Hey forum,

i planned to finish up with the first volume of heisig due the next upcoming week (i'm at 1650 at the moment) and looking through all the guides and advices (thanks first of all, they seem to be well experimented and throughthought) a question came up to my mind which i think a lot of RTKers are asking themselves after finishing this book, which is a really good invention indeed.
What means to learn a language, in this case japanese? Learning the sentences by heart, or just getting the gist, how to say X, Y and Z? Which grammar points are presented by knowing an example sentence for example, or learning the grammar rules willingly and "plain stupidly"? I'm a bit irritated and do not want to waste a day after having finished with Heisig.. As already discussed the best approach seems to be to get a basic/elementar grammar excursion (Tae Kim.. I did this before i started with Heisig and read a few other books on grammar, so my grammar knowledge does not equal to zero) and afterwards doing SRS (with Anki prefer.) - core2k and then core6k.. How to combine the Anki work sensefully with a textbook (genki)? HOW to learn exactly? Compared to english i always learnt the vocabs by heart, word by word, Ger->Eng, Eng->Ger, both..

Awaiting your helpful answers, and thank you a lot in advance folks, you have been always so useful

In terms of language learning it can mean many things but I say you learned something when you understand or recognize a word or pattern.

I'd say you learn when you can understand/read something that you couldn't before. I'd say you'd master it when you can read/understand it from both text/audio and be able to write/speak it with ease.

Honestly, the phrase "to learn a language" is vague and silly; that's probably why it gives people so much trouble.

Language is not on the same scale as learning to drive, or learning the lyrics to a song. The vast amount of information: spelling, pronunciation, grammar, synonyms, slang, all of it is on an unthinkable scale. I honestly don't believe anyone can know all of a language, even their first language. Do I know all the English words that have ever existed? Could I ever?

I think I remember being told that there are actually about 50,000 kanji, though obviously most of them are never used by most people. Do I have to know all of them to have 'learned' Japanese? Of course not. Because that's impossible.

Really, you're always going to be learning new things in Japanese. We've all got our different ideas of where we want to me. For me, for example, I'm going to say I've 'learned' Japanese when I can pick up a videogame or book at random and understand it the same way a Japanese person would.


Uh...of course, if you just mean what it means to learn the individual pieces of information...I guess I'd say you've learned it when it feels as natural as stuff in your language. ^_^;;;

Especially with me i recognised at the beginning of my journey (plain method using a textbook, learning grammar and vocabularies, a few kanjis like taberu/akeru etc.) that i have hellish a lot problems getting the readings into my head (of kanjis, therefore vocabulary in fact). Therefore i started with Heisig, splitting the meaning and the readings of each kanji into two Volumes, namely one and two (since three is not available in my mother tongue (yet)). But now, being at 1650 approximately i recognise that i forgot a lot of kanjis from prior Chapters (12, 16, 25 f.e.)! I mean, how can i revise so much, not to forget them, thousands of kanjis! I use KanjiGym Light btw, because it contains german keywords (has no sense for me starting with the english ones, hence this nice alternative to Anki, which i will prolly use for vocab drilling with KANJIDAMAGE).

Therefore i asked how you define the word "to learn".. Most of us out of Japan cannot even practise japanese actively as we are mostly not surrounded by japanese folks. I'm just afraid with Heisig now, because i recognise i forget more and more and that it's sometimes really difficult creating an obvious story+picture in my mind for some words he uses. Help!~

There is this sort of fear i have, that after i finish up with heisig and go on with japanese, i will forget a lot of heisig's kanjis (unjyouyou not to mention), which will appear (the difficult ones) later in grammar/vocabulary, which i need to learn from zero onwards.. i don't want heisig to waste my time now and i want it to be useful later on, too. How to keep this balance, but though going on somehow?

Ah...
No problem then, grammar issues are with ひらがな　mostly (particles and verb flexions).
And you'll probably won't forget them, Heisig has the highest recognition rate I've ever seen.
The logical answer would be to start getting exposure through native material as quick as possible, so you have to finish Heisig as fast as you can.

Tori-kun Wrote:Therefore i asked how you define the word "to learn".. Most of us out of Japan cannot even practise japanese actively as we are mostly not surrounded by japanese folks.

