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Hi all,
This is my first post on this forum but I've been toying around with RTK for years. One thing that keeps holding me back is not knowing how I should memorize the primitive meanings for each kanji. In my past attempts at RTK, I've always made a story JUST for the keyword and then simply listed possible primitive meanings at the bottom of each card. I've come to realize that this method does not work because it is so crucial to remember the primitive meaning when forming new stories for new kanji. How does everyone else deal with this? I notice that most of the stories, or at least the early ones that I've looked at, only include the keyword meaning in their story. But every now and then there are stories listed, such as the one for 月 by Thaorius "Once a MONTH, when the moon is full, the warewolves hunt for fleshy part[!s] of the [!human] body."
In the opening part of lesson 2, Heisig says, "...you should learn both the keyword and the primitive meaning of new kanji as they appear". However, primitives continue to be be, for the most part, excluded from his example stories.
long story short: do you include primitive and keyword meaning for single kanji in your story for the kanji? how well does this work for you? do you get confused remembering which is the keyword meaning and which is the primitive.
I'd love to hear people's opinions on this! Apologies if this has been asked before. I searched the archives but couldn't quite find any post that covered it.
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Hmm...I think if you use the primitive meanings of a kanji in your stories, only using that meaning which best fits the story, then it would reinforce automatically the primitve meanings of that particular kanji, provided you use an SRS. The one kanji you brought up as an example is the worst example of all, because it's quite rare, in terms of the number of primitive meanings (further on: pm) assigned to a kanji. In other words, there are very few kanji which have more than on pm in the book, later on. Anyway, I just incorporated the meaning (when it was too unrelated to the keyword) into the story, but I don't think it's neccessary, it's not that much which cannot be learned through rote memorization....I think.
Edited: 2010-07-18, 1:31 pm
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I have been confused a couple of times by instances like that, but examples as egregious as moon/flesh are rare. I don't think you'll encounter this problem often enough for it to matter.
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@mafried. You're right. However, I've only seen 月 like 2 times in kanji when it clearly looked like 肉. Also, since Heisig didn't make the distinction I didn't bother. I figured, that it's not like anyone except me will know/care as long as I know the kanji. However, if had to do it again, I would consider making the distinction.
For some radical/primitive that appear in different locations, I use different keywords. Imagine trying to remember which kanji is which 部vs陪 using the same primitives.
Edited: 2010-07-19, 12:22 am
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@oregum Try contrasting 胃 and 胃 in a Chinese font, to name two from early on in RTK1. But like I said, that difference only shows up in the Japanese fonts for very rare, old-form kanji. Otherwise the distinction only matters for calligraphy or traditional Chinese, which is why I said I was being pedantic. (For those that don't know, the 肉-derived 'flesh' kanji looks like 月, but with the two horizontal strokes replace with a right stroke and a left stroke, like the 'drop's in the Japanese kanji 均).
I second using different meanings for primitives that can arbitrarily show up in different locations (I do this for 阝, as well as 一 among others), and putting that location in the story for the handful of exceptions to primitives that generally show up in one location only. For everything else though I generally try to stick to one meaning per primitive.
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I completely agree with you. However, when I was first doing RtK, Heisig didn't make the distinction and didn't bother looking up the etymology of each kanji with the 月/肉 radical to check which is which.
There was a thread on this topic when I began RtK (2 years ago ???). In the end I decided it was too much of a hassle and combined flesh/moon/month/meat into one.
Edited: 2010-07-19, 12:36 am
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@OP, I may be wrong, but you seem a bit confused about the Heisig system, so here's an overview:
Kanji are made of strokes. To learn them you could memorize the stroke pattern for each and every kanji. But that will take a long time and there is an easier way as follows:
Notice that certain blocks of strokes appear in many different kanji, e.g. 古, 中, 只 and 右 all contain 口; and 左, 貢, 項 all contain 工, etc.
So, to make life easier, give each of those blocks a name and then the kanji can be remembered as combinations of the blocks. (Heisig calls the blocks "primitives").
Also, give each kanji a name in English and we can now remember any kanji as:
Name = block A + block B + block C (the number of blocks varies)
(Keyword = primitive A + primitive B + primitive C (in Heisig terms))
e.g. 吐 = 口 + 土
spit = mouth + soil
To remember a kanji you try to make a vivid image in your mind that contains the all the parts (keyword & primitives) and write it down (the story). E.g. You get some soil in your mouth, Yeuk!, spit it out quick.
But how do you initially remember the simple building blocks (primitives) on which all the characters are based? Well, mostly pictographically, i.e. what does the simple block look like?
E.g. 口 looks a bit like a mouth.
乙 looks a bit like a fishhook.
目 looks a bit like an eye.
You might be thinking, "目 doesn't really look that much like an eye, so it will be easy to forget". In fact you'll see most of these same primitives again and again in different kanji, and this helps to cement them in your memory.
Note that Heisig made up some of the primitive names, but many were taken from Japanese.
Also note that Heisig sometimes gives more than one name to an individual primitive (e.g. 月 = "moon" or "month"). There are two main reasons for this: 1. That primitive also has those multiple names in Japanese; OR 2. Some of the kanji can be remembered much more easily by using an alternative name for that primitive.
Edited: 2010-07-19, 1:21 am
