I don't understand why so many people felt the need to change the meaning to Spider-man. Perhaps it is because of Heisig's warning that the primitive will occur very often ? But so what if it appears very often. There aren't many other thread-related primitives so what's the problem with using just thread.

Did anyone try to go with the simple meaning of "thread" ? How did it go ?

I used both, but Spider Man was way easier to remember for most of them, so I used that one more often.

Spider man just seemed easier to make stories with. I didn't think about it at the time, but one of the advantages of using unique characters like Spider man and Mr T is that they don't create confusion by cropping up in stories where they're not primitives.

I used 'thread' and it went fine. Just see which stories are easier to remember.

The more vivid, special and nonsensical the stories and images are, the easier they stick. Spider-Man is perfect, you can have him do lots of crazy things while still relating to the fact that the original meaning is "thread".

You can use both. I try to stick to etymology where possible (http://www.chineseetymology.org is a nice resource for that), so where it made sense I just used "thread". Where that didn't work or I needed something more memorable, I went with Spider-Man.

For future reference, if anyone stumbles upon this thread (haha..), I used thread with no problems. I found it was one of the easiest primitives to work with so far.

I used either, wherever each works well. Sometimes, having Spiderman available was just perfect, like for 績 "exploits", for example. Others, thread made the most sense, like for 績 "sutra".

Edit: actually I just realised I revised my sutra story to involve Spiderman doing naughty things, because it's impossible to read that word and not get sexual images.

Thread was awesome, I'd take five of those over cornstalk, cabbage, ketchup, salige, bushes, bonsai, christmas tree, chestnut, ride seedling changing every 2 kanjis...-_-

amillerchip Wrote:Edit: actually I just realised I revised my sutra story to involve Spiderman doing naughty things, because it's impossible to read that word and not get sexual images.

I guess I've been in Asian studies so long that when I see "sutra" I don't think of the kama sutra first. It actually took me a few seconds to figure out what sutras had to do with sexual images.

I personally used 'anything having to do with Final Fantasy 7' for that primitive--justifying it with how popular it used to be to talk about FF7 on any thread from forums talking about games back in the day.

Was one of the best primitives I ever used actually. FF7 is a fairly huge topic, since you can use any of the characters or story from the game, and you can't really confuse them with anything else.

Anyway, you can use 'thread', 'Spider Man', or anything really. I doubt it will make that much difference. Personally, I only have a very vague understanding of the story of Spider Man, so I thought it wouldn't be such a useful primtive for me.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

amillerchip Wrote:Edit: actually I just realised I revised my sutra story to involve Spiderman doing naughty things, because it's impossible to read that word and not get sexual images.

I guess I've been in Asian studies so long that when I see "sutra" I don't think of the kama sutra first. It actually took me a few seconds to figure out what sutras had to do with sexual images.

I was scratching my head too: "How is diamond sutra naughty?"

I found the spiderman stories to be very memorable. Although I did confuse him with Mr. T on a few occasions.