The ばか's Guide To RTK 2

I may seem like a ばか for having to even begin this thread. Though, perhaps there is some value in that old phrase, there is no such thing as a stupid question. Regardless, I don't want to make as many mistakes as I did with RTK 1.

I am open to any and all useful feedback you are willing to give.
This is my essential understanding of RTK 2:

*RTK 2 is intended to prescribe a listing of only the onyomi readings of the Japanese kanji. Though there is a very nice index of the kunyomi readings in Index IV.
*Employing the kanjichain method with films and the like seems to be the most recommended method for learning the onyomi readings. Though, if I am wrong about this, please feel free to correct me.
*Heisig waits until page 291 before detailing how the flashcards should be made. His example flashcard includes the kunyomi readings. Therefore, he intends for readers to proceed through RTK 2, learning the onyomi readings. Then return to frame 1 of RTK 2 and learn the kunyomi readings employing "primitive phonemes" and flashcards.

Is this correct, as far as being correct goes?
What are/were your study methods? For later reference, please include that of the kunyomi? Note: I already have Anki installed and raring to go.
Your time table?
Other than: http://kanjitown.blogspot.com, does anyone have a concrete example of how a kanjichain should look?
Tips, tricks, cheats, anything.


I would like to NOT fall off the horse, if you catch my meaning. Other than my sheer determination and stubbornness, I have no encouraging force in my life to finnish this thing. Setbacks are kryptonite for those of us studying the kanji.

I'll be approaching this topic soon aswell and wanted to know something here...

Kanji Town, Movie Method, Kanji Chains, ... where are the differences? pros and cons? Any recommendations?
And how are we supposed to learn the kunyomi, just by vocab?

Would love to hear more...
I'm about to finish rtk as well. Not sure if I should try movie method, rtk 2(already have book) or just start ko2001 sentence mining.

The main problem I have with Movie Method/KanjiTown is that I want to learn the Korean readings as well. And that has a much wider range of syllables! Guess I'll just have to be more creative with it :p

PATRICKRL Wrote:The main problem I have with Movie Method/KanjiTown is that I want to learn the Korean readings as well. And that has a much wider range of syllables! Guess I'll just have to be more creative with it :p

Is it really a good idea to learn the Korean and Japanese readings at the same time?
Seems to me like it'd be awfully confusing.

I decided to use RTK2 to kill two birds with one stone: build vocabulary and learn the onyomi. I took the RTK2 example words and threw them into SRS. And for each reading I would try to find one or two more common words to throw into SRS. I had a Japanese friend take a look at the very last chapters to help me to decide which ones to exclude. Some of these readings are Buddhist terms and/or very rare, so I didn't want to take the time to learn them. In the end, I have a vocabulary deck of several thousand words and a pretty good command of onyomi.

I have not found RTK2 helpful for kunyomi. I simply started another SRS deck for kunyomi and hiragana words I encounter while reading. Further, I have begun to take advantage of the recent enhancement to this site allowing for the editing of keywords, changing them to kunyomi when possible.

Good luck!

shaggadelyc Wrote:I'll be approaching this topic soon aswell and wanted to know something here...

Kanji Town, Movie Method, Kanji Chains, ... where are the differences? pros and cons? Any recommendations?
And how are we supposed to learn the kunyomi, just by vocab?

As far as I can tell:
Kanji Town, is using spatial recognition to learn the kanji. Take for instance, the town of Springfield in The Simpsons. Take the sound, ちゅ, have it represent church and build on a story involving the church using the keyword. Do the same thing with the sound, も, and have it represent Mo's Tavern. For a better explanation, refer to the blog: http://kanjitown.blogspot.com/

The movie method does essentially the same thing, only rather than restricting one's self to say, Springfield as the source of inspiration for the stories, any film, book, or tv show can be used to represent a sound. And the story is build around them. For example, the sound は, can represent Harry Potter, or whatever. This blog explain that: http://kanjieiga.blogspot.com/

Both of these methods are essentially kanjichains. An explination for them can be found in this article: http://www.susi.ru/kanji/ChMethod.html

As to the pros, cons, and recommendations ... thats what I'd like to know.

Tzadeck Wrote:

PATRICKRL Wrote:The main problem I have with Movie Method/KanjiTown is that I want to learn the Korean readings as well. And that has a much wider range of syllables! Guess I'll just have to be more creative with it :p

Is it really a good idea to learn the Korean and Japanese readings at the same time?
Seems to me like it'd be awfully confusing.

I'd have to agree with Tzadeck. Japanese is hard enough. Your ambition is commendable, but for me, I couldn't wrap my brain around trying to learn Korean at the same time.

gibosi Wrote:I decided to use RTK2 to kill two birds with one stone: build vocabulary and learn the onyomi. I took the RTK2 example words and threw them into SRS. And for each reading I would try to find one or two more common words to throw into SRS. I had a Japanese friend take a look at the very last chapters to help me to decide which ones to exclude. Some of these readings are Buddhist terms and/or very rare, so I didn't want to take the time to learn them. In the end, I have a vocabulary deck of several thousand words and a pretty good command of onyomi.

I have not found RTK2 helpful for kunyomi. I simply started another SRS deck for kunyomi and hiragana words I encounter while reading. Further, I have begun to take advantage of the recent enhancement to this site allowing for the editing of keywords, changing them to kunyomi when possible.

Good luck!

