Hi, I'm going over all of the kanji covered in RtK1~3 one final time as I put them into Supermemo. I found this site and wasn't aware at how useful reading other people's stories can be, so I'm modifying (and creating many new) stories I used previously to remember kanji covered in RtK3. I was wondering if there was a group of people that would like to learn more kanji beyond what is covered in the RtK books. Meaning, we create new frames "Frame 3008: ????," "Frame 3009: ????," and so on. Maybe create an ongoing "RtK4" list or something.

I love learning kanji, and I also really like the input of others when creating stories.

Is there a wiki group of something we could start, or could this web site be "expanded" or something to allow for what I think I'm asking about?

I know little about how web page design and what not "work," exactly, but I don't want to stop my kanji journey!

There are some discussions about this, but nothing has really developed as of yet.

I've been planning to make a list of Beyond RTK 3 kanji that I've encountered in my readings, but I was going to wait until I'd gained some momentum before sharing it. 　Only got 4 so far : )
Just for the heck of it, here are the four I've got so far and the keywords I've assigned to them:

敖 - sandbox - soil + set free　 (this rarely used kanji is associated with playing)
set your children free to go play in the soil out behind your house, which you affectionately call "the sandbox"

贅 - cushy - sandbox + shells (first character in the compound 贅沢)
rich people (with a lot of shells ) often own cushy apartments, complete with sandboxes for their kids (and those of course are supplied with shells and cushions )

蜘 - spidey sense - insect + know (this together with the next one forms ...)
like an insect with tiny hairs attuned for such things, spider man knows in advance when an attack is coming at him thanks to his spidey-sense

蛛 - spidersuit - insect + vermillion (...the word for spider 蜘蛛)
before he can go fight crime, spiderman must don his vermillion, insect-pattern spidersuit to disguise himself

I think it would be hard to get together a web application to share stories because first of all, people are unlikely to agree on any certain set of keywords or ordering for the characters.

I think that when you get to that stage.. perhaps not strictly assigning keywords might be a good idea. There seems to be lots of people here who would wish to alter existing RTK1 keywords to suit their own needs, maybe you could allow students to assign their own. Even though I'm sure there would be a general consensus regarding the majority of characters.

It could be done in such a way that, similar to how we now share stories, where you could share new/potential keywords.

Yes, because there is no set list to go off of, it makes things difficult, but studying stuff in groups makes it easier on the individual lost in the kanji jungle (Not to say it's not fun to do, it just saves time, which I love to save). Just having a few stories to look off while I learn new characters is making RtK 3 so much easier for me, I would love for this style of learning to continue after these 3,000 are Supermemo'ed.

There were discussions about this a year ago, someone started a wiki, and not surprisingly, nothing happened, because it would be a huge amount of work to make a "RTK4" that picks up the 3000+ kanji not in RTK1-3. To me, the best way forward is something which is not perfect, but could be done with little additional effort so that we could have it now rather than waiting who knows how many more years.

For example, Fabrice could add all of the kanji into the system without keywords (or the keyword could be just the number of the card) and with little or no regard to order. These should be in a "non-RTK" category, just the way RTK1 and RTK3 are separated now. I think very few people are interested in going through all of the non-RTK kanji, but it sure would be nice to be able to review some non-RTK kanji and share stories on this site. People could indicate the keyword they used within their stories. On the "study" page you would have to search by the kanji rather than by keyword. Over a period of time, the keyword used by the favorite story (perhaps as indicated by voting) could become the "official" keyword for that card.

The only complication I see doing this is that the way the site is set up now, there is no way to add just one card here and there at random (e.g., add card 3189, 3523 and 3590 into your stack without adding the cards in between).

Sounds like an interesting idea, but brose brought up an important point, with the numbering system. Since I have no idea about programing, I don't know if it's possible for this side; and if Fabrice wants to have something like a RtK4 at all.

