astridtops Wrote:Yet, Heisig made me look up words like quandary, awl, funnel, promontory, etc. Do native speakers actually know all these words? Or do you people have to look a few up as well?

I knew all the words you listed, but there were a lot of others I had to look up. I applaud non-native speakers for learning some tough English vocab to study Japanese. BTW, why do so many Dutch want to learn Japanese?

As to the "oops, I learned the wrong definition", that also happened to me a lot. I thought "place on the head" was a given location on someone's head, for example. "Patent" is the one that bugged me the most. In the US it nearly always means "a document granting an inventor sole rights to an invention" rather than "obvious".

ivoSF Wrote:mine

yer killin' me

im also dutch btw ^^

its true mine(edited to my) english increase the way you have to look up english words, but like Serge says, concepts more important then words, appelation for example could be beter descriped as "the process of naming", i think half the people under 20 would not know that word?

like piitaa i dont translate things to dutch and stay in english mode

i realize discussing this wont change a thing, but let us be sagacious<--i did not know this word until yesterday)

ivoSF Wrote:im also dutch btw ^^

Oops, sorry ivoSF. I thought you were "pulling my leg" (know that one yet?). Why are you learning Japanese? Are there a lot of jobs?

I'm a native American speaker, and I look up lots of words to get a clear idea of the meaning, so that I can form a clear picture from the stories. Forming the clear image is important to me, for remembering to happen.

What is a "godown"? Is that a real english word? I have a picture for that word now, but from this website, pretty much.

We've got to remember that he's sharing with us how HE succeeded in learning Kanji. He picked these keywords because they were powerful for HIM. He did a lot of work for us in comparing kanji, some with similar base meanings, and picking out keywords that didn't conflict too much. We could do that for ourselves, but it's easier (for me at least) to put up with some keywords that I don't immediately relate to, than to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.

I'm a native speaker and I found that it helped to look up the words in quite a few cases. Like you, I was uncertain about exactly what an awl was but with the others that I looked up, it was more a case of giving myself some images associated with the keyword rather than not knowing what the word meant.

I'm actually working on a system which will hopefully capture all of the best parts of the Heisig method but eliminate the need for keywords. I'm thinking about asking some people to help after I've done a bit more work.

leosmith Wrote:BTW, why do so many Dutch want to learn Japanese?

I don't think the numbers are so much higher than in other countries, but you'll find relatively more of them at this site because there is no Dutch language version, nor do the Dutch expect a Dutch language version. We're too small a country. Dutch people with some form of higher education are usually proficient enough in English to use it as their international base for anything not covered in Dutch, including studying Japanese. As for motives, I don't think most of them are job-related, more hobby related.

At my course, I've seen: anime/manga otaku's, someone into karate, someone into go, someone with a Japanese partner, someone who simply wanted to learn something new and didn't care exactly what (she could have started Italian instead), someone with a Japanese pen pal, an interior decorator who wanted to understand the culture better, someone studying anthropology, someone whose husband does a lot of business in Japan, etc.

I think astridtops is right. There is a German, French and Spanish version of RTK, but not a Dutch one. I don't expect one to be made either. I can't speak for the others, but I'm learning Japanese as a hobby. I like languages and if anything the complex writing system made me want to learn more about it. Someday I want to learn Chinese too.

Risking to go off-topic in this off-topic topic, did you know there's going to be a Remembering the Hanzi? I read about it on some forum some time ago, but now I'm pretty sure it's real since there's a PDF of it on a restricted area of Nanzan's website.

I'm also a native speaker of Dutch and just like the others I also had some difficulties with some of the words, but I really wouldn't want to have a Dutch version of the book. Most of the other books on the topic are also in English and using Dutch and English books together would just make things more confusing for me. When I'm learning Japanese I don't think in Dutch, almost every single thing I translate or write down is done in English. My English is far from perfect so this is also an excellent way of expanding my vocabulary

yeah im also learning japanese for mine hobbies(go anime, manga), when i started to look up some english words i didn`t yet know, it also became a habit to check some i did know for a clearer image like CharleyGarrett.
i also think the reason it seems a relative high number of dutch people are learning japanese is becouse a relative high number of dutchman have a good level of english.

i gather that the reason, heisig uses those infrequent words as a meaning, is for the sake of nuance even though to me it seems more common to not complicate an already difficult learning process with them?

jhuijts2 Wrote:Risking to go off-topic in this off-topic topic, did you know there's going to be a Remembering the Hanzi? I read about it on some forum some time ago, but now I'm pretty sure it's real since there's a PDF of it on a restricted area of Nanzan's website.

