This method of learning and how it helps. I'm getting extremely confused trying to understand all of what I'm supposed to be doing, and how it's supposed to help me.

From what I can understand I'm supposed to purchase the RTK1 book, and study some kanji from there? Then after studying I'm supposed to put the kanji into a program like Anki and review them using that? Is that correct?

Also where do you go from there. Learning how to write the kanji based on a keyword doesn't necessarily mean you know the definition of the kanji (although the keyword can help with that) and you certainly wouldn't understand how to combine kanji. So your not really going to be able to do a whole lot of reading, and your still clueless on the whole listening/speaking aspect.

So I don't really understand where this all takes me, and how it helps to me to understand the language. it seems like it could be an important step, but from there where am I supposed to go to really learn how to read it, nonetheless understanding it vocally. And I don't even know if I understand the method of studying RTK1 correctly.

So if you kind folks could help straighten out someone who has no idea what is going on I would really appreciate it. Japanese is a language I've always wanted to know, but I'm having a very hard time understanding the approach.

Also as a final, bit sillier question. How do you go about typing in Japanese?

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1864

The actual method of doing RTK is that you basically look at the kanji, identify the primitives, read Heisig's explanation, and then come up with an image/story/mnemonic using the primitives to help it stick in your head. That's it. It's a good idea to review it with an SRS, either the one here or Anki. Anki is more convenient, IMO, because once you add your story everything is there and it's less clicking to restudy ones you forget.

As for what RTK achieves, it makes you familiar with the kanji. You learn a general meaning as well as how to write them, and it makes identifying them in the wild a lot easier. It doesn't seem like it's worth it, but when you look at other methods of studying kanji it is. There is no writing kanji 8,000 times to learn it - you only need to do it once, and even then, you really don't have to if you want to. You'll remember it anyways. Yes, you won't be able to actually read it, but that comes after with much more fun and efficient methods than writing it over and over again until you go insane.

Edit: Awesome ninja posting skills right here...

But I would disagree about not doing RTK when you have no Japanese skills...Assuming you're actually dedicated, you might as well get it over with...

I would not recommend starting RTK if you absolutely no prior experience with Japanese. RTK will be more effective if you do it after you have gotten at least some basic exposure to Japanese.

What do I mean by "some basic foundation"? Well, it doesn't have to be much. Something like an introductory course, or going through an introductory textbook by yourself, etc.

Quote:From what I can understand I'm supposed to purchase the RTK1 book, and study some kanji from there? Then after studying I'm supposed to put the kanji into a program like Anki and review them using that? Is that correct?

Correct. Instead of using Anki you can also use this website.

Quote:Also where do you go from there. Learning how to write the kanji based on a keyword doesn't necessarily mean you know the definition of the kanji (although the keyword can help with that) and you certainly wouldn't understand how to combine kanji. So your not really going to be able to do a whole lot of reading, and your still clueless on the whole listening/speaking aspect.

That is right, RTK does not teach you Japanese. Learning the Kanji is only ONE aspect of Japanese and RTKs goal is it to make memorzing the Kanji as easy as possible, nothing more.

What do you mean by "definition" of the Kanji? Heisig often tries to put the meaning of the Kanji in his keywords. Of course, that's not always possible and Heisigs definitions are not flawless but in general you will nonetheless get a good/general idea of each Kanjis meaning.

Yes, this does not teach you how to read Kanji, how to form compounds, or anything else. That's not the purpose of the book/method either. The sole purpose is to help you MEMORIZE the Kanji and their definitions.

Quote:So I don't really understand where this all takes me, and how it helps to me to understand the language. it seems like it could be an important step, but from there where am I supposed to go to really learn how to read it, nonetheless understanding it vocally. And I don't even know if I understand the method of studying RTK1 correctly.

Exactly, it is an important step. For most people, leaning Kanji is even the most time-consuming/difficult step in all of Japanese. That's why RTK tries to make it as easy as possible.

Knowing Kanji and their meanings will help you learn reading/writing in the following way:

When you see a new word after doing RTK you will say: Oh, I know the Kanji in this word　今 means "now", 夜 means "night" according to Heisig, so what does 今夜　mean? Tonight/This evening. More importantly however, since you already know the Kanji your brain will not easily forget the meaning of the compound 今夜. On the other hand, if you have no idea about Kanji and their meanings and you encounter 今夜 all you will see are some "weird" characters and the next time you encounter the same word you won't even remember you have seen it before. That's because your brain cannot make any connections. Therefore, knowing all the Kanji when/before learning compounds will help your retention immensely. In short, going through RTK might be boring, time-consuming and not really useful in the beginning, but when looked at over longer period of time it will speed up your learning rate greatly.