I'd think that making lists according to topics might be helpful, like the list of fish-names that was mentioned somewhere else in this forum. Or a list on cooking and cooking-utensils, or on electronics,or...or...or. That way people can better choose what they want to learn, and it might be possible to spot a pattern of kanji, that are asked for most often.

Since I'm still a long way off of finishing RTK1, let alone RTK2 or 3, this is just a little comment. I'd be interested in kanji-lists related to biological/pharmaceutical/medicinal sciences, though.

A possible way of doing this would be to take the list of kanji by frequency (http://nozaki-lab.ics.aichi-edu.ac.jp/no...kanji.html), remove the RTK kanji and then make a list including the 1000 most frequent ones.

edit: I noticed that this list only covers 3000 kanjis, so it's probably going to be of limited usefulness.

Just to bring this topic back up.....
Someone on the forum mentioned this site:

http://www.kanjinetworks.com/

which is...

"Covering 5,400 Chinese characters as used in Japan"

Well, if we could some how use this site/data and add it to RevTK, we would have a pretty strong BEYOND RTK3 section I believe.....

Here is a pretty sick list of non joyo kanji

http://www.sarumayo.com/2005/standard-kanji.html

zazen666 Wrote:Here is a pretty sick list of non joyo kanji

http://www.sarumayo.com/2005/standard-kanji.html

This is yet another reproduction of KANJIDIC, and though the page author gives acknowlegment to "Mr. Yamamoto," neither he nor Mr. Yamamoto seems to give credit to Mr. Breen.

Frankly, I'm a little alarmed that people who have finished RTK3 still need more kanji. What types of stuff are you reading? And to what extent are you finding that you still need more kanji?

howdycowdy Wrote:What types of stuff are you reading?

Anything, everything, it's an obsession.

howdycowdy Wrote:And to what extent are you finding that you still need more kanji?

Not hugely, you can "get by" with only a handful of non-joyo characters, but if you truly want to be able to read everything, you will need more than RTK3.

Obivously the majority of day to day texts will be mainly Joyo characters, but if you like literature, or want to read more complicated texts, the more characters you know the better.

Also, if you plan on taking higher-level Kanken exams, you'll need over 6000 characters for 1kyuu (JIS2). That's every character in KANJIDIC.

i think that going beyond RtK 3 is a good idea for the serious hardcore learners that not only wanna delve into 古典 but also study for the 準1級 and the 1級 of the 漢検. it's also good practice for those studying Chinese (anyone here? except me) and those plain nutty (anyone here? besides me)? anyways, just like khatzumoto says from AllJapaneseAllTheTime, the process never stops. i propose that we go through the list here: http://www.sarumayo.com/2005/condensed-list.html and we come up with the list (theoretically 3,348 i believe) of remaining kanji outside the RtK3. anyone with me on this?

I'm one who is in it for the long haul. I'm never going to stop learning new ones (if I can just manage to retain the ones I *have*).

So, I qualify as that sort of nut. I'm also starting to look at Mandarin. The silly reason for that is that I'm already learning a lot of them anyway in my first love (Japanese), and then there are more native speakers of Mandarin than any other language on earth. So, it should come in handy in this globalized world of ours.

That seems to be an interesting list. Thanks for the link.

I just learn the kanji beyond RTK1 as I come across them. When you use context and vocab(on top of the experience of learning 2000+ kanji prior), it's about as easy as learning a new word.
I think people use rare kanji more often online...and I keep seeing ones that aren't in RTK3, so...I don't plan to use RTK3.

I'm also hoping that Fabrice will add a beyond-RtK3 part. In combination with an enhanced Alter sequence script, that would give a pretty powerful tool. Unless of course Fabrice develops something of his own.

I've gathered some numbers on the sites mentioned in this and other threads to (hopefully) give a clearer picture of what we're getting into. I compare the kanji covered to those in RtK1+3 and check whether they include the missing kanji for JLPT1 as noted by Katsuo, and JimmySeal's short list.

