a little background: I am currently in the middle of my second semester of Japanese study. We have been using Genki and are just finishing up lesson 9. Last semester, I used Heisig's method to learn the katakana (I had already learned the hiragana in class) in about 4 hours. The speed at which I was able to learn the katakana compared to others in my class totally convinced me of the value of this method.

I have been putting off starting on RTK mostly out of intimidation, but after finding this website and poking around the forums I got totally inspired. So, here I am 73 kanji later and totally loving it. I do have some questions though:

1. I find that I'm still a little bit fuzzy as to the distinction between what Heisig refers to as a story and "abstract grammatical conventions" (frame 47) and "a pictograph" (frame 16). Specifically I'm not quite sure why the tombstone for old is a pictograph while the suns in prosperous or bones in spine or the eye looking at a sun in risk etc. are not. Am I over-analyzing (I tend to do that) or am I just unclear on what Heisig means by "imaginative memory" and what constitutes a good story?

2. Should I anticipate any problems with learning kanji in the traditional way with Genki in class as well as using RTK outside the classroom? Should I be focusing on just one or the other?

3. Heisig says 20-25 characters is a good amount to learn in a couple hours. I find that I'm going much faster than that. I read the keyword and the story, then spend a minute solidifying the story and finally write the kanji. Am I shooting myself in the foot by moving too fast? I don't see what else I can do in terms of learning each kanji. As I get farther along will things start moving slower? I know moving too fast is a weird concern to have, but at the rate I'm going I will be "done" in about 3 months. Again, am I just worrying over nothing?

4. I'm using an older copy of the book - I believe its the 3rd edition. I have read that there are some mistakes in the book (which is to be expected). I don't mind minor mistakes but some people are saying there are incorrect keywords and the like. Is there a list of these I can review to prevent learning something wrong and then having to go through the trouble of unlearning it? Is it worth getting a newer version of the book to avoid some of these mistakes?

5. Frame 73: The kanji in the book and the kanji in jisho.org and on this website are not the same. In fact, they are very different and yet the stories on the website make references to eyes when according to the website and jisho.org the primitive is not eye but a similar one with an extra stroke. I'm inclined to believe jisho.org and the website, but why are the stories making reference to the incorrect kanji in the book. Is this an error of the 3rd edition? I have to say, this one issue is a little discouraging - am I going to have to be on the lookout for stuff like this?

Sorry for the deluge of questions, but I'm really motivated and don't want my studying to stall or go to waste and I know you guys and gals could help me out.

Thanks!!

1. You're worrying too much.

2. You might have to learn some characters out of sequence for a while. That wasn't much of a problem for me.

3. I went much more quickly than that after a while, too. As long as your reviews are working, the speed is fine.

4. I don't know where the errata are.

5. I don't have my book handy. Is this the character: 直? I have the primitives + on top, eye below it, and about half-encased with a square, the left and bottom sides.

Welcome to the RTK world.

If your within I think Part I, you can just grab the free sample PDF of I think the latest edition.

As far as errata goes, some changes have been made to the keywords, which I believe is all reflected on this site, I think a lot of the errata is the stroke orders and things like that. You could always grab a greasemonkey script to change the website font to something like the KanjiStrokeOrder font. Also a lot of people will point out incorrect stroke order in their story boxes.

Also, I'll add this, give RTK Lite a look to make sure you wouldn't rather do that instead. It focuses on just about all the primitives and goes through the most common Kanji, you can get to native content a lot faster while still knowing how to break a kanji apart.

Hey.
Welcome.

1. A pictograph is, in Heisig, a kanji that depicts something literaly, whose symbolic layer is the thinnest if you like. For example, the kanji for "leather" is a pictograph, of a cow skin to be tanned. Here, on frame 16, and for a lot of simple kanji, it's easier to learn them as a whole (picture of something), rather than to disassemble them to make a story.
On frame 47, he refers to the point, which like the coma and the question mark, are grammatical conventions (that signify something nearly extralinguistic). Here, he is talking about the point in "Dr.". By that, he means it's usually not a good idea to perceive stroke elements (here the drop) in our own system (here seeing a point instead of a drop), because the back and forth will be confusing later on when a lot of kanji will involve this specific primitive. However, he says here it's relevant. I wouldn't know, I used a different story (in fact I used the etymology which means "spread", but it's a question of style, as you will see, not all will fit your mind).

