みんなさん、今晩は！

I have some questions about RTK. I'm extremely interested in purchasing and using this book, but I'm not sure if it's going to be what I'm looking for.

I'm a Japanese major in college with 1-2 semester left before I graduate. This puts me at an intermediate level speaking-wise (I'd say I'm easily at JLPT 4, studying the information in a JLPT 3 test currently.) I am also majoring in Chinese, so I can read a lot of hanzi...and about 200+ kanji. I do find that learning Chinese has greatly hindered my Kanji learning, and I'm behind about 50 kanji I should know. I'm done with Chinese now, so I'm cracking down on my kanji.

Anyways, I decided to start by reviewing the first 200 kanji flashcards on the site...and I only knew 39% of them! There weren't even any that I had known and forgotten, I have literally only learnt 39% of the first 200 kanji in RTK...yet I know at least 200 kanji.

So, perhaps you can see my dilemma...I'm not sure if the kanji I am required to learn are going to be in book 1 or book 2. I want to learn more than what I'm required to in class this semester (I'm aiming for 10 a day, and in class we learn about...10 a week) but I'd also like to learn the mnemonics for the required kanji.

I'm also currently studying out of "Kanji Isn't That Hard!" which is essentially the Japanese version of RTK, but with only 200-ish kanji.

Sorry for the length of this, but if any fellow Japanese majors could give any insight (or anyone for that matter, not just majors) I would appreciate it. Also, how many frames are in the first book? I'm not really planning on buying the two books at once.

どもうありがとうございます。 I really appreciate it.

EDIT: Also, I am required to know the On-yomi and kun-yomi, and I have seen that the first book doesn't use that. As a student, I want to be able to incorporate the kanji into my writing (essays, homework, etc.) but the first book doesn't give you any indication of usage?

I'm a Japanese major (along with Computer Science). I've already finished my classes, and it sure helped being in Japan for year.

RtK vol 1 goes through 2042 kanji. You learn to recognize/write them, and associate them with an English keyword. That's it. Learning to use them is completely up to you (unless you do book 2, but most people here don't).

If you want to learn Onyomi, I'd suggest adding it into the story as an extra primitive. That way you can associate the reading with the kanji. Or learn a few words that incorporate that kanji in it. (ie. 動 -> 運動、動作)
To learn the kunyomi, I'd suggest learning the "base" word that the kunyomi is used in. etc. 楽 -> 楽しい -> たの. The reading will stick if the word sticks.

If your classes are like mine were, adding 10 kanji a day through heisig on your own time should be cake. I'd up it to 25 and be done quicker.

Without studying RtK, why would you expect to get anything on this site's review system? It's quite specific, and not knowing that "prosperous" is 昌 really doesn't mean anything.

Will you be able to incorporate the kanji into your homework by going through Heisig? Probably not. As a Japanese major, you should know that kanji =/= words. You need to know the words that use the kanji in order to use them. That's where the real fun comes in.

RtK will just take away the barrier of not understanding the difference between 特、侍、持、待、寺、時、得. It's up to you to learn the words for 特別、侍、持つ、待つ、お寺、時、納得, etc...

わかりました、ありがとう。


The purpose of reviewing the first 200 RTK cards was simply to see if the order I was learning kanji was corresponding to the RTK order. I wasn't expecting it to match completely, or even remotely, but I was still shocked at how little I know. Knowing that 2000 kanji are in the first book though puts this into perspective. I was expecting 2000 to be split up over the 3 books.

I see what you're saying about the having to learn the on and kun readings on my own, it means a decent amount of extra work. Haha. While I am not opposed to this at all, I just hope that using a dictionary, etc, will help me to correctly identify which kanji are components of already known vocab.

Out of curiosity, how much would you say that RTK helped you with your fluency in reading and writing? And have you completed RTK2 or 3? Thanks for the info.

Stephanie Alexandra Wrote:I'm not sure if the kanji I am required to learn are going to be in book 1 or book 2.[...]
Also, I am required to know the On-yomi and kun-yomi, and I have seen that the first book doesn't use that.

Here's a summary of what you'll find in the books:

* RTK 1 teaches you how to recognize and write all the 2042 general-use kanji by associating it with one unique keyword, which is always one of the meanings of the kanji;

*RTK 2 teaches a systematic way for reading — on-yomi and kun-yomi — what you've studied in RTK 1, using "signal primitives";

* RTK 3 teaches an additional 965 kanji, combining the methods presented in RTK 1 and 2.

It's better to do them in order, but not mandatory (though it's much harder if you do not). In my opinion, if done properly, they can be very useful for anyone studying Japanese.

I will tell you how it helped me even though I am not done with it, currently on frame 1500. I started it over the summer before my intermediate 2 Japanese class. I was on frame around 700 starting class and it made all the kanji for that class easy to learn because I already knew some of the kanjis or part of the primitives. As of now I am no longer scared of kanji ,they seem simple because I can recognized most of them.

