I would like to explore something you mentioned in another thread...

Christine_Tham wrote:

"...[snip]... as I've been told by my teacher. If you have a good grasp of the Bushu radicals, plus some common words that appear as components in other Kanji, you already have what you need.

So guess what, we spent one class learning all (most?) of them. So we're prepared now."

Learning all of the bushu radicals sounds like a very good exercise. I think I remember reading in a doctoral paper written by the co-author of "Remembering the Hanzi" that he felt it might be better to present all of the primitives up front for memorization. (Or perhaps it was the "Kanji A-B-C" authors who advocated this.) If this is true of primitives then certainly the same argument can be made for the bushu radicals.

But which words, I assume you mean graphically simple kanji, are the necessary "common words that appear as components in other Kanji" for kanji studies following a bushu radical-based method?

Did your instructor give you a list of the "common words (kanji)" s/he feels are a necessary foundation to learning kanji via a bushu radical-based method? (Naturally, I can guess as to what many of these kanji might be. I was just wondering if there was a systematic list already made up for use in this method.)

And if so, would you be willing to share such a list on this site or via PM?

I would like to explore this method further.

Thanks!

Cristine,
I too would love such a list if you have it.

Best,
Laura

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/radicalnames.html

Hopefully there's more to it than that, johnzep.

johnzep Wrote:http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/radicalnames.html

I can look up the radicals. That is not what I was asking.

If my understanding of the method/concept that Christine mentioned is correct, then a student will learn all of the bushu radicals together with graphically simple (and common) kanji at the beginning of their studies. This will then provide them with a thorough foundation for learning more kanji.

So my question was this, did Christine's instructor list the graphically simple (and common) kanji that s/he feels are necessary to using a bushu radical-based method to build one's foundation for learning more kanji?

And if so, is she willing to share such a list on this site or by private email?

Another question I would like to ask Christine is:

Did your instructor have you start with the graphically simple kanji (that you referred to as "common words") and then study all of the bushu radicals? Or was it the other way around?

I really would like to explore this method / concept for kanji learning. And if there is such a list that an instructor has already put together it would be better than trying to re-invent the wheel myself.

This is only tangentially related, so feel free to ignore this:

I have a list of the names of radicals and some examples of their use, for simplified Chinese. This may interest some of the RTH devotees, I suppose. I can link it somewhere if people are interested - or email me to ask for it.

Carry on.

Hi guys,

I will strongly recommend that you check out a book called "Kanji ABC", because it contains exactly what you are looking for. It only costs less than US$15 if you order it from Amazon.

What it has is:
1. A list of the non-trivial Bushu radicals, and English keywords for them
2. A list of graphemes (="primitives") and simple Kanji characters that uses them, grouped into 26 groups (A-Z)
3. Finally the entire Jouyou list arranged by grapheme group (A-Z)

For each Jouyou character, the book provides:
1. on yomi and kun yomi readings, but reduced to only the most common 2-3 readings, so that you can assign these as the keyword if you want
2. a Heisig like keyword
3. a list of graphemes that make up the character
4. References to Halpern and Spahn dictionaries

If you want to use a Heisig like approach but you want a much better kanji ordering, plus graphemes that are based on Bushu radicals, this is the book for you. The book has no stories - the idea is that you make up your own based on the grapheme breakdowns.

You can choose to learn exactly like Heisig - associating the English keyword with the character via a story involving the graphemes. Or you can substitute Japanese keywords (based on the readings). Or you can learn the readings as well.

A bonus is, the characters within each grapheme group are sorted by phonetic reading, which allows you to identify the phonetic marker and separate it from the semantic marker.

My instructor has a list (which I am trying to get) but it's limited to JLPT3 characters only (around 300). I think Kanji ABC is pretty much perfect and has all the Jouyou characters.

I found this site with Mary Sisk Noguchi's review of Kanji ABC.

http://www.kanjiclinic.com/reviewabc.htm

According to her review "In Part I, they introduce, step-by-step, one concise label for each of 483 kanji components, which they call "graphemes."　The graphemes they name include: basic kanji; historical radicals; and frequent combinations of other graphemes, which are used to avoid unreasonable fragmentation of the characters. According to Kanji ABC, 90% of all the general-use characters consist of from 1 to 3 of these graphemes."

At 483, the number of graphemes presented in "Kanji ABC" sounds fairly consistent with your instructor's list of 300 kanji. (300 kanji + all 214 bushu radicals would yield 514 graphemes to lay one's foundation with.) Given that they need to be graphically simple and common kanji, I wouldn't be surprised if the kanji included as graphemes in this book and those selected by your instructor are more or less similar. Let us know if you find this to be true.

Christine, thanks again for the recommendation and info!