I'm aware that the radical for person is in *a lot* of kanji, and when I crammed for 3kyu last year, I used the mental image of a manequin. This was fine, but I want to find out if anyone has come up with some really great images that make this really easy to remember.

An example is I used batman to mean "anti" no. 722 (the classic anti-hero), and I have never had a problem with any of those kanji because it's such a distinctive image to remember.

Help is appreciated, I should reach that kanji this week.

I had huge sucess with Zorro. But since you already have a superhero with a black cape...

[ファブリス]

Mr. T, foo!

Have you looked at the shared stories? You'll find some ideas in there.

I suggest a highly iconic character, as well as a flexible character that you can fit into various roles for your stories.

Heisig's adivce didn't work for me, I didn't like the idea of mixing fabrications of my mind with real people from my friends or family. In fact I rarely used any living person I know of personally into my stories. But movie stars and such are good because through the TV or movies they become like caricatures.

Going by the stories on the site, I know a lot of people have used Mr T from the A-Team. I guess this is because in it's most common form it looks like a capital T.

Personally I used a friend from Uni. He's a cool guy, and known for doing some crazy things, so it's easy to picture him in any situation.

I saw Mr. T, but i'm a bit reluctant to use him because he is so flat as a character (in that he has no character). I'm worried about using one person for so many kanji. For example, for the feelings/heart radical, I used star wars and it allowed me to use any part of the star wars universe for the kanji, so I got a lot of flexibility.

I'll have a think about it over night (only a few kanji left before I get to it now).

I chose Ned Flanders as my person. As well as providing a unique and vivid image, it also allowed me draw on many classic episodes of The Simpsons to create stories.
The first Ned Flanders kanji that came up, was "assistant". Made up of Ned and "left", it took about 2 seconds to have an image of Ned Flanders working as an assistant in his left-handed store. It was a breeze from then on.

[ファブリス]

craigvanaman Wrote:I saw Mr. T, but i'm a bit reluctant to use him because he is so flat as a character (in that he has no character). I'm worried about using one person for so many kanji.

Use a character that sparks your imagination. If Mr.T. doesn't make you smile or enjoy creating stories with it, then definitely don't use it.

Do not worry about using the same person for many stories. It's the link between the primitives; that is the story; which ties up to the keyword and meaning and which is the memorable part. I can't think of many kanji which I remembered based purely on the primitive by itself.

There are other primitives which appeared just as much as "person", at least that's my impression; I haven't counted; but there are tons of *wheat* and *fingers* as well, to name a few. I didn't encounter any difficulty by using "Shrek the ogre" in nearly all my *finger* stories. Did you have a problem with the many *trees* ?

You can interchange various characters from the same universe/theme such as Star Wars or the Simpsons family, whenever the *person* primitive is present. But I would personally recommend to stick to one character as it may help you backtrack from kanji to story to keyword, when you do the recall the other way around. That's because you won't have to search your memory for possible stories involving each of the possible characters you chose for that same primitive. As you practice more kanji > keyword recall you'll get a feel for what stories worked well and which didn't.

@ファブリス: That is a really good point about back tracking from kanji to story and the problems that will arise with multiple characters, I never thought of that.
I think I like Ned Flanders as a character, that seems pretty good to me (thanks naniwa).

Cheers guys

I guess I'm the odd one out, I just use 'person'. I find it easier to use general meanings in most cases, and they're still memorable. So I end up changing the meanings of the primitives to either something more accurate or something that works better for me. Takes me about 2 seconds to make a story for most new characters and my short term memory(it hasn't been long enough for long term) for them is great.

I find that really amazing. How do you keep straight of which kanji actually use the person primative and which just have a person in the story because someone has to be there to do or act? My story for 'income' has someone rejoicing because of their sudden increase in income. I never add person by accident because it's clearly not my person character (zorro) doing the rejoicing. Other elements that I didn't personalize tend to creep into my stories where they don't belong and then I write some really strange complicated (incorrect) kanji.

I don't follow the Heisig method exactly, I don't study from keyword to kanji anymore...so I have a stronger visualization of the characters.
As for telling whether a person is or isn't in the kanji...take 休 for example, a (super simple) story would be ' a person resting under a tree' verses 'resting under a tree'. Or 例
'a person collapses when they arrive at their limit'. I guess it doesn't work for everyone, which is why people use more distinct meanings or stories, but my brain rebels at the thought of using Zorro or Shrek in a kanji. I learned this kanji yesterday 誇, I remember it as 'boasting about snaring the big one'. 言 is included by default because you talk when you boast. I'm learning 50-100 kanji a day easily now, and hopefully I'll remember them. I'll be finishing in a few days now ~yay~

yukamina Wrote:I don't study from keyword to kanji anymore...

That's a huge difference though... In your case adding a person by accident in your story just can't happen, since you see it immediately from the kanji.

[I think nearly everyone does keyword -> kanji, the point being that this allows you to write the kanji from scratch, and not just read it. Very useful when learning vocab.]

I did use the keyword to kanji method before, up to around 1600 kanji. But I went way too long without studying anything and decided to use Slime Forest Adventure/Kanji/whatever(which unfortunately uses the same words for several different kanji) to make things easier... I can still write kanji from scratch, since it's easy to mix up kanji if you don't include all the components in the mnemonic.

I started off with Spongebob, but afterwards I saw some really good stories for Mr. T so I use both.

I use Captain Picard (of the USS Enterprise), and he has given me no trouble. Of course, to use him you will have to have watched some critical mass of ST:TnG.

akrodha Wrote:I started off with Spongebob, but afterwards I saw some really good stories for Mr. T so I use both.

Similarly, I started off with Mr. T, but picked up some Chuck Norris stories along the way.

Instead of fucusing on a particular man, I use the word "detective" because it's fast to create funny/curious/odd stories and this word is not sticky to the peculiarities of a well known personage.
The funny thing is that in my stories "person/people" are not keyword as only "detective" sound recalls the proper primitive in my mind. I'm thinking to do the same thing with another problematic primitive, the one for thread, which isn't much versatile....
I studied unit 27 about three times faster than unit 36...