This book isn't going to directly help you for the class but doing so will help you greatly in japanese. Normally in class they just go over the most common kanji. I know thats how they did it with me. This is good to know but when reading natural japanese text you will stuck because you don't have enough kanji to help you read. So what the book does is make it easy for you to start reading japanese. It separates the process of learning the kanji. First you learn how to recognize and write them. Then you learn their reading naturally in sentences and phrases. It makes the whole process of learning and reading less random. Instead of learning a werid character and how to say it On-yomi and kun-yomi. You learn to recognize the kanji and build better connections to the word or phrase.

So at first you will not be able to incorporated learned but later on it will be of big advantage to you.

P.S. (Do them in order don't skip any)

[Katsuo]

To help decide whether the books are suitable for you, note that large chunks are available for free. The sample linked to below includes the introduction to the book plus the first 249 kanji.

RTK1 page
RTK1 sample download pdf file.

The sample above is from the new edition which hasn't been released yet. This edition incorporates the new Joyo kanji standard and as a result the numbering system has changed, i.e. it is different to this site.

The basic ordering method is unchanged, but the following have now been added to the sample:

46 肘 elbow
54 嘲 derision
57 唄 pop song
60 貼 post a bill
108 呪 curse
123 妬 jealous
129 嗅 sniff
141 腺 gland
147 汎 pan-
149 汰 cleanse
151 沙 grains of sand
166 圭 squared jewel
218 椅 chair
230 昧 obscure
240 苛 bullying

The book can help you learn the kanji, but won't help your immediate goal of making up those 50 kanji that you are behind.

At least, not if you use it as it's supposed to be.

You could go through the intro and the first few chapters to get the hang of it, and then create your own order to the kanji and that would probably help you study.

Not really specific to RTK, but Stephanie I'm just curious. Do you use Spaced Repetition at all in your own studies?

[ファブリス]

OP Wrote:The purpose of reviewing the first 200 RTK cards was simply to see if the order I was learning kanji was corresponding to the RTK order. I wasn't expecting it to match completely, or even remotely, but I was still shocked at how little I know.

The first part of the book introduces several characters that are rarely, if ever, used on their own. They are building blocks for the more complex characters that follow.

Read the whole book introduction if you haven't done so already.

Also see sticky topic What's the point of RtK (Remembering the Kanji) ?


If you feel you are going to continue to learn kanji for coming years, and/or really want to master the writing, then you can get RTK to work for you.

* On this site or a SRS of choice, you can add a custom set of cards. Skip all the characters you are not interested in.
* If you have a custom set, then find them in RTK1, and backtrack through the pages to find the building blocks that you don't already know.
* RTK 1 introduces the vast majority of radicals, so you don't absolutely need RTK 3. You can do the RTK 3 kanji by using the RTK 1 building blocks, as far as I know. If there is a new radical not in RTK1, by then you'll know how it works and can name it anything you like.

Wow thank you so much for the information everyone! Very helpful and insightful. I checked out the first chapter as advised by Katsuo and really enjoyed the mneumonics (I find that it really helps me to learn to characters better than just writing over and over, as I'm sure you all agree on seeing as how you use this method) and I ordered the book on Amazon, really excited for it to arrive. I figure, if I put in the time and effort to study both the book and my class, it will work for me! Thank you everyone!!

Daichi Wrote:Not really specific to RTK, but Stephanie I'm just curious. Do you use Spaced Repetition at all in your own studies?

After looking this up on Wikipedia I can safely say that no, I have never used this method. How exactly does it work?

Judging from your question and the subsequent responses, I think you have what you need, Stephanie Alexandra.Nevertheless, here are my two-yen' worth:

The fact that you are using "Kanji Isn't that Hard" means you are already acquainted with component analysis, which is the learning method employed by Heisig (and others). One component-analysis book that comes up a lot is "Kanji ABC". It is a similar concept but with the difference that you can, after learning a limited number of radicals, use them in to learn kanji in whatever order a class textbook presents them. You may be able to check the table of contents and introduction on Amazon. There is a review of this book on Mary Sisk Noguchi's "kanji clinic" website.

Stephanie Alexandra Wrote:

Daichi Wrote:Not really specific to RTK, but Stephanie I'm just curious. Do you use Spaced Repetition at all in your own studies?

After looking this up on Wikipedia I can safely say that no, I have never used this method. How exactly does it work?

This site has a good explanation of SRS. www.xamuel.com/spaced-repetition-systems/. This site has an SRS built into it. If your interested in your own solution for custom cards, you can try Anki out or if that's too complex for you there is cardmonkeyhq.com which is based off this site's SRS.

To be honest regarding, RTK, I think part of the magic is the order that the kanji is presented and how they build off what you have learned before. It ignores other traditional orders that focus on frequency but frequency isn't as important if you plan to learn them all anyway.

Also, keep in mind that there are quite a few variants of RTK: You could learn everything in order and still learn a reading or vocab word for each kanji as you go; there is RTK Lite that only focuses on the more common order but leaves the primitives you need to build off of; There are Japanese Keywords which keeps you from using English as your memory hooks; the Lazy kanji method, which reduces the amount of work you need to do to recall things; Or you can take the method and just build your own order using a site like zhongwen.com.

Anyway, good luck with your studies.