I'm a day or two away from finish RTK 1 (I'm on 1977) and I'm planning on doing the RTK1 Supplement next. In the introduction to the supplement Heisig made a comment about us not needing to learn the old forms because they will soon become obsolete. However, I've seen some debate over this on forums. Is this true? And furthermore, has Heisig made any other assumptions like that and not put certain forms in RTK 1?

Old forms are unlikely to present a problem. Just deal with them as you meet them.

I'm not sure what he means by "soon" being obsolete; it seems to me that the old forms have already reached the point where if you need to know them, you're still going to need to know them in 10 or 20 years, but if you don't, that's not going to change.

If you want to read any pre-war literature, you're likely to encounter the old forms of kanji; depending on the edition you get, they may well have furigana. I wouldn't bother to learn them at this point, certainly.

What's the "RTK1 Supplement"? Google isn't informative...

RTK 1 Supplement for Newly Approved General-Use Kanji24 June 2010
From the publisher's page:

In April 2010 the Japanese Ministry approved the addition of 196 characters to the "general-use" kanji list. 39 of these are already included in Remembering the Kanji I. The remaining 157 have been prepared as a special Supplement that may be downloaded here (PDF, 27 pages, 492KB) (22 June 2010 update). They will all be integrated into a new edition of the book currently in preparation.

Thanks to member JimmySeal for the heads up. See RTK 1 Supplement topic on the forums.



- It's on the website's main page

Thanks guys

The forum thread you linked to probably answers your question. (That it's the first google result made me think pm215's question might not have been serious...) :-)

You might want to check out this other thread as well - particularly Jarvik7's links to wikipedia articles on the various kanji forms. (Keep in mind that official Joyo forms and available official computer forms are different ideas. Also, for non-joyo kanji, different groups have been using different forms, hence the mix of new and old.)

No, I searched for '"RTK1 supplement"' and didn't get anything useful, because that thread had a space between 'RTK' and '1' :-)

oh..haha...I had deleted my earlier reply to you b/c I thought perhaps it wasn't a real question. (edit: Apologies, it didn't really seem like your style, but the Google result and "..." made me second guess it.)

Just to echo others, learning the traditional characters should be pretty far down on the to-do listen of learners. Ones that are still commonly used such as 摑む instead of 掴む (國 instead of 国 for that matter) are certainly worth knowing, but the majority you'll never come across except in proper nouns (family and place names, etc) which you can learn on a case-by-case basis as you encounter them. The publications now adays of pre-war literature will either just be published with simplified characters, or in the case of wanting to keep style or specific character choices by the author intact, with furigana over them. Generally the simplified characters will look similar enough to the traditional that you'll be able to figure out it out from context (来る and 來る look very similar, for example)

There aren't all that many traditional characters though, so if you do decide to eventually learn them then it won't be too much of an issue.

Aijin Wrote:Just to echo others, learning the traditional characters should be pretty far down on the to-do listen of learners. Ones that are still commonly used such as 摑む instead of 掴む (國 instead of 国 for that matter) are certainly worth knowing, but the majority you'll never come across except in proper nouns (family and place names, etc) which you can learn on a case-by-case basis as you encounter them. The publications now adays of pre-war literature will either just be published with simplified characters, or in the case of wanting to keep style or specific character choices by the author intact, with furigana over them. Generally the simplified characters will look similar enough to the traditional that you'll be able to figure out it out from context (来る and 來る look very similar, for example)

There aren't all that many traditional characters though, so if you do decide to eventually learn them then it won't be too much of an issue.

I've always wondered how to learn names.i mean is there any other way expect on a encounter-base thing to learn them fast/effectively?

One thing I've noticed is that, the more kanji I learn via names/on-yo mi,kun-yomi,etc. Is that, names are becoming easier to guess the right readings.

Traditional characters should be learned if your interested in learning Chinese, which i will do but after japanese

Aijin Wrote:learning the traditional characters should be pretty far down on the to-do listen

Aha. Native mistake. You've been in America for too long.

