Hey there. While working my way through some kanjis (and in the process typing them into the computer), I ran into a problem with the kanji in frame 308 in the 6th edition of RtK 1. The kanji in question is this one - 喩 - which has been assigned the keyword metaphor. My problem concerns the bottom right of the kanji. In the book, it has the saber primitive placed in the bottom right position, while the computer-printed one has two of these bended lines that makes the flood radical when there are three of them. Whenever this happens I usually try to find a source on how the kanji should look when handwritten and they tend to agree with RtK, but this one time it appears as though all my sources agree it should be the 2/3 flood radical in the bottom right.
Did Heisig make a mistake when printing this character? Are they two different but very similar-looking kanji with almost the same meaning (same keyword at least) as well? Is one of them an old version of the other or are there two currently used ways of writing this kanji? In that case which version should I learn?
Any help to solve this problem is appreciated. As a bonus, I've thrown in an introducion below as this is my first post and I couldn't find an appropriate sub-forum for introductions.

So, here goes. My name is Nicklas and I'm an 18 year old boy currently living north of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. I'm currently studying physics at the university on my first semester. Recently I've become interested in Japanese and have now started going through RtK. I've been stalking around this forum for about one to two weeks and thought I should finally pull myself together and become an active part of this, as far as I can tell, fantastic community for people who are trying to learn Japanese. I'm looking forward to learning Japanese along with all of you.

喩 and 喻 are basically the same character — the difference is that 喻 (with the 'saber' primitive) is much, much more common in Chinese, while in Japanese it's 喩 (with the 'flood-like' primitive).

Ah, I see, thank you very much for the swift response. I guess I'll go with the Japanese variant then. I kinda wonder why the Chinese version would appear in RtK, maybe it was because the 'flood' primitive with only two lines instead of three hadn't been introduced...

It's basically two variants of the same primitive 兪. All pre-2010 joyo kanji with that primitive use the saber version, and anything outside that set tends to use the ㄍ version. There was a declaration a few years back where they pretty much standardized non-joyo kanji to use older variant forms for some reason. This was probably included, though I don't know where to find that information.

Either way, nobody's going to take issue with you using one version vs. the other as long as you're consistent, and I myself have yet to have any cause to write that character, so I'd say don't worry about it.

Quote:I kinda wonder why the Chinese version would appear in RtK,

The reason is that Dr. Heisig tends to favor consistency above established standards or trends, and using the saber verson is consistent with the other joyo kanji. It's not that he's actually using the Chinese version.

And also when he wrote the book, there was no official position on the forms of non-jouyou kanji. I personally think the committee's decision is stupid; I guess they did it for simplicity's sake but it's hard for me to imagine that native speakers are actually going to switch to writing 溌 with 發 on the right side, for instance.

yudantaiteki Wrote:And also when he wrote the book, there was no official position on the forms of non-jouyou kanji.

I don't think this is true. 喩 was only added to RtK this year, to accommodate the additional Joyo-Kanji, while the JIS2004 revision was (as you can guess) released in 2004.

Here's the page I was looking for, breaking down JIS2004 in a nice chart format:
http://www.eonet.ne.jp/~kotobukispace/dd...32004.html

In the RTK 1 Supplement, he declares his intentions in favoring the 拡張新字体 forms, saying he believes standardization will also favor them very soon. At the time, Jarvik7 seemed to think this was a load of hogwash, and I haven't seen anything yet to confirm Dr. Heisig's prediction.

RTK1 Supplement Wrote:A number of the supplementary kanji published by the Ministry use “old forms” of primitive elements or their compounds. While the trend has been to unify the writing of these elements, it will take time for unicode numbers to be assigned to the simpler forms and for font-makers to catch up. This leaves certain
inconsistencies in the updated list. In the long run there is no need for you to learn the older forms, which will often go against the grain of how you have been learning the kanji in this book. For those who want them, the older—and for the time being approved—forms are given in square brackets, along with an explanation of differences from the simplified form.

So is it okay to skip this kanji since Revtk doesn't have this kanji?

Carnival Wrote:So is it okay to skip this kanji since Revtk doesn't have this kanji?

That's up to you. What would make a kanji "okay to skip" in your mind?

I honestly don't know. I don't know what to follow for learning this kanji. Revtk kanji version has primitives that I haven't learned yet. While the current Heisig's kanji has the primitives I've learned, but I don't have other SRS programs other than Revtk's to come back to for practicing this kanji. I'm stuck.

[Katsuo]

I would suggest learning the character using the primitives you are already familiar with (i.e. as drawn in Heisig's RTK1 6th Ed.), then just make a note to yourself that sometimes that kanji is drawn with the horizontal strokes of 月 falling down a bit and the vertical strokes of "sword" bent almost like a hiragana く.

I don't understand though. How would I learn this 6th edition character since RevTK doesn't have it? I would forget the Heisig or any other story too soon. How should I make note of this kanji having two versions? How do I know this note will stick to me?

Carnival Wrote:I don't understand though. How would I learn this 6th edition character since RevTK doesn't have it? I would forget the Heisig or any other story too soon. How should I make note of this kanji having two versions? How do I know this note will stick to me?

Revtk will have it. It will be somewhat higher than 2000 though. So try searching under the key word, and add it in manually.

just to clarify for others who might read this thread:

what was stated above is correct; think of the kanji that mention an alternative, older way of writing as being two versions of one and the same kanji, not unlike the two options of writing a latin letter in cursive or printscript in English. it still stays the same letter.

usage of the older/newer variant varies, this means there is no "correct" one you should learn and an unimportant one you should forget. best probably would be to memorize both, and being able to recognize them as variants of the same kanji.

don't worry too much, though - most of these kanji are used very rarely, you might happen to see them in proper nouns (place and person names), if at all. therefore, my suggestion would be: to stay consistent, memorize the reduced form that Heisig provides; make a mental note though, that there is an alternative way of writing this specific primitive/part of the kanji (you can even try and incorporate that fact into your mnemonic story).

to the question of why you can't find those specific kanji when working through the RevTK list with RTK1/3 6th ed: they are part of an addition that happened in 2010, and since RevTK still uses the old, pre-6th-edition way of ordering kanji, some of them are to be found further at the back (no. 2000+), or at the very end (no. 3008+). just search for their keyword to find them, if you are following RTK1/3 6th edition.

There is a list of them and their numbers according to the 5th edition numbering system floating around on this site. Hopefully someone knows better where it's located, and can direct you to it.