mnemonic, rather than some abstract concept you don't give a carp about.
That was my bailout for a lot of the primitives that were duller than dirt, and threatened to make me want to toss the book into the trash. Thread became another fictional character from another book, who was a bit of a lecher. She's fun.
Person became Mr. T, because Mr. T, although a bit overused by other people, is still cool. The A-Team was awesome. Ahh... Anyway, it's a tool to be used. Use it as you need to.
Heisig has already tossed linguistic purity aside, so you might as well just throw it all out the window and just roll with the quick and dirty beauty that is RTK. Makes it a hell of a lot easier to remember if you actually care about the mnemonic, rather than some abstract concept you don't give a carp about.
2010-04-15, 10:31 am
rich_f Wrote:I changed the "state of mind" primitive into a fictional character that I liked.I used Sigmund Freud, well-known for checking out people's state of mind. I recently came across this word, 忸怩 (じくじ), meaning "ashamed".
Combined story: A cow strays into Freud's clinic so he cooks and eats it, but then a nun (尼, Maria from "Sound of Music") who'd raised it from a calf pops her head round the door saying, "Any sign of the cow(丑)?". Freud replies, "I'm ashamed to say that I, er..."
2010-04-15, 10:33 am
Katsuo Wrote:I went with Dhalsim from Street Fighter because he does that floating meditation thing when he wins.rich_f Wrote:I changed the "state of mind" primitive into a fictional character that I liked.I used Sigmund Freud, well-known for checking out people's state of mind. I recently came across this word, 忸怩 (じくじ), meaning "ashamed".
Combined story: A cow strays into Freud's clinic so he cooks and eats it, but then a nun (尼, Maria from "Sound of Music") who'd raised it from a calf pops her head round the door saying, "Any sign of the cow(丑)?". Freud replies, "I'm ashamed to say that I, er..."
2010-04-15, 11:59 pm
Yeah... hardest chapter in the book. I can remember all of them now but I probably failed every one of them at least twice in SRS. I rely pretty heavily on visual memory for the state of mind ones.
2010-04-16, 2:03 am
I didn't worry too much about stuff like "heart" and "state of mind" because they show up so often as primitives, they get burned into your head pretty quickly. The important thing is to keep moving forward. The SRS + Heisig's ordering ensure that you get really, really used to most of the kanji through repitition, but in a super efficient way. I think Heisig's true genius wasn't the stories, it was the ordering of the kanji and using components to build new kanji while reinforcing those very components. Once the SRS made reviewing them more efficient and productive, the highly detailed visual stories become less of an issue. Remember, the stories are a ladder that is going to disappear as soon as you don't need it anymore, so don't stress too hard about trying to make every story some masterpiece of literature. Usually a single, simple sentence will do the job quite well.
2010-04-16, 2:08 am
Go rouge on those primitives I say! Make your own up as rich_f describes -> I didn't do it until I was 3/4, and wish I had from the get go. Of course many of them are good so you may not want to do it with all of them, but it is a more powerful mnemonic if you use stuff that has a strong place in your mind. I think I used many of my good friends for primitives.