I'm allowed to make typos once in a while! Usually I spot them after I post...thus why so many of my posts are marked as being edited

ta12121 Wrote:I've always wondered how to learn names.i mean is there any other way expect on a encounter-base thing to learn them fast/effectively?

One thing I've noticed is that, the more kanji I learn via names/on-yo mi,kun-yomi,etc. Is that, names are becoming easier to guess the right readings.

Traditional characters should be learned if your interested in learning Chinese, which i will do but after japanese

There's not really any methodical way for learning how to read proper nouns except to learn them on a case by case basis. But when you think about it, that's really not so bad, as it's the same issue in English. Any English speaker can spell and read common names such as "James" "Bob" "Mary" or popular proper nouns because of how frequently they pop up in the language, while when they encounter rare or proper nouns hey are often lost as to the pronunciation/spelling because it's not something that's a part of their daily life.

Same issue with Japanese: common names and places are easy to recognize because you'll encounter those names among your friends, peers, in stories, TV, etc. The uncommon ones just have to be learned when they creep up.

Aijin Wrote:Same issue with Japanese: common names and places are easy to recognize because you'll encounter those names among your friends, peers, in stories, TV, etc. The uncommon ones just have to be learned when they creep up.

I agree with ya. Being a native English speaker and having lived in the US my whole life (23 years), there's TONS of names I can't read properly. The common names are easy enough, but the rare names are sure to throw you off. Even worse because in English there's 50 different ways to possibly pronounce a single name >_>

ahh,basically just learn them as they pop up(the rare ones).
I was asking if there is another method because My goal(ultimate goal for reading) is to be able to read novels like there nothing(ranging from literature,post-war,history,medical,etc). And knowing names is one part of it that's pretty big i think.

Yeah, whenever people complain about Japanese names I always scoff and complain about English ones right back at them all the different languages used for last names, and then the anglified pronunciations on top of that...boggles my mind.

Reading Japanese names in literature is infinitely easier than in English literature too in my opinion. With Japanese, if the reader cannot be assumed to be able to read the name, then furigana will be provided at least the first time in the publication. There's no ambiguity. In English, however, readers often are forced to guess and come up with their own way to pronounce names in their head. This is especially seen in fantasy and genres with more fantastic/foreign names, where if you take 10 readers they'll give you 10 different pronunciations.

Aijin Wrote:Yeah, whenever people complain about Japanese names I always scoff and complain about English ones right back at them all the different languages used for last names, and then the anglified pronunciations on top of that...boggles my mind.

Reading Japanese names in literature is infinitely easier than in English literature too in my opinion. With Japanese, if the reader cannot be assumed to be able to read the name, then furigana will be provided at least the first time in the publication. There's no ambiguity. In English, however, readers often are forced to guess and come up with their own way to pronounce names in their head. This is especially seen in fantasy and genres with more fantastic/foreign names, where if you take 10 readers they'll give you 10 different pronunciations.

Very true, I've noticed that they do provide furigana readings for names if it's a rare one, but in english that's never the case. For the kanji, i'm pretty aiming for 4000+.I know it seems like a lot but i've been doing research on "how much kanji do you really need to know?" So far i know almost all 常用漢字.But this still isn't enough. They say 3000 is a solid number but if you want to breeze through books with ease and such. Then 4000+ is the way to go for 99.9999999%(The percentage here is exaggerated lol the 9s part)

Here is where i found it
http://blog.anokorok.com/2009/11/how-man...e-to-know/

I think that if you read that blog post and come away thinking "I need to learn 4000 kanji to breeze through books" then you've completely misread it. The post says that (based on the 1300 books analysed) then the set of kanji which occur on average once per book or more is only 1900 or so kanji. A quick bit of maths suggests that if you know just those then you'll encounter a kanji you don't know maybe twice in an entire novel. This is scarcely an obstacle huge enough to prevent you breezing through it...

I know a concrete goal like 3000 or 4000 kanji sounds like a good idea but if you're actually spending time to achieve it rather than learning "normal" Japanese, I think you're doing it wrong.
I couldn't care less if I know 3000, 40000 or 200 kanji as long as I can comfortably read stuff (books, papers, internet). Premade lists (kanji, vocab or sentences) are good in the beginning to get yourself going but after that its exposure thats supposed to push you further, not mindless cramming of things you might never ever use/encounter.

