I'm just getting started with RTK (just finished lesson 2) and am loving the method and this site. Thanks very much for making the site freely available.

My reasons for studying RTK are to be reasonably literate on a trip to Japan later this year, but I'm also eager to be able to read some of my favorite manga in Japanese.

Should I finish all of RTK1 before spending any time learning pronunciations and compounds? (I've picked up a few here and there already, of course; I always recognize 私 and 食, which probably says a lot about me.) All of RTK1+3? I don't want to do anything to slow my progress with RTK, but I'm eager to start reading.

Thanks for any advice.

If you want to try to learn pronunciations, that's fine, but I would keep that practice separate from RTK1, and not let it interfere with that part of your studying.

Yes. Don't mix pronunciation or grammar with RTK.
It will slow you down too much.

Set aside time for doing RTK alone.

Also, if you use this web site, you can do RTK reviews on your iPhone or Android phone.
That way you can fill in idle time with reviews. A minute here. A few minutes there.
It all adds up.

Getting past the kanji barrier is the single greatest obstacle for most japanese
language learners. Once you're comfortable with kanji, picking up new vocab is trivial.

For example, many manga have the pronunciation written down for every kanji.
With RTK, you'll already know what the kanji mean. You'll just have to commit the
pronunciation to memory. MUCH easier than struggling to remember each kanji AND
pronunciation.

Anyway, good luck.

Get RTK1 (or RTK-lite) done asap and move on. If, however, you're getting burned out on kanji and want to do something else, such that studying that something else isn't really going to slow you down, go for it. But really the goal should be to finish your kanji study asap. The method is only really helpful if you do it in a short period of time... if you let it drag on, you're just wasting time not learning japanese.

The main reason why i think you should do kanji before learning vocab is so that you can learn vocab in the full kanji it is normally written with. No learning words in hiragana because you don't know the kanji yet (or even more silly, writing one kanji in kanji and the other in hiragana because you only know one so far). So, if you do want to start on vocab on the side, focus on vocab that is both common (N5 list etc) and only uses kanji you've done so far.

For the love of god, don't do RTK3 before you've learned japanese to at least a moderate level, that's just an enormous waste of time. Most of us skipped it all together. There are some common kanji in there (which you can learn separately) but it's mostly full of tonnes of plant and animal kanji, which you'll either never have heard of, or are more commonly written in katakana anyway. They're good to know, but not before you you can string together a sentence.

Start working on you pronunciation now, especially if you are planning on going to Japan this year. Don't work to much about compounds, as you progress you will learn them. There are books that are designed to help you work on your pronunciation.

This is very helpful, everyone--thanks very much.

I think some of it depends on how quickly you're going through RTK. Knowing kanji from RTK won't help you at all with being able to have a basic conversation. I would definitely want to spend some time on practical survival Japanese before travelling, but like someone else said, keep that study separate from your RTK study.

chamcham Wrote:Getting past the kanji barrier is the single greatest obstacle for most japanese language learners.

I personally find grammar very difficult. It seemed, kanji was something you had to get used to and with the right system (RTK) it works out finally, however, grammar is just somewhat myserious and 微妙 for me sometimes...

The grammar seems logical but completely different from the way of thinking we're used to. It's really hard to learn to think like a Japanese, but I don't think it's harder than learning kanji.

If kanji are difficult then this is only because of the volume of characters you need to learn. The process of learning those is purely mechanical and doesn't involve special cognitive abilities. Grammar is different. You probably can quickly learn simple phrases like:
図書館へ行った。
図書館へ一時半に友達と行った。

but the moment you try to read/write/say something of a greater complexity it's getting hard. The simple reason is that structures that you are familiar in your native language are not the structures of Japanese sentences. English, French, German, or any other Indo-European language, share many commonalities that make learning within those languages a relatively simple task. With Japanese you need to acquire a skill of building/recognising sentences in a completely new way - and this is the hard bit which takes some time and persistence.

I know I'm preaching against the choir here, but don't you find it odd that you are trying to learn a language, but are avoiding learning the pronunciation?

Frankly, learning how to pronounce things and how to communicate with people should be your number one goal! I realize kanji is very useful, but it's still just an arbitrary system developped for writing -- you'll learn it as you go along anyway. But if you can't communicate with people, I don't see where the fun is. You'll be in Japan; you'll be able to read some of the signs, but you won't be able to communicate with anyone! Doesn't that sound odd?