SRS as in spaced repetition learning systems? So you essentially used something like Anki. I like the idea of adding common words in addition to the ones RTK 2 has listed. I got so stuck on the notion of not editing the keywords because Heisig advised against it. Because of that, I became weary of editing RTK 1 until I was more than three quarters of the way through, when I realized its ok to edit the keywords of the primitives as needed, because that won't effect the meaning of the kanji.
For example, City Wall became Great Wall of China.
And Golden Calf became Eros, the horny dude in heaven.
So adding to the RTK 2 vocabulary can't hurt.

By the way, if want to include that like of rare readings you excluded, I would be much obliged.

Personally I can say, that RtK2 "Pure groups" are really doing a good job concerning the "on-yomi" problem. At the beginning I saw a thick red book from heisig on my table lieing again and thought, no, not again.. but somehow i sticked to that method and add every week 4 pages or so. works quite well in addition with core2k in anki if you get used to it plus stick to it. can only recommend it, especially the first part.

Tori-kun Wrote:Personally I can say, that RtK2 "Pure groups" are really doing a good job concerning the "on-yomi" problem. At the beginning I saw a thick red book from heisig on my table lieing again and thought, no, not again.. but somehow i sticked to that method and add every week 4 pages or so. works quite well in addition with core2k in anki if you get used to it plus stick to it. can only recommend it, especially the first part.

Ok. So thats my second vote for the traditional route with an SRS like Anki. And you're averaging about 36 frames per week.
Have you only gotten as far as the Pure Groups? If not, what of the other groups?

Ok then, has anybody got a spreadsheet with kanji ordered by reading?
Also, what do I do with multiple readings? Just stick the same Kanji in two different categories?

A note to most posters in this thread... Kanji Town, Movie Method, Kanji Chains, etc. are not RTK-2. There's a tendency on this forum to conflate RTK-2 with the general act of learning the readings (especially onyomi). This is simply incorrect. In fact, I have yet to see a description of RTK-2 on these forums which adequately summarizes the book and the method. Perhaps this is part of the problem.

/rant

RTK-2 is a specific method for learning the readings, organized in a rather complex way as the kanji readings are not as regular as the writing. Some methodologies work better for some groups of kanji than others, and other methods work better for the rest. For this reason Heisig grouped them into chapters where each chapter employs a different, albeit often related methodology, and covers just those readings which work well for that method.

RTK-2 is a single method for learning the readings, employing multiple methodologies as appropriate, and organized by methodology. If it has one flaw, it is that the information on how to use the book is not layed out in as straightforward a manner as RTK-1. You kind of have to skim the whole book, read thoroughly the introduction and notes at the end, then read a bit between the lines to understand how it is put together.

That makes it rather difficult to approach, but should not reflect poorly on its utility.

I recommend either learning one onyomi for each kanji while doing RTK, or learning them afterwards by SRSing vocab as described by Gibosi. You don't necessarily need RTK2 for this though. Whichever way you go about it, onyomi are so useful that it's worth going through and 90% mastering them from the beginning rather than learning them gradually. Kunyomi are a little more difficult, but I imagine (I didn't do this) quickly SRSing 1 or 2 common kunyomi words for each character would be beneficial and you'd be reinforcing rare kanji from RTK1 that you might otherwise start forgetting if you jumped straight into reading. I think it would be very possible to get all this done in 4-5 months, but if it takes much longer than jumping straight into reading after RTK1 might be a better idea.

mafried Wrote:You kind of have to skim the whole book, read thoroughly the introduction and notes at the end, then read a bit between the lines to understand how it is put together.

Interestingly enough, I did that very thing this morning.

The thing that made RTK 1 work for me were the stories. I studied history in college and I dabble in writing, therefore, my memory works best with narratives, be they non-fiction, fiction, or the short stories I concocted to remember the elements of a kanji. This is the reason I think the movie method appeals to me particularly. From what I gathered this morning, the Pure Groups and Semi-Pure Groups are the most conducive chapters to employ the movie method, and maybe, just maybe the Mixed Groups. With the remainder of the groups it seems as though straight memorization with Anki is the way to go for me.

I am resolved to be open minded about this and not find myself bogged down by any of the methodologies I try. If the newfangled method isn't working, I can always revert to straight memorization.

nadiatims Wrote:Kunyomi are a little more difficult, but I imagine (I didn't do this) quickly SRSing 1 or 2 common kunyomi words for each character would be beneficial and you'd be reinforcing rare kanji from RTK1 that you might otherwise start forgetting if you jumped straight into reading. I think it would be very possible to get all this done in 4-5 months, but if it takes much longer than jumping straight into reading after RTK1 might be a better idea.

This is defiantly a possible method for learn the kunyomi.

gibosi Wrote:I decided to use RTK2 to kill two birds with one stone: build vocabulary and learn the onyomi. I took the RTK2 example words and threw them into SRS. And for each reading I would try to find one or two more common words to throw into SRS...

Any chance your spreadsheet is publicly available? I'm working on something similar and it might save me a lot of time.

Hyland1 Wrote:Any chance your spreadsheet is publicly available? I'm working on something similar and it might save me a lot of time.

This SRS file lives in my Android phone, and I use Anymemo rather than Anki, so I don't know how useful it might be. But I am willing to send it to you if you wish.

I would appreciate that. If you can export to .csv, I might be able to convert it for Anki.