Yeah, in fact I posted a letter from Dr. Heisig on the crisscross forum, saying it would most likely come out in November. I'm with you; Chinese will be a blast. Hey, what was the password for that PDF again?

Thanks for answering my question folks. I'm fortunate enough to work with some Fokker guys here in Texas - good people, excellent language skills. Sorry about the major thread jack.

astridtops Wrote:95% of the keywords are not a problem at all. Yet, Heisig made me look up words like quandary, awl, funnel, promontory, etc. Do native speakers actually know all these words? Or do you people have to look a few up as well?

Without wanting to dis Heisig, because I think RTK1 is fantastic, I only knew 50% of those four words astridtops mentioned. 1. quandary - meaning okay, but not the sort of word I find myself using on a regular basis. 2. awl - I'd have to use a dictionary. 3. funnel - no worries. 4. promontory - had to use my dictonary when I found that one. When I see the keyword I think of 'promenade' which leads to promontory.

I am a native English speaker. For me there are definitely some strange words. That said some of the keywords, because of their strangeness, are potentially easier to remember. Off the top of my head, 'decameron' is a word that I don't think I'll forget anytime soon!

My problems stem from getting muddled up between keywords, for example, abandon vs neglect.

Anyway to try to keep this post on topic, if you want to learn kanji, it's never too eary to start Heisig.

Astridtops, I find myself running to the dictionary every so often to look up some of Heisig's keywords - such as Portent, Vermilion, and Eventide - and I'm only up to Kanji #340.

I haven't heard anybody else mention this, but I have some trouble remembering the keywords when I see the kanji. When I test myself the way Heisig recommends (keyword to kanji) I make very few (if any) mistakes. But when I see a learned kanji in a magazine or book I often struggle to recall what the associated keyword is (and am sometimes unsuccessful). Does anybody have a technique or strategy to overcome this?

I had to look up all those words too: quandry, awl, funnel, promentory, as well as lots of others. I suspect it may stem from the fact that Dr. Heisig was learning ANOTHER language after having learned several previously. Lots of vocab studies in lots of languages will lead one to appreciate some more esoteric たんご.

I still think that (such a large task) should be started as early as possible, while I opine that learning the kana should come first.

Reviewing KANJI-to-keyword is what I do when I'm forced to try to read Japanese. It's harder, I think, mainly because that's not what I'm practicing just now. That which we persist in doing will become easier, not that the nature of the thing will change, but that our capacity to do it will grow.

So, I've notice this...look at a character. Notice the primitives, in the order that they're written. I've noticed that when the character doesn't immediately suggest a keyword, that I've not really LOOKED at the kanji and noticed the primatives. I'm trying (instinctively, I think) to read the character as a geschtalt. So, if it just looks like a blob, then I need to do the step of noticing the exact primatives. Recall the story that incorporates those plot elements (for me--in that order). Then the keyword pops out. That's pretty convoluted. It's easier, naturally for the kanji that have fewer primatives.

When I get to reading, I think I will perhaps want to practice---not kanji to keyword, but --- kanji to たんご. I want to train the neurons to go directly from the seeing of the kanji to the Japanese words in one step.

But, I'm sold on the divide and conquer, step-by-step methodology of the Heisig approach. First learn one meaning and how to write the kanji. Later, if I cannot remember how to write a kanji, or to distinguish between two similar kanji, then I can "fall back" on the plots that will lead to a sureness of the correct primatives to include. Or whatever I'm trying to say here.

jonkanji Wrote:Astridtops, I find myself running to the dictionary every so often to look up some of Heisig's keywords - such as Portent, Vermilion, and Eventide - and I'm only up to Kanji #340.

I haven't heard anybody else mention this, but I have some trouble remembering the keywords when I see the kanji. When I test myself the way Heisig recommends (keyword to kanji) I make very few (if any) mistakes. But when I see a learned kanji in a magazine or book I often struggle to recall what the associated keyword is (and am sometimes unsuccessful). Does anybody have a technique or strategy to overcome this?

I am in the same situation, except I'm more than twice as far through the book. There are a surprisingly high number of keywords which are words that I have never heard of before. I'm a US native English speaker but not an avid reader. I'm not even sure what 'esoteric' means even though I've seen it a dozen times. I'm just not interested in looking up the meaning.

