If anyone wants to view the spreadsheet as it's being updated then just click on this link:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p...UHNQ&gid=0

As updates are made, the published version that the above links to will also change. So if anyone has any suggestions about the structure of the sheet then feel free to look at the above.

wrightak Wrote:synewave, maybe I'm interpretting Fabrice's suggestions differently but I thought that as far as possible we just wanted words, and example phrases would only be used when necessary. In the new columns you put in, some of the entries you've inserted include:

RTK - kunyomi word RTK - kunyomi reading English meaning
墓に花を供える はかにはなをそなえる place flowers on a grave
鏡に映る かがみにうつる be reflected in a mirror
（洗濯物を）外に干す （せんたくものを）そとにほす hang out (the laundry)

One word keywords would be the optimum. But all these "words" could refer to different kanji if a bit of context isn't included.

i.e.

そなえる　ー　備える　／　供える　／　具える

うつる　ー　写る　／　移る　／　映る

ほす　ー　干す　／　補す　／　保す

Admittedly, ほす does make me think 干す。But for うつる in particular (to my knowledge anyway) they are all common. So unless we are going to include English prompts, some additional info in JP is gonna be required.

Potentially we could have something like:

うつる　ー　not　移る　／　写る

Personally I don't like this solution though.

EDIT: typo

Yeah, I agree. What do you think about keeping the sentence and the word separate?

So we now have three columns for koohii.com. Here's an example:

N O P
映る　鏡にうつる　かがみにうつる

The first column (column N) has the Japanese keyword chosen for that kanji. The second column (column O) has the explanatory phrase if needed. For this column, we need to make sure that the keyword part of the phrase is in hiragana and not kanji. If Fabrice chooses to use the entry in this column as a prompt on a flash card then it's going to do no good if the entire thing is in kanji already! The third column (column P) has the entire example phrase in hiragana. If possible, column N should be used for prompts on koohii.com. If disambiguation is needed, column O can be used. In any case, I think column O is always better than column P. Do you agree?

I suppose we could have a fourth one giving the keyword in hiragana but there should be some software out there that will do that for us. (I guess that the same software could be used with column P).

The sentences sheet contains lots of longer sentences that I've inputed in much the same fashion. They might be too long for koohii.com though.

Would it be possible for this to be a "sticky" for easy access?

How are folks figuring out which words make the best keywords? For example, wrightak chose 許諾　for 351 Consent. It's not a word I know. Are people drawing words from particular lists? I wish I could help out with this project, but I just don't have the background. I learned many of the words I know as a kid and I just learned the other day that 固い　and 硬い　are different words. If you are basically illiterate like I am, they are one word with different shades of meaning.

Laura Wrote:How are folks figuring out which words make the best keywords?

I'm choosing 訓読み reasons posted further up the thread.

For words that only have 音読み I'm skipping them for now till we decide on a common solution.

Laura Wrote:How are folks figuring out which words make the best keywords? For example, wrightak chose 許諾　for 351 Consent. It's not a word I know. Are people drawing words from particular lists?

許諾 was a word that I chose and it's not necessarily the one that Fabrice will import into this site. The same goes for everything in the "Word 1" column. I chose it because 諾 has no kun-yomi, the meaning of 許諾 is similar to consent and it is seems to be a common word. I'm not drawing any of the words from particular lists.

By the way, a lot of the words that I've added have example sentences on the next sheet. You can check them out to help get a better understanding of what the word means.

Laura Wrote:I wish I could help out with this project, but I just don't have the background.

To anyone who's interested in this thread: even if you don't think you can add very much to the spreadsheet, every little helps so please send me an email if you'd like to get involved. There's no "background" that's needed. Even if you don't want to edit the spreadsheet, I can invite you as a 'viewer', which means that you can look at the spreadsheet and take the data from it.