AlexandreC Wrote:You'll be in Japan; you'll be able to read some of the signs, but you won't be able to communicate with anyone! Doesn't that sound odd?

I don't think anybody is saying *don't* learn pronunciation. Just to learn to recognise the characters first, to enable you to become literate when you start focusing on the actual language itself. It's easy to start just learning the language phonetically with romaji or kana, but then you'll never be literate, or at least kanji will seem like some sort of barrier. Best to get it out the way early, goes the theory.

AlexandreC Wrote:I know I'm preaching against the choir here, but don't you find it odd that you are trying to learn a language, but are avoiding learning the pronunciation?

Frankly, learning how to pronounce things and how to communicate with people should be your number one goal! I realize kanji is very useful, but it's still just an arbitrary system developped for writing -- you'll learn it as you go along anyway. But if you can't communicate with people, I don't see where the fun is. You'll be in Japan; you'll be able to read some of the signs, but you won't be able to communicate with anyone! Doesn't that sound odd?

He just said that he wanted to be literate, didn't even mention anything about his motivation or ability to speak.

Getting RTK done fast is great because then you can move over completely to the readings and vocabulary and start focusing on it, instead of having to do less of both at the same time. Also, since extensive reading is really the most effective way to learn through input (well, in my opinion), it's great to have RTK out of the way since a lot of very common characters appear at the later stages of the book.

I am not a great fan of Heisig at all. I don't say it does not work at all, it does for some people. Not for me, thank you very much. If you want to learn that 九 is baseball, 田 brains, or 里 a computer - go for it.

What I did:
1. I learned about pronunciation - I mean phonemes, long-short vowels, pitch accent, etc.
2. I learned kana
3. I learned all the bushu and their JAPANESE names.
4. I learned stroke order rules
5. I learned basic grammar (-u, -ru verbs, i-adjectives, the copula (de aru, etc), plain, polite, honorific/humble forms, basic sentence patterns

I took texts I liked - audio + transcript + translation.
+ mouse-over pop-up dictionary.
I just kept on listening and reading and NEVER reviewing anything.

And that's about it.

I knew about Heisig and srs but I didn't like the approach, I don't believe in learning anything without listening. And I need something that appeals to me right now and here, be it a poem, a phrase from a movie, a fairy tale, or a joke.


As to when you should start speaking. Any time you feel like it. Damn it.

Ladies and gentlemen,
didn't I enjoy myslef!

Haha you sure did!

buonaparte Wrote:If you want to learn that 九 is baseball, 田 brains, or 里 a computer - go for it.

Meh, you can't say that! None of those meanings pop into my head when I see those kanji by themselves like that!

buonaparte Wrote:What I did:
1. I learned about pronunciation - I mean phonemes, long-short vowels, pitch accent, etc.
2. I learned kana
3. I learned all the bushu and their JAPANESE names.
4. I learned stroke order rules
5. I learned basic grammar (-u, -ru verbs, i-adjectives, the copula (de aru, etc), plain, polite, honorific/humble forms, basic sentence patterns

I took texts I liked - audio + transcript + translation.
+ mouse-over pop-up dictionary.
I just kept on listening and reading and NEVER reviewing anything.

And that's about it.

Awesome. Except that I would just stick RTK in there myself

buonaparte Wrote:I knew about Heisig and srs but I didn't like the approach, I don't believe in learning anything without listening. And I need something that appeals to me right now and here, be it a poem, a phrase from a movie, a fairy tale, or a joke.

As to when you should start speaking. Any time you feel like it. Damn it.

I feel exactly the same, I just think that while RTK was a bit like a chore, it was great smaller step that made it a lot easier to get into reading and learning vocabulary. Also, SRSs are just tools you can use to whatever extent you like anyway.

buonaparte Wrote:http://i43.tinypic.com/14wag7c.gif

That's so damn cute!

Just as a quick question:
If you learn Heisig's primitives, is learning the bushu really that important (since a quick look at a list of bushu tells me that Hesig took a lot of his primitives from the list)?

And if it is, how does one going about it efficiently?
Do they use rote memorization? Or did someone invent RTK 1.5 for bushu?

There are not that many bushu, they can be rote memorized easily enough. You already know most of them if you've completed RTK1 and just need to put a name to them.