As for listening comprehension, there are other ways to get that. If you look around in the forums you will find a lot of threads about just that.

Quote:How do you go about typing in Japanese?

Go to Region&Language options in windows and add Japanese under Input Languages. If not already installed you might have to install "Support for East Asian Languages".

xquio Wrote:But I would disagree about not doing RTK when you have no Japanese skills...Assuming you're actually dedicated, you might as well get it over with...

Well, basically you are right, there is no disadvantage in doing RTK before anything else but something tells me it's nor right. Imagine the following scenario:

Your friend asks you how to study Japanese. You tell him to do RTK. Since your friend admires your Japanese skills so much he jumps right into RTK without doing any further research. He is so dedicated that he finishes it within a few weeks and can now read/write the Kanji covered in RTK The problem is the following:
When doing RTK he had no idea what Kanji are (except for "some Japanese/Chinese characters") or how they are used. I think that somebody who had prior exposure to REAL Japanese knows how Kanji are being used and put together. He/She can understand the rather abstract concepts Kanji might represent and thus will get more out of RTK than somebody with no prior exposure. Why? The person with previous exposure will look at Kanji differently than the person with no exposure. Instead of memorizing the keyword he might understand that this specific Kanji might represents this "concept" and may be used under this and this circumstance. I think that subconsciously the person with prior exposure will "understand" something while the person with no exposure will be doing pure memorization.

Also, I think that spending weeks/months to memorize 2000 characters is not a very motivating start in learning any language I think it's much more motivating to actually being able to use the language for something rather quickly.

Well, arch (the original poster) didn't say whether he/she has any prior exposure to Japanese or not. Arch, if you haven't learned kana yet, that is certainly one place to start before RTK.

Japanese uses at least four different types of script: kanji, roman letters, hiragana, and katakana -- the last two collectively known as kana. Kanji are used for many nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. -- really, most vocabulary. Roman characters are used sparingly for some numbers and other occasional uses. Hiragana and katakana are the two Japanese "syllabaries," sort of like our alphabet but with each character representing a syllable. Hiragana help express grammar and some words not rendered in kanji. Katakana denote foreign words and other expressions that we might italicize in English. You need to know all four of these systems to read Japanese: kanji, hiragana, katakana, roman letters. Fortunately, all but kanji are pretty easy to learn. You could learn the basics of kana in a weekend.

To that end, Heisig actually has a book called "Remembering the Kana", which might be an easier place to begin than RTK. I didn't find it as helpful as RTK, but then I'd already learned the kana simply by using websites on learning kana.

Once you have some familiarity with kana, maybe spend a little time learning the basics of Japanese from a text like Genki or "Human Japanese," the latter being available as an iPhone app (but unfortunately relies rather heavily on roman letters instead of kana).

All that said, I guess I lean toward doing RTK sooner rather than later. I've tried to learn kanji for years, but without a systematic method of study, I would try just to remember them by their general shape -- and when characters can have 20 strokes or more, the general shape is awful easy to forget. Heisig instead offers a rigorous, systematic method for learning all general-use kanji in a surprisingly fun and quick way. It really gives one a big sense of accomplishment to be able to write and recognize a large number of Japanese characters. And it's fun. Anything that keeps you engaged in the language is a good thing, in my view.

Yes, Heisig's keywords are sometimes a bit odd, but for the most part they put you in the right ballpark, and from there it's a much easier task to add "meat" to a keyword. Yes, most words are compounds of more than one kanji, but single kanji do have their own independent meanings too, and in any case learning compounds is a lot easier if you know a core meaning of each component kanji. And yes, Heisig won't teach you how to pronounce any of the kanji or compounds. But as he says, pronunciation is far less rational than the writing system, so why not learn the easier thing first? It simplifies the problem of pronunciation by removing one variable -- the obstacle of recognizing what is to be pronounced.

Finally, I personally have just used this website's SRS (Reviewing the Kanji) so far, and I've been very happy with it. Anki may well be more efficient, but the website gets you going easily, and it has the added advantage of providing other people's mnemonics (stories). I'll probably move to Anki once I'm done with RTK and ready for the next step.

I used it to memorize how to write characters and to see how they're organized.

I finished all 2042, continued for about a month, then dropped it and moved straight to KO2001.

