About Heisig and the website.

I'm working through the new sixth edition of the book (I actually started with a PDF of the 4th ed. but felt guilty so I purchased the real thing off of B&N). My shoddy attention span has caused some pauses in learning but I've gotten a bit past the 500 mark in about three weeks. Ended up getting distracted by a book for a while there but yeah. Ideally I would be finished with Volume 1 by late September / Mid-November.

So the sixth edition was published just this year but after I finish Vol.1 I would like to move on to 2 and 3. My first question is, should I purchase older editions of the books (if they aren't out yet) once I've finished Vol.1, or would it be prudent to wait until they are published and updated to move on?

My second question is about Learning the Kana... I'm planning on purchasing this book relatively soon and learning it as I go with Vol.1. Does RevTK have the Kana in its database, so I can add them into my rotation to help keep them memorized?

Thank you and I'm sorry if this information is posted somewhere I missed >.>

I wouldn't worry about puting the Kana on flashcards. I learned them from the remember the kana book within a few days (just studying for a little while over breakfast). If you start having any exposure to the kana at all, you'll remember them easily enough once learned.

I think kana are much less complicated than kanji so you may not even need a book. Try a website like this first and see how you go.

I'm mostly getting the book because the tactile response of book paper under my fingers makes learning easier for me but I will definitely take a look at the website.

IsaacSumizone Wrote:I'm mostly getting the book because the tactile response of book paper under my fingers makes learning easier for me but I will definitely take a look at the website.

Visit the Meguro Learning Center website and get the Katakana worksheets. Print them out and learn the Kana with them. There is really no need to buy a book for that. You can also use Nukemarine's Kana videos, or at least have a look on them, they are very good as well!

About your other question, to do with the RTK2 and 3 books:

I started RTK2 myself (never finished it) and though the words in there do refer to the kanji in RTK1, you don't necessarily need to use that reference. You don't need RTK1 to do RTK2 at all. Exactly what is different in the 6th edition compared to the 4th one (or older)? Sometimes the title of the kanji differs (hence you see different words for the same kanji on this site, like masculine/male for 雄). Sometimes he might have made small corrections in the story. I'm sure some more Jouyou have been added to meet the new standards, but they wouldn't have been added in between (right? Otherwise you wouldn't be able to review them on this site). All of these things are not needed for RTK2, so you'll be fine getting an older version of that book.

As for RTK3, I'd get a newer one, because it's basically an extension of RTK1, working in the same way, just learning more kanji. However, decide first if you really need to know more than the 2000~ kanji Heisig has put in RTK1. You don't need RTK3 if you want to read Japanese books/newspapers/regular documents. So decide for yourself: why do I want to learn Japanese? Do I want to do something there that's difficult (university, difficult job) or is it ok to learn enough kanji to get by in daily life and then move on to vocabulary/grammar to get by even better in daily life?

The kanji in RTK3 are not all super-rare. The main reason to avoid RTK3 (in my opinion) is that by the time you finish RTK1, you should know how to learn kanji on your own. It's going to be a much better use of your time to start learning Japanese and learn new kanji from what you encounter in actual writings.

tokyostyle Wrote:The 6th edition has all of the new kanji in their appropriate places. So yes the number has changed greatly between the original editions and the 6th edition because of the new kanji that were inserted.

"Appropriate" places as in more common kanji are now near the front rather than at the back? If that was the case, I'd assume that would require a great change to the primitive system.