nac_est and wright- thanks for the responses!

nac_est, i've seen you over at ajatt many a time and nice to see you here, too

wright, good to hear that the sentences are trustworthy! just making sure, ya know. as for helping out, i need some more time to think about it. if that list nac_est posted above is up-to-date, i can think of common words of the top of my head for some of those kanji (like 聖書[bible] for 聖).

i just started in on this thing last night. it's slower going than i expected but the slowest part is at first. i'm learning more vocab. than i expected to be honest. probably the slowest part is that i'm doing some heavy editing to suit my own wants and needs (no offense!). i'm going thru and making the hiragana prompt for the kanji that i'm being tested on only with the other parts of the word in kanji. also, i'm adding either sentences or definitions in japanese for the vocab. i don't know.

anyway, so far i'm hitting all my reviews and plugging away at about 50 cards an hr. let me tinker with this some more and then i'll let you know if i'll get in on this project. i'm probably gonna do my own cards for the missing kanji anyway, so it's not like i'd be doing extra work

お疲れ様です！

This is a great idea, I totally ditched the Heisig deck I had in favour of cramming vocabulary and grammar sentences. I could have written them all out as I tested them, but I would rather just get as many words into my head in as short a time as possible. I have a filthy amount of reviews each day though.

ok, sorry i'm throwing up all over this thread. haha.

i think i'm gonna stick with the english keywords and here's why...

1) it takes too much time.
a) the time i'm spending editing this deck, i could be spending doing sentences in my normal anki deck (the tanuki corpus), or reading or whatever.
b) the time i'm spending going back thru all the kanji. i wouldn't say this is a waste of time except for the fact that it totally defeats the purpose of an srs in the first place (which is to space reviews). so i'm going back thru and writing kanji that i don't NEED to write for another like 6 months.
c) time adjusting stories.

2) "if it ain't broke don't fix it"
i think somebody brought this up on page one or something. i'm not against change but only if it's necessary. as i see it there are only two benefits of moving to japanese keywords....
a) avoiding confusion over similar english keywords
b) avoiding keywords that you don't agree with
the other things you listed on your website as reasons to move to japanese keywords, wright, i think could just as easily be accomplished by reading and doing sentences. in other words, i think- for me- this would be a duplication of effort.

as for how i intend to avoid confusion over similar english keywords and keywords i don't agree with- i'll just edit those in my existing deck as they come up.

also, i may go ahead and start replacing keywords with japanese keywords if the kanji readily brings a japanese word to mind. but if i'm having to learn new vocab., i'm probably not gonna bother with it.

sorry to bale on the project and no disrespect to your work. i really appreciate what you've done. and i don't want to discourage anyone from doing what you're doing if it works for them. i just wanted to give my two cents on the thing. i've really gone back and forth on this for the past day and writing this has really helped me be convinced in my own mind.

thanks again!

One reason for which I've decided to use Japanese keywords is that I wanted to make my reviews finally self-consistent, that is, fully Japanese-Japanese. I had long since gone J-J with my sentences and dictionaries, and my kanji reviews were the only part that still had English in it.

PS

LloydGA Wrote:nac_est, i've seen you over at ajatt many a time and nice to see you here, too

Really? I must be spamming too much... See you there!

wrightak Wrote:Sorry, from your earlier post, it sounded like you got mixed up between 胃 and 腹 so I thought that the word 'abdomen' wasn't helping you to recall the story. If it helps then I can understand why you keep it in your card.

I know the meanings of both words, I know they are different, but I still recall 2 stories when the keyword abdomen pops up. There are many pairs like this that cause problems for me and for others, so I've read. There might even be some pairs that I have no trouble with, but would cause you problems in a similar situation.

The method I suggested is merely a way that one can reduce the confusion by adding something in Japanese, without having to replace a mnemonic.

wrightak Wrote:However, in order to write in Japanese (not read), I need to be able to write the kanji when thinking of the reading alone.

There are an awful lot of characters per reading. Your time may be better spent practicing writing out compounds, per Heisig's suggestion, than switching out keywords. Also, when practicing writing, you may be better off relying on your visual memory of the compound rather than the mapping of the character to the yomi. For writing out compounds, I find I rarely need to use keywords.

leosmith Wrote:There are an awful lot of characters per reading. Your time may be better spent practicing writing out compounds, per Heisig's suggestion, than switching out keywords. Also, when practicing writing, you may be better off relying on your visual memory of the compound rather than the mapping of the character to the yomi. For writing out compounds, I find I rarely need to use keywords.

What I meant by the reading was the reading for a Japanese word, and not a solitary kanji. The situation I was describing was when I'm writing out a sentence in Japanese, which I do often at work. For example, if I write out the note ＿＿さんに連絡, I already know the word 連絡 but I need to recall how to write it. When recalling how to write it, I don't want to have to remember the English keyword for 連 and 絡. So in my flashcards, I don't put English words in because I need to be able to write out the Japanese word, given the kana prompt alone. Hopefully this helps explain the rational for the Japanese keywords project a little better but of course, each to their own.

wrightak Wrote:if I write out the note ＿＿さんに連絡, I already know the word 連絡 but I need to recall how to write it. When recalling how to write it, I don't want to have to remember the English keyword for 連 and 絡. So in my flashcards, I don't put English words in because I need to be able to write out the Japanese word, given the kana prompt alone.