Definitely true. Ta, I know you are always saying that you want to be at the level of an educated native at your own age level -- college, right? I haven't read the article you posted yet, but I highly doubt that a normal person would know 4000+ kanji, there's simply no need for it. As for a number, I don't really know what to tell you, but after RtK3, just learn them as they come up. At that point they're probably so rare that the word you see it in is probably the only word you will see it in.

Don't tell me that you've never gone through an english book "like nothing" and didn't come across a word that you didn't know, and didn't bother to know. It's the same in Japanese. Spending your time learning arguably 2000+ kanji that aren't necessary won't put you on that level.

I know you do other stuff too, so I miht not be saying anything useful, but seriously, knowing that much kanji is just...silly

Asriel Wrote:Definitely true. Ta, I know you are always saying that you want to be at the level of an educated native at your own age level -- college, right? I haven't read the article you posted yet, but I highly doubt that a normal person would know 4000+ kanji, there's simply no need for it. As for a number, I don't really know what to tell you, but after RtK3, just learn them as they come up. At that point they're probably so rare that the word you see it in is probably the only word you will see it in.

Don't tell me that you've never gone through an english book "like nothing" and didn't come across a word that you didn't know, and didn't bother to know. It's the same in Japanese. Spending your time learning arguably 2000+ kanji that aren't necessary won't put you on that level.

I know you do other stuff too, so I miht not be saying anything useful, but seriously, knowing that much kanji is just...silly

True, i wouldn't say the same thing as in english as I don't know a lot of words that come up in a novel. A good portion of the time I can figure it out from context.
I am doing other stuff as well, but maybe this is a sign I should focus heavily on speaking/writing now since my reading/understanding are good enough already(almost 1 year now). As for the kanji, majority say that 3000 kanji is enough. Obviously my goal isn't to learn all these straight, I do read stuff I like,immersion,write,srs,etc but I guess since it's just a new language, my mind is stuck saying "I want to excel". But now that I see it. You don't really need to know a lot to consider yourself "fluent in reading"

thurd Wrote:I know a concrete goal like 3000 or 4000 kanji sounds like a good idea but if you're actually spending time to achieve it rather than learning "normal" Japanese, I think you're doing it wrong.
I couldn't care less if I know 3000, 40000 or 200 kanji as long as I can comfortably read stuff (books, papers, internet). Premade lists (kanji, vocab or sentences) are good in the beginning to get yourself going but after that its exposure thats supposed to push you further, not mindless cramming of things you might never ever use/encounter.

I do get a lot of immersion via reading/listening in general. True I've been noticing now that, the more I srs the less I need it. Immersion is starting to become enough just by itself to increase my level. I don't think i'll stop adding new vocab into my srs deck but I will go at a slower pace eventually, really slow like 20 a day

Yeah, when you get into numbers that high the kanji are so rarely used as to be only in a few words, so that knowing the kanji itself isn't really significant so much as knowing the actual words. And remember that novels and other reading materials are generally published with the intent of being accessible to as wide of an audience as possible, so that words written in kanji that most people would only recognize the hiragana for, will just have furigana over it, making knowing the obscure kanji not too useful. Raw numbers can help to motivate oneself by tracking progress and being able to look back and see how truly far one has come, but there's not too much of a practical application for it.

I guess this comes down to just learning on a see to see basis and learning more words/kanji slowly. I know that once you reach a certain level, the kanji that one is learning/words is just becoming more rare/less practical to real-life.

This makes me think about how much kanji/vocab one would need to know to read/speak fluently. It isn't that high, if one knows 10,000 words in an active-sense/understand, one could speak pretty fluidly/fluently.I assume the same applies with reading, Jouyou kanji is enough for reading, the rest outside of that(expect names) are just rare kanji/vocab.
This seriously get's me thinking that getting towards fluency in japanese isn't as hard as I thought it would be(initially). It really just comes down to putting in the time, nothing more