2. You should be focusing on Heisig. If you're not tested on kanji, ignore genki completely, if not, learn the genki list in priority the Heisig way.

3. Keep going fast, the fisrt 1000 usually are. If you stick to your daily reviews and are above 66% retention, no problem.

4. Don't worry, and check every kanji on the RevTK studying part. A lot of users already mentionned the errors.

5. Not sure what you mean, always use RevTK as your reference. Straightaway is indeed needle, eye, straightened hook.

Good luck.

Thanks for the quick replies!

bertoni Wrote:1. You're worrying too much.

Yup, I had the feeling that might be the case. It helps to hear it from someone else though (<-- not being sarcastic, sometimes its hard to tell online). Guess I better just get on with it, huh?

bertoni Wrote:5. I don't have my book handy. Is this the character: 直? I have the primitives + on top, eye below it, and about half-encased with a square, the left and bottom sides.

I think its the font I have. I see the primitive for needle, eye + an extra horizontal stroke on the inside, and the primitive for floor ([kana]ichi[/kana]) touching underneath it all.

Daichi Wrote:You could always grab a greasemonkey script to change the website font to something like the KanjiStrokeOrder font.

I think I'm going to end up doing that or just changing the font system wide if possible. Seems like whatever font I have now might be a little wonky (could be an Ubuntu thing...)

Thanks for the heads up on RTK Lite, sounds like it might be just the thing for me.

EratiK Wrote:1. A pictograph is, in Heisig, a kanji that depicts something literaly, whose symbolic layer is the thinnest if you like. For example, the kanji for "leather" is a pictograph, of a cow skin to be tanned. Here, on frame 16, and for a lot of simple kanji, it's easier to learn them as a whole (picture of something), rather than to disassemble them to make a story.
On frame 47, he refers to the point, which like the coma and the question mark, are grammatical conventions (that signify something nearly extralinguistic). Here, he is talking about the point in "Dr.". By that, he means it's usually not a good idea to perceive stroke elements (here the drop) in our own system (here seeing a point instead of a drop), because the back and forth will be confusing later on when a lot of kanji will involve this specific primitive. However, he says here it's relevant. I wouldn't know, I used a different story (in fact I used the etymology which means "spread", but it's a question of style, as you will see, not all will fit your mind).

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense. I also reread the introduction and after actually going through the system for a couple days I can see where the pieces fit in.

Thanks again everyone..

once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our Kanji dead.

poor kanji

I'll put this here for anyone who might have the same font problem I had:

Download the Mincho font (on Ubuntu just find the Sazanami Mincho package). This is a font pretty much identical to the one in the book. In Firefox (its all I use, but the process should be similar in other browsers) go to Edit-->Preferences-->Content. Under Fonts & Colors hit the Advanced button. Change the Fonts For to Japanese and change the Serif, San-Serif, and Monospace fields to the Sazanami Mincho font (or any other Japanese font you would prefer). Uncheck the box that asks if you want websites to force their own fonts.

One key point about 古 is that the resemblance of that to a gravestone is pure coincidence and has nothing to do with the origin of the character. This is distinct from something like 日, which actually is historically derived from a picture of a sun.

I think Heisig put in the disclaimer on 古 to make sure he was distinguishing his technique from things like Kanji Pict-o-grafix which just try to make every kanji into a picture. Heisig takes them as collections of abstract elements rather than a picture.

In other words, if you take 寺 and somehow try to see a picture of a temple in it, that's not Heisig. If you make up a story that connects temple to the keywords for 土 and 寸, that is Heisig.

Nothing wrong with going fast, just make sure you can keep on top of your reviews. Burning out seems like such a ridiculous & avoidable thing until it happens to you.