And there's Skype and Lang8 for that...

EDIT: And even if you forget the keyword, you won't forget the kanji (because once you start breaking them down in primitives, you get a feeling of familiarity from the operation), and you'll forget the keyword eventually as you learn vocab. So don't worry.

Also, RTK kanji are something like 95%? frequent, so it will be really difficult to forget them once you're deep into native material.

EratiK Wrote:EDIT: And even if you forget the keyword, you won't forget the kanji (because once you start breaking them down in primitives, you get a feeling of familiarity from the operation), and you'll forget the keyword eventually as you learn vocab.

Bluff. I did RTK a couple of years ago and there are definitely lots of kanji I've forgotten. The kanji I know how to read are the ones I know as parts of vocabulary I know, and the (declining, small) set I can write without looking them up are the set that I've written often enough to remember. RTK turned out (for me) to be almost useless for practical purposes of learning Japanese as far as I could tell...

Okay, I fold.
But even when seeing them, you couldn't tell you had already learned them?
And hasn't RTK helped you to learn vocab through understanding compounds?
Using Japanese Grammar books? and for reading (a huge part of my way of learning Japanese)? Etc.

EratiK Wrote:Okay, I fold.
But even when seeing them, you couldn't tell you had already learned them?
And hasn't RTK helped you to learn vocab through understanding compounds?

Ah, well, I already had a general idea of the radical/component system before I started, I wasn't approaching RTK as the first thing in studying Japanese. My major problem was that when I'm reading (for instance) and see a compound I'm a bit unsure of then what I'm likely to think of is (a) a plausible guess at the reading (b) perhaps some other word with that kanji or a similar one © maybe some vague field of meaning. What I definitely never think of is the Heisig keyword. Alternatively, if I want to write something I've generally started with a word in Japanese, and I don't know the keywords for any of those either. So I ended up with a party trick of being able to go from 2000 English keywords to kanji, but since I'm never in a position where I start with a keyword, it's rather useless (and it's atrophied for lack of practice since).

I think for it to be useful I'd want to redo it with Japanese keywords and with a followup of flashcards going from reading+meaning to kanji (ie training writing rather than reading). But I don't actually do anywhere near enough writing to care to put the time in.

pm215 Wrote:My major problem was that when I'm reading (for instance) and see a compound I'm a bit unsure of then what I'm likely to think of is (a) a plausible guess at the reading (b) perhaps some other word with that kanji or a similar one © maybe some vague field of meaning. What I definitely never think of is the Heisig keyword.

But you can only do these once you're at an intermediate stage. Heisig is aimed at beginners. You use the keyword to help you remember the readings and the words containing that kanji...

@pm215: fair enough.
I still think Heisig helped you on recognition somehow. But it's not that practical in your case, I agree...

I suppose you are in a way right, eratik.. I wrote about 80 sheets of paper fully with kanji, there is no white space, just kanjis in black with a mechanical pencil and only god knows how many mines i used up so far already. Generally speaking I'm writing kanjis a lot, as i'm interested in calligraphy (kaisho/sosho), too, which is helpful then.
I guess i will write a lot by hand in japanese in future, when i'm able to (grammar/vocabs), so Heisig will turn out to be useful. It's just the worry of forgetting things/wasting time now with Heisig.

@Eratik: Would you recommend using the second volume? I bought it (bundle with the first one) and it's lieing here on my desk, awaiting to be learnt, too.. The system seems to be systematic and structred again, whereas you learn strange word compounds first (not basic vocabs, you see)

There's a lot of topics about RTK2 (come on, look them up!), and its use is rather controversial on this forum. Since you bought it, you might as well use it, especially the chapter called "pure groups", everybody agrees on that being useful.
But you doesn't seem to want to lose a lot of time, so maybe RTK2 isn't really for you. You should ebay it quickly after that (try to keep it new).

I see.. I had a few brief looks into it and it seems the section "pure groups" is really indeed and clarifying.. about the rest i'm not too sure (quite a lot RtK1 effort would be simply lost, not learning everything).

On the other hand the Kun-Yomi part is quite.. sucky XP Thanks for answering EratiK.