Heisig came up with all these words 30 years ago. Perhaps some of them were more common back then. Plus he also must have had quite a large vocabulary. And a lot of kanji actually seem to have the same meaning, however you need different keywords.

There are quite a few kanji which I see and know I've studied but I cannot recall the keyword even though if I saw the keyword I would have no problem recalling the little story to write the kanji. I think it's just the way memory recall works. You study one-way and that trains you to recall something. Study a keyword and then you recall the kanji. Just seeing the kanji doesn't make you recall the keyword. I even have studied kanji in this book that I didn't realize I already know this kanji in a word when reading Japanese. I mean, before studying the kanji in Heisig, I was already reading the kanji in Japanese text, but while studying in Heisig I never thought about that word.

Sometimes, I feel cheated when I am reviewing and I write the wrong kanji because I looked at the keyword and I thought of a different kanji. I feel cheated because I know the character and can read it in Japanese. For example, the keywords 'town' and 'village'. When I see those keywords, I have to stop and think which is which. However, if I were thinking in Japanese and wanted to write むら or まち, I would never write the wrong one. Regardless of their keywords, I know what I need to write. Maybe I'm more of a visual person, but I can only write the kanji if I can visualize it in my head. The Heisig way helps me to remember all the parts of the kanji and to make it more concrete.
With his system though, the keywords are the only way you can test yourself to check that you know how to write the kanji. The most beneficial part is the order of the kanji. Although, sometimes when you go through a group of 25 or so kanji with the same element, you think, hmm this must have that element, so what is the other part? I don't know if I will be able to remember that that element exists in that kanji later on. Such as all the kanji with the 'state of mind' element. All of my stories go something like this, for example, PLEASURE is the state of mind many butchers have when chopping things up. I just know that in that group of 15 kanji, they are all states of mind. But later, when I see the keyword by itself, I probably will forget that this is one of the state of mind kanji. I will think, PLEASURE... hmm, what wonderful thing am I supposed to remember when I see this keyword?

The word たのしみ can be written 楽しみ or 愉しみ, but it seems the verb たのしむ can only be written with one of the kanji, 楽しむ. As the other one is not in the dictionary and does not come up in the computer when you convert kana to kanji. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you learn 'music' for 楽? I haven't gotten that far yet.

I think knowing which kanji for which words will be another big step. Just being able to read them and write them doesn't mean we can know which kanji is used for every word. So, I just look at RTK as a single step in the road to kanji mastery.

I want to go through all the kanji I can write now, and list all the words I already know and study them so I'll know that I can write that word if I need to. But being so busy, I probably won't.

wrightak Wrote:I'm actually working on a system which will hopefully capture all of the best parts of the Heisig method but eliminate the need for keywords. I'm thinking about asking some people to help after I've done a bit more work.

I'm very interested in your idea. I hope I can help. Feel free to contact me.

I just got to part 3 two days ago, but I have a couple of ideas as to why Heisig chose some strange words. Aside from certain types of trees, the words I've had to look up so far are nightbreak (which isn't a word in any dictionary I've checked... but daybreak is used later...), straightaway, brocade, ridgepole, porter, and prefecture. I also looked up muzzle, but then I realized I knew what that was.

First of all, I don't know why we should expect every kanji to have an easy English translation. Some of them are rare and nuanced in meaning. Promontory is a geological feature, and upon looking up 崎 on Kanjidict, the main definition seems to be promontory. The others are cape and spit, but those were already used in other kanji, and that version of spit is also a geological feature which would've only served to cause more confusion.

Secondly, I noticed that a lot of his primitives (the ones not derived from other kanji, at least directly) had strange, uncommon words, like awl, muzzle, kazoo, Thanksgiving, siesta, taskmaster, lidded crock, double back. I think there are two reasons for this. One, these uncommon words do not have their own kanji, so you won't get confused. Two, these are all objects that can be used in images easily (once you get an image for the word).

He had his reasons for his decisions, and it's not like it's hard to look up the meaning of an obscure word (just like it's not hard to look up other meanings of that kanji). You can hone your English in the process

Good post Shvegait, I agree completely. A high standard of English vocabulary is a given for Heisig, I don't think his method would be possible without it; and somehow I get the vibe from him that he would refuse to compromise his work by any kind of accomodation or even worse, "dumbing down".

