I poked around the forum some, but I couldn't find any posts about this (maybe I'm not looking hard enough) I'm still on 1042-ish (喚), and any thoughts from people who've finished would be welcome. Actually any thoughts at all.

There are three characters/primitives that include a 冂 with the 儿 inside. All of the kanji I could find in the JDIC contained one of these three characters:

冏 奐 鬲

鬲 means tripod apparently, but it looks like there's another tripod up ahead. On the page for tripod (鼎) gfb345 suggests substituting three legged kettle freeing up tripod for 鬲.

冏 奐 both mean bright or clear. On top of that we have 明. All three can be read あかるい (明 is the one that is used). I'm still trying to come up with keywords for these two... I'll post them if I think of some good ones.

Let me know what you think, especially if I'm making more problems for myself than I'm solving.

I didn't do RtK3, and even though it's included, I really don't think I've ever come across 鼎 in real life. Leave 鬲 as it is, and by the time you need to use 鼎, you'll be long past these keyword worries.

As for 冏 奐. I dont' know why you'd bother coming up with keywords for them. I've never seen them "mean" anything in real life. I didn't use any keyword for 冏, and 奐 was just "four bound up dogs" for me like other people's suggestions.

Unless it's an actual kanji that you'll see in real life, don't worry about the keyword or meaning, think about a memorable image. Otherwise you're overcomplicating it up for yourself way too much.

I've actually stumbled across 鼎談 a couple of times, but never 鼎 by itself.
It's definitely not a common used kanji, that's for sure!

Asriel Wrote:奐 was just "four bound up dogs" for me like other people's suggestions.

I find this complicated too! I guess I'm looking for a way to solidify 3, in my opinion, unrelated concepts: four, bound, and dog, into one primitive. Otherwise 喚 will have 4 elements.

Asriel Wrote:Unless it's an actual kanji that you'll see in real life, don't worry about the keyword or meaning, think about a memorable image. Otherwise you're overcomplicating it up for yourself way too much.

That's a good point. I think I might still benefit from a key word for 奐, but trying to keep the meaning, now that you mention it, is definitely over complicating things.

On an unrelated note, Zorlee, I love your avatar

My 'four bound up dogs' went with the specific image of four dogs 'bound up' in a fight with each other, each one biting the tail of another to form a snarling ring, but I only did RTK1 so it only came up for a handful of characters. Still, it solved the problem - 1 image, no need to worry about a new keyword.

the_pudding Wrote:I guess I'm looking for a way to solidify 3, in my opinion, unrelated concepts: four, bound, and dog, into one primitive. Otherwise 喚 will have 4 elements.

That's fine, and thats what I did with the dogs -- I had an image of sled dogs "bound" together pulling a sleigh.

How about something like a 4-headed Cerberus or something? It doesn't have to be a keyword, just an image, just like SomeCallMeChris said.

Asriel Wrote:That's fine, and thats what I did with the dogs -- I had an image of sled dogs "bound" together pulling a sleigh.

I know this is totally anti-Heisig, but I just don't think in images. At least not unless I want to spend 20 min on each character. I'm probably just been doing it wrong...

Cerberus is a great idea though, thanks! I think I'll go with that. It's not a keyword so much as a single concept I was looking for, if that makes any sense.

I don't actually close my eyes and conjure up a perfectly visualized tableau, but I do run through an imagining of my story as I would do if I was reading a book - or perhaps a little more like recalling events as I tell a story, or somewhere in-between, if that makes sense. Heisig said it was about 'imaginative' memory and not visual, and I took that to heart... so I don't really stress whether my imagination conjures up images, sounds, smells, or what have you. Some stories remained pretty much mere wordplay, and as warned, those do have a tendency to fade awfully quickly, but sometimes it doesn't matter - if they held long enough to imprint the character I could care less if I lost the story.