"許諾 was a word that I chose and it's not necessarily the one that Fabrice will import into this site."
wrightak, I am not taking issue with your choice of the keyword word for "consent" and I have no trouble doing a little work to solidify the meaning of a new word. What I am trying to do for myself is figure out how to continue adding kanji to my stacks using as many Japanese keywords as possible. I am finding that when I learn a new kanji using a Japanese keyword, I am often able to read compound using the kanji immediately. If I use an English keyword it's as if there are large stop signs sprinkled into the text I am trying to read. Stop: think of story. Stop: What is the keyword: Stop: Can I relate the keyword to the meaning of this kanji. This seems to be because using English keywords causes me to think in English. Currently, I am using a mish-mash hybrid method using some Japanese keywords. Learning with Japanese keywords for someone at my level takes longer and I have revised my estimate of how long RTK1 will take me, but it has also caused me to aim towards a higher level of literacy than I was previously contemplating. When I started to work with Japanese keywords, it was if my brain started to make all sorts of connections on it's own: new kanji to Japanese keyword, to other compounds with same kanji, to related kanji to related words using different compounds. I am exited about this project! Having a program which allowed people to share stories for Japanese keywords would be a big help.

Looks like there is somewhere between about 700-1000 RTK1 kanji without kunyomi.

What do you think is the best way to deal with these bad boys?

For my part, as I've already said, I think it's perfectly sensible to use 熟語 keywords, which ideally:
1. resemble the Heisig keyword and
2. are fairly common and useful

I think 熟語 are also desirable in situations where the kun-yomi has a lot of homonyms.

JimmySeal Wrote:I think 熟語 are also desirable in situations where the kun-yomi has a lot of homonyms.

熟語 themselves aren't free from the homonym problem.

Absolutely not. But at least with 熟語, unlike kun-yomi, you usually have a lot of options to choose from.

Laura Wrote:wrightak, I am not taking issue with your choice of the keyword

Sure, I didn't think that you were. I just thought that I'd make that clear.

Laura Wrote:What I am trying to do for myself is figure out how to continue adding kanji to my stacks using as many Japanese keywords as possible. I am finding that when I learn a new kanji using a Japanese keyword, I am often able to read compound using the kanji immediately. If I use an English keyword it's as if there are large stop signs sprinkled into the text I am trying to read. Stop: think of story. Stop: What is the keyword: Stop: Can I relate the keyword to the meaning of this kanji. This seems to be because using English keywords causes me to think in English.
...
I am exited about this project! Having a program which allowed people to share stories for Japanese keywords would be a big help.

I have very similar experiences with the English keywords. It's interesting getting people's points of view on this forum. Some people seem to have no problem at all flicking their mind from English to Japanese and back again. For me, it's a real headache and I'm glad I'm not the only one. It's one of the main reasons for me pursuing this.

Unless the idea gains a lot more popularity, I can't see Fabrice adding any facility for sharing Japanese keyword stories. Personally, I find that as long as my English story doesn't depend on some English word nuance, I can transfer it quite easily. For example, the scorpion dripping out it's poisonous pond works in either language but the baseball team and the car stuck in a rut doesn't. I sometimes need to adjust my stories in these cases.

synewave Wrote:Looks like there is somewhere between about 700-1000 RTK1 kanji without kunyomi.

What do you think is the best way to deal with these bad boys?

I think Jimmy summed it up. I listed 3 possible goals you could have when choosing a Japanese keyword. If there's no kun-yomi then the first is impossible and I think you have to find a balance between the other two. So ideally we should be looking for common words that are close in meaning to the Heisig keyword. 許諾 would be a good example for 諾 I think.

There are other goals that you could introduce but that I don't think should be.

1. Try to avoid clashes with other homonyms. - I think this could be easily solved with a short, simple example sentence, which we're doing for the kun-yomi words anyway. If these Japanese keywords are designed for RTK graduates, then they shouldn't be put off by this. I also think that Heisig's need to have complete uniqueness

2. Declare a preference for spoken or written Japanese - I don't think this is necessary. By having common words as a goal, most of the formal words will be taken out of the equation and ones that aren't will be worth knowing.

maybe some others...

Wrightak: I'm not sure whether my email made it to you. I'd be happy to contribute as time permits. Perhaps you could send me an email? I thought I'd start at the bottom and work up.

My two cents: It seems that you have two lists to create with quite different criteria: one of Japanese keywords and one for kunyomi practice. Would make sense to separate them? For e.g., the kunyomi list will not include all the kanji, doesn't need to reflect the keyword meanings, and (I think) should include more than one common reading for some kanji.

Also, no sense reinventing the wheel... I have an old textbook which includes a table of all the most common kunyomi words for each relevant kanji and gives an example sentence for each word (1000 or so). It would have been published around 1980. I wonder how difficult it would be to get permission to use some or all of that?