It's not particularly important to memorize them, but it has a some value. You can look up characters by radical name (or a list of radical names!), and talk about character structure in words, and such.
I wouldn't make it a priority though... unless, of course, you were going to use bushu -instead- of heisig, then it's a priority!
Or if you were planning to save money by getting an electronic dictionary with no handwriting input function.
Or you just like studying kanji.

Heisig's primitives are just most of the regular radicals and some clusters of them put together because it's more effective to see them as single parts and give them single names.

I think he always mentions and tries to link with the real meaning of a radical when he introduces a different one. Like calling 隹 "turkey" instead of the "small bird" or "old bird" or whatever it is. I still remember that the actual meaning of the radical is not actually turkey, so I think I'm fine.

buonaparte Wrote:I don't believe in learning anything without listening.

Deaf people everywhere would like to have a word with you.

It's funny, though, because I don't believe in learning anything without reading. (Blind people everywhere would like to have a word with me, I'm sure).

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:There are not that many bushu, they can be rote memorized easily enough. You already know most of them if you've completed RTK1 and just need to put a name to them.

And some of them are hilarious, like ワ冠, ウ冠, etc.

AlexandreC Wrote:But if you can't communicate with people, I don't see where the fun is.

Here's an answer:

Quote:At first, I assumed that his ambition was to speak all of his languages—otherwise, what’s the point of shadowing? This turned out to be wrong. I also assumed that he might like to talk to people. That, too, wasn’t right. His goal is to read literature from all over the world, classic and contemporary, in the original languages. He had shown me a recent novel by a Dutch author. “Reading this puts me in tune with the living spirit, the resonance of the language,” he’d said, waving the book, “not being able to go to Amsterdam and go into a café and get a hash brownie and have them think that I’m one of them, not an American tourist.” He wants to explore his consciousness, to encounter a language as a living entity, and to collect the esoteric knowledge of these encounters. “Most of the languages I’ve studied I’ve never spoken, and I probably never will,” he told me. “And that’s okay with me. That’s nice if you can do that, but it’s rare that you have an interesting conversation in English. Why do I think it would be any better in another language?”

For me it's
1. listening to and reading good poetry, stories, and novels.
2. watching good movies.

zigmonty Wrote:

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:There are not that many bushu, they can be rote memorized easily enough. You already know most of them if you've completed RTK1 and just need to put a name to them.

And some of them are hilarious, like ワ冠, ウ冠, etc.

What's hilarious about katakana?

Marble101 Wrote:Just as a quick question:
If you learn Heisig's primitives, is learning the bushu really that important (since a quick look at a list of bushu tells me that Hesig took a lot of his primitives from the list)?

And if it is, how does one going about it efficiently?
Do they use rote memorization? Or did someone invent RTK 1.5 for bushu?

Heisig's primitives aren't designed to replace the Kanji radicals, they are for making learning and remembering Kanji easier. It is the individual's choice on whether or not to learn the radicals. However, try not to mistake a primitive for a radical since every Kanji has only one radical.

@mamster

You haven't said what your Japanese level is, or reason for going to Japan, so I'm just going to suggest this for now. My local B&N had a copy, so it shouldn't be too hard to find if you wanted to look at it first:

Japanese/English Bilingual Visual Dictionary
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese%C3%A2-Eng...189&sr=8-4

Nicely laid out, with color photos throughout instead of drawings, recently published, and has probably far more than the average person really needs to know. (I also think it's fun to look at/study.) Learn the words you obviously need to know (ex: toilet; probably won't be needing the words related to carpentry). It shouldn't interfere too much with RTK, and if it does, so what? It's still repetition of kanji, which can only really help cement them in your memory, and you learned a few useful words along the way.

I Agree pretty much entirely with Buonaparte except that learning bushu names isn't a priority nor is learning about minute details of pronunciation right at the start.

One undeniable thing, is that you are spending a bunch of time learning something that is not Japanese. And the value of learning it is questionable. It seems important, because when you test yourself on the kanji from the keyword, you get that aha I remembered the kanji feeling. But in reality when you actually have japanese text sitting in front of you, it's actually a much less useful skill than just having learned a heap of vocabulary and all the readings that go with it. It's pointless commenting on the usefulness of RTK without considering the other things you could have done with your time.