The goal is to master the building blocks for reading and writing in a sophisticated language at a fairly high level, I don't see how students can be expected to achieve this if they are not at that level in their own language. If you aren't at that level I think you have to rise to it as you study: as Shvegait says "You can hone your English in the process". Let's not underestimate the immensity of the task.

It's tough if English isn't your first language, I sympathise, but RTK is English to Japanese. Lacking translations in other languages, you just have to put up with this. What else can be done?

I would also say that Japanese is also a language that has retained a lot of traditional concepts and objects, words that may seem somewhat archaic or obscure in English are not necessarily so in Japanese.

And by the way, I don't think any of his "difficult" words were more commonly used when he first wrote RTK than now, I doubt that some of them were ever that common.

Generally speaking, the quicker you get rid of the English keywords and substitute them for JAPANESE ones, the better. What's the point of remembering the English keyword for?the kanji that belongs in [kana]hazukashii[/kana] if you know the actual word? And what's the point of memorising the subtle differences of the ENGLISH keywords for the FIVE different ways to say 'me, I' when you can remember the Japanese equivalents and their respective usages?

That is to say, instead of struggling with the keywords, the time is better spent learning the actual Japanese equivalents.

jhuijts2 Wrote:Someday I want to learn Chinese too.

Risking to go off-topic in this off-topic topic, did you know there's going to be a Remembering the Hanzi?

Who needs a book?! Take this list of 3,000 most common Hanzi: http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html and apply the methodology, come up with your own key elements, etc.

I have been studying Chinese for a while and the method works beautifully. The MAJOR source of irritation is the difference between simplified and traditional.

In fact, I believe knowledge of Chinese is essential for a deep understanding of Japanese, just like the Latin helps to understand European languages... But maybe someone should start another thread on Zhong Wen...

Serge Wrote:And what's the point of memorising the subtle differences of the ENGLISH keywords for the FIVE different ways to say 'me, I' when you can remember the Japanese equivalents and their respective usages?

Off-top: all my attempts to actually post KANJI on this forum seem to result in question marks on the final posts. Very strange, considering that I'm running the Japanese version of Mac OS X... Any tips on what I'm doing wrong?

Serge Wrote:Who needs a book?! Take this list of 3,000 most common Hanzi: http://www.zein.se/patrick/3000char.html and apply the methodology, come up with your own key elements, etc.

Thanks for the spreadsheet Serge! I'm not going to learn the characters until next year, so I'll use the new Heisig book. But It sure is nice to have this spreadsheet as a handy reference.

Serge Wrote:Off-top: all my attempts to actually post KANJI on this forum seem to result in question marks on the final posts. Very strange, considering that I'm running the Japanese version of Mac OS X... Any tips on what I'm doing wrong?

When I try to write?????????I have a problem too. That was supposed to say "When I try to write KANJI ([kana]kanji[/kana]) I have a problem too" Oh, I just used the kana tags and writing 'kanji' gives you [kana]kanji[/kana]!

Mac OS X - using different browsers doesn't seem to make a difference

Shvegait Wrote:Promontory is a geological feature, and upon looking up 崎 on Kanjidict, the main definition seems to be promontory.

I've noticed before that most keywords from Heisig are identical to the primary meaning given in KANJIDIC. Having read the documentation I now know why. About 1900 meanings were taken from RTK in the early days of KANJIDIC! You'll notice that the keywords from RTK part 3 differ more from the meaning given in KANJIDIC.

jonkanji Wrote:I haven't heard anybody else mention this, but I have some trouble remembering the keywords when I see the kanji. When I test myself the way Heisig recommends (keyword to kanji) I make very few (if any) mistakes. But when I see a learned kanji in a magazine or book I often struggle to recall what the associated keyword is (and am sometimes unsuccessful). Does anybody have a technique or strategy to overcome this?

I don't think that that is a proper use of the keywords. This is the reason people here keep saying, "the keywords don't matter that much." The keywords are just handy tags, placeholders for the "real data" that will eventually take their place. This is why (again, this is all IMHO) Heisig says, "always quiz from keyword to kanji," (or words to that effect). For this reason, I think it would be counterproductive (in the long term) to "overcome" this supposed problem.

What I mean is: What you want to come to mind when you see the character is a much larger set of associations (and sometimes totally different from the keyword). You'll want to learn to associate the ON/kun readings, the actual meanings (plural) that the kanji might have, etc. RTK1 doesn't provide all this (no usuable system could). It is just the first step on the path.

just my 2 cents, (IMHO, YMMV)

cjon256