The textbook also has a table of common (ie newspaper) jukugo with a short definition (in Japanese) and an example sentence for each compound (2000 or so). This might be useful as a source for hint phrases for some keywords.

Question: in google docs, can you fix the column headings to top of the screen?

Jimmy and Synewave: (referring to text results from other thread) Impressive! Deepest bow. I very humbly offer my assistance here.

cheers

Thora Wrote:Wrightak: I'm not sure whether my email made it to you. I'd be happy to contribute as time permits. Perhaps you could send me an email? I thought I'd start at the bottom and work up.

Sorry for the delay to Thora and to everyone else who emailed me. They were all in my junk email box and I have added you all to the spreadsheet. We now have 5 editors and 1 viewer! The more the merrier I say.

Thora Wrote:My two cents: It seems that you have two lists to create with quite different criteria: one of Japanese keywords and one for kunyomi practice. Would make sense to separate them? For e.g., the kunyomi list will not include all the kanji, doesn't need to reflect the keyword meanings, and (I think) should include more than one common reading for some kanji.

I think that the best thing to do, rather than making the row orange as synewave suggested, would be to add another column. (Sorry, I hate adding more columns). Here we can label kanji with kun-yomi as "yes" and ones without as "no". Then we can easily filter it and make whatever lists we want.

Thora Wrote:Also, no sense reinventing the wheel... I have an old textbook...

Brilliant resource. What's the text book? If you're going to add words then I don't think there are any copyright concerns but if you add sentences to the second sheet, I think it would be best to put the source of the sentence in the appropriate column.

Thora Wrote:Question: in google docs, can you fix the column headings to top of the screen?

Yes, already done! Pity it doesn't do it in the webpage version.

I have mailed as well, but haven't been added as of right now. Sent a mail yesterday.

[ファブリス]

For kanji.koohii, we need only one prompt.

Something like this :

かがみに＿る

Then probably as a tooltip/popup, the english meaning with keyword in bold where possible:

be reflected in a mirror

That way you can look at the hint if you want to but once you remember it, you dont have to see any english in the prompt.

We could have the complete written form on the flip side of the card so after checking answer :

鏡に映る

It would be best if the prompt itself doesnt use any non-RTK1 kanji.

Sounds great.

ファブリス Wrote:Something like this :

かがみに＿る

But did you not mean

かがみにうつる

?

It adds quite a lot if you have to supply the word AND its kanji.

Also, by highlighting the word needed in blue, or underlining it, you can choose to give away the okurigana. Do we want to make the user know how to write the word, okurigana and all, or do we just want them to write the kanji?

wrightak Wrote:Also, by highlighting the word needed in blue, or underlining it, you can choose to give away the okurigana. Do we want to make the user know how to write the word, okurigana and all, or do we just want them to write the kanji?

I agree with wrightak that it "adds a lot if you have to supply the word AND its kanji" even if the Japanese keywords are for folk further along in their Japanese/kanji studies.

And I think it would be nice to challenge people to write the word okurigana and all. (It fits nicely with the "bag two birds with one stone" for this level of study put forward by Heisig.)

For example:

かがみにうつる

Thora Wrote:I have an old textbook which includes a table of all the most common kunyomi words for each relevant kanji and gives an example sentence for each word (1000 or so). [...] The textbook also has a table of common (ie newspaper) jukugo with a short definition (in Japanese) and an example sentence for each compound (2000 or so).

wrightak Wrote:Brilliant resource. What's the text book?

「よく使われる新聞の漢字と熟語」
豊田豊子 (Toyoko Tomoda)
凡人社　(Bonjinsha) 1981
ISBN4-89358-021-3 C3081
Y1500 paperback (20 years ago)

I contacted the publisher, but unfortunately wasn't able to get permission to use the sentences. I didn't check whether or not it is still in print. I did come across a "Kanji and Kanji Compounds" by the same professor on a 2004 reading list for a university course.

I'm getting confused again!

I thought we were talking about keywords to trigger giving the kanji, just in japanese rather than english. Well, the "fill-in-the-blank" doesn't even provide the keyword! The point of the sentence, I can see, is to make it unambiguous which homonym is indicated by a certain word which could be written several ways. I suppose you could have an option to "hide the keyword & it's okurigana" or "only hide the keyword" or "don't hide the keyword". That would let you work on multiple things at a time, but not (as Heisig says) Caesarian.

[ファブリス]

I of course meant "かがみにうつる" sorry for the typo.