One thing that helps is that when you do KO2001 sentences, you know how to write all the characters, so when a compound comes up you don't have to keep flipping back and forth between kanji to know how to write the entire compound. (I write things down when I get them incorrect.)

I don't really care for the keyword. It CAN help but most of the time, I don't care for it.

Knowing how the kanji is organized is a big help. I finished RTK1 when I was halfway through Japanese 2 at my community college and writing the characters (and remembering them) was no sweat. Asking my classmates though, they were struggling because they didn't really know what to memorize and had crazy ways of remembering things without any understanding of how the kanji all came together... memorizing 日 and 時 and 持 and treating them all differently instead of noticing the similarities, etc.

I think I'm starting to see it. Thanks for all the responses. This seems to be a really supportive community unlike other forums I've visited. I think I'll probably get the Kana down then move onto RTK.

That's already at least a couple months of time so maybe I shouldn't be trying to map out my entire path this very second. It seems like the possibilities from that point become quite a bit larger on how you wanna go about learning the rest of the language.

Maybe I'll have a better idea of what to do after memorizing the Kana and the general use Kanji. Right now there's just so much it seems really easy to get overwhelmed.

Well thanks for the responses. I'm sure I'll be back here at some point in the future when I've completed the above tasks looking for more guidance from you more advanced people. =)

ThomasB Wrote:Well, basically you are right, there is no disadvantage in doing RTK before anything else but something tells me it's nor right. Imagine the following scenario:

Your friend asks you how to study Japanese. You tell him to do RTK. Since your friend admires your Japanese skills so much he jumps right into RTK without doing any further research. He is so dedicated that he finishes it within a few weeks and can now read/write the Kanji covered in RTK The problem is the following:
When doing RTK he had no idea what Kanji are (except for "some Japanese/Chinese characters") or how they are used. I think that somebody who had prior exposure to REAL Japanese knows how Kanji are being used and put together. He/She can understand the rather abstract concepts Kanji might represent and thus will get more out of RTK than somebody with no prior exposure. Why? The person with previous exposure will look at Kanji differently than the person with no exposure. Instead of memorizing the keyword he might understand that this specific Kanji might represents this "concept" and may be used under this and this circumstance. I think that subconsciously the person with prior exposure will "understand" something while the person with no exposure will be doing pure memorization.

Also, I think that spending weeks/months to memorize 2000 characters is not a very motivating start in learning any language I think it's much more motivating to actually being able to use the language for something rather quickly.

Well, you have a point, but you'd eventually develop that understanding later anyways so I don't see it as that big of a disadvantage.

Honestly, though, it's just something that comes down to personal preference. I jumped straight into RTK with absolutely no Japanese experience beyond the usual anime words. Three months later I know about the same amount of Japanese with a bit of grammar thrown in and I'm 3/4 of the way through RTK. I'm totally biased and have a need to justify doing this. =P

You're definitely right that it's discouraging, though. When I said dedicated, I really meant it. I swear sometimes the only reason I haven't ditched Japanese for German is because I already spent $30 on the damn book. But at the same time, what is motivating is having a path to fluency laid out and made tremendously easier(I hope...) with RTK. Or something like that.

kainzero Wrote:memorizing 日 and 時 and 持 and treating them all differently instead of noticing the similarities, etc.

Cut out everything else, and zero in on this. Learning Heisig / RTK, you get a utility belt that helps you program new kanji into your head. You could really even simplify RTK down to a primitive list, as some people have done, and once you memorize all the widely-used primitives you can make up your own method from there.

The central problem for most students going into Japanese / Chinese is that you're looking at a bunch of squiggles, and most people never get over seeing a bunch of squiggles. Any time they see a new kanji, it's just a bunch of shapes to be memorized as-is. And most students never learn anything but the most basic kanji at all anyway. After Heisig though, a 23-stroke character might just be a couple of flags with some decorations, something you can write with perfect stroke order instantly.

So a theoretical person who did all of Heisig but couldn't actually read Japanese might feel a bit frustrated. Until he sees a sign in Japanese and instantly knows it's a restaraunt (even if he doesn't know the pronunciation) while his friends in traditional classes are still fumbling with the kana and dictionaries and completely diregard the kanji because they don't ever intend to master them.

After RTK, the kana are a remedial class, and the actual language learning look infinitely less difficult because the hardest part- the kanji- are noe familiar friends. It sucks up front (actually it doesn't, it's compeltely fun compared to traditional classes and it never gets as bad as a traditional class on kanji), then it pays off later.