+ The Jim Breen list mentioned by Pangolin
2900 unique kanji, 243 doubles. Lacks 4 RtK1 kanji and 289 RtK3, as such it adds 186 kanji not in RtK1 or 3. Has the missing JLPT1 kanji, but none of JimmySeal's.
The reason for the high number of doubles is that 80% of the Other JLPT1 kanji and Blay kanji are also in the Kanji for use in names.

+ The Standard Kanji list mentioned by zazen666
6355 unique kanji, no doubles. Contains all of RtK1, 3, the missing JLPT1 and JimmySeal's. Adds 3348 kanji to RtK1+3.

+ The Kanji Networks list mentioned by zazen666
6284 unique kanji, 4 doubles. Lacks 3 RtK1 and 75 RtK3 kanji. Contains the missing JLPT1 and JimmySeal's. Adds 3355 kanji to RtK1+3. Contains 1068 kanji not in the Standard Kanji List.

Which means that based on these resources, the true kanji master would have 7423 kanji under his belt.

One thing I noticed is that the Sakura text editor I'm using has problems displaying many of the non-Standard Kanji List kanji Kanji Networks adds, including the forked branch 丫 (which looks like a capital Y in case it doesn't display properly).

Jarvik7 Wrote:Also, if you plan on taking higher-level Kanken exams, you'll need over 6000 characters for 1kyuu (JIS2). That's every character in KANJIDIC.

Of course, that's also well beyond what most native speakers are able to handle. Even among natives, the only people who can do 1 kyuu are kanji nuts. There's nothing wrong with learning that many kanji if that's what you want to do, but you certainly don't need that many to master Japanese at a native level. (Besides, there's so much else to mastering Japanese than memorizing kanji.)

- Kef

I'm curious. After RtK 3, what is to stop people from using Kanken resources to increase their knowledge? I know little about these, but I am assuming they include various readings and example sentences which can be put in an SRS. I understand the attractiveness of an on-line resource like Reviewing the Kanji but at some point, it seems to me, peoples' needs for kanji diverge. Everyone needs the Joyo kanji; the extra bunch in RtK 3 are the most commonly useful of the rest (at least, in the eyes of Heisig and his co-author). But as for the remaining 3- to 4000, unless you are a true otaku and want to learn them all methodically just because they exist, the odds are that everyone is going to go his or her own way. This is the way AJATT recommends proceeding: learn according to interest. Since we all have different interests, we might not agree on which kanji to pursue further.

Also, I don't mean to start an argument here, but aren't we fetishizing this site? Fabrice has made an incredible resource for us kanji-learners; amazingly, he continues to make it even more useful and powerful. But at some point, users need to go their own paths. Just a thought .

howdycowdy Wrote:Frankly, I'm a little alarmed that people who have finished RTK3 still need more kanji. What types of stuff are you reading? And to what extent are you finding that you still need more kanji?

Way late response to this thread, but

儚い　はかない　(person+ dream) this is on TV all the time because songrwriters use it all the time. It means 'denied hope'　Recently it was a lyric in 366日, the song by HY. And it has hit the charts before in a song by Cocco 強く儚い者たち.(つよく　はかない　ものたち)

as mentioned 贅沢　ぜいたく　which means fancy and special. This is also on TV ads all the time.

So not reading even gets you past RTK3 easily. A lot of the RTK3 Kanji has been chosen because of what Heisig studies apparently, because you never see those kanji in the real world, out side of buddhist texts . And he has ignored some kanji that are very common in normal life.

I'm doing RTK3 now. Thanks to cb4960's great Rikaichan mod I thought that after RTK3 I could add easily non-RTK kanji whenever I found them. I checked and non-RTK kanji have their own study page and you can add and share stories, but I couldn't add the kanji to my study pile. Is it a bug with the site or my browser? Or is it that Fabrice has plans for creating a "Premium" RevTK and free users won't be supposed to be allowed to add non-RTK kanji (which I think would be totally fair)?


[/necromancy FTW]