Ok, now I understand what you're doing, but I don't understand why. The keywords were never meant to be permanent, they are merely mnemonics that melt away when you start to read/write. If you have gone through RTK1, you can learn to read your vocabulary quickly, because you now have the ability to distinguish between characters. After learning to read, you can learn to write your vocabulary quickly, because you now have a good aural/visual memory of the words. While keywords can help you get over rough spots occasionally, in general, reading and writing is not about keywords. Forcing yourself to use keywords when you read and write is every bit as damaging as forcing yourself to translate during conversation, IMO.

I've heard many other arguments for use of Japanese keywords, some of them reasonable. A beginner who wants to pick up vocabulary while doing RTK1. Someone who wants to clean all the english out of their flashcards to feel more immersed. Someone who wants to pass an upper level kanji kentei. Etc. None of those reasons make sense in my situation, but may be fine for others. So I'm not saying the concept of using Japanese keywords is bad in general. I'm saying the specific reason you state is bad in general. But to each his own.

I would like to promote this project so that more people can make use of the work that I and others did but I feel I've done a pretty bad job of it in my dialogue with you Leo! I've been interested in your views though so I hope you don't mind.

I had an interesting email discussion with one of the contributors to the spreadsheet, who mentioned that the phrase 'Japanese Keywords' didn't accurately describe the nature of the project. A better description might be 'Japanese prompts' because the aim, as I stated on my web page, is to change the standard Heisig flash cards so that the question part contains only Japanese.

I think you're absolutely right about not thinking about keywords when you're writing or reading in Japanese. I wouldn't recommend that at all. All I am saying is that I am able to write much more fluently now that all of my Heisig flashcards have Japanese prompts rather than English ones. When I am writing a sentence, I don't think about my 'Japanese Keyword' for each kanji in the sentence. I think about the reading and the meaning and thanks to my efforts with this project, the shape of the kanji appears quite readily in my mind. Before this project, I would have the reading and the meaning in my mind, then I would have to recall the English keyword in order to remember my story and write the kanji.

Quote:The keywords were never meant to be permanent, they are merely mnemonics that melt away when you start to read/write

I don't know whether you've finished RTK 1 yet or not but if you have, how are the keywords going to melt away when they're still in your flashcards that you drill every day?

Also, if you write with a pen and paper regularly in Japanese (not on a computer), do you find yourself thinking about words like 'abdomen' and so forth in order to remember how to write the kanji? As I mentioned, I found that I did and I'm just wondering if I'm unique in this.

I don't think keywords tend to melt away if you continue drilling. Some seem permanently drilled in my mind already. Basically, I think there are only 2 possible solutions if you want to rid yourself of the English keywords as much as possible:

1. Stop drilling with keywords completely at some point, and move on to drilling sentences
and vocab only.


2. Switch to Japanese keywords.


If you continue drilling keywords (preferably Japanese), you may actually have a distinct advantage over native Japanese as far as not having to look up how to write a tough character as often because the stories, and therefore the primitives and their placement, will probably stick in your mind better that way.

Wrightak, I haven't had the same luck as you in being able to consistently reproduce handwritten characters without keywords/stories. However, when reading, I usually don't have any problems.

Dragg Wrote:Wrightak, I haven't had the same luck as you in being able to consistently reproduce handwritten characters without keywords/stories. However, when reading, I usually don't have any problems.

I agree with everything you said except that I think that 1. and 2. are very similar. The Japanese prompts are just vocab and sentences that have been chosen carefully. (Or at least an attempt at this)

I suspect that for many members of this forum, the vast majority of the writing practice that they do is with Heisig flashcards (be they with English prompts or otherwise). Everyone's really hungry to understand, and those who are in Japan want to be able to speak but motivation for (non electronic) writing is pretty low. Just as everyone aims to read, listen and speak in Japanese as well as they do in their native tongue, I think that people should also aim to achieve the same goal with writing.

I can read magazine articles and novels in Japanese but if someone sat me down with a pen and paper and asked me to write a short story in Japanese like I did in English as a kid, I'd struggle. It's definitely the weakest of the four disciplines for me and I suspect that I'm not alone. My efforts with this project have helped enormously though.

I keep telling myself I need to switch over to JP keywords... I've reached a saturation point with English keywords, and I feel like sometimes I flunk a word because I don't know the English keyword, even though I know it cold in Japanese. -_-

I'm hovering around the 1850-1900 mark in column 4. There are some words whose English keywords just don't resonate with me. It's frustrating. I know what the 麗 of 奇麗 means, but when I see "lovely," it just doesn't register with me.

So yeah, I'm definitely going to try to start switching over, because I'm starting to feel that while the English keywords certainly help a lot, it's time to replace them now.

But I think I'm going to change some JP keywords in order to help fill in gaps in my vocab. Especially now that I found "Building Word Power in Japanese." I'm thinking about using that and the JP keywords as a base for sneaking in all of those prefixes and suffixes... and also trying to nail down some extra verbs. Sort of a three birds/one stone idea.

Perhaps when one's sentence deck gets so big as to contain all of the RTK kanji (maybe even multiple times, covering more than one reading for each), then one could stop drilling individual characters without risks.
It's either that or keep on reviewing till you die... What do you think?

@nac_est
I think I'm going to start moving over to JP keywords, that's what I think.

But right now it seems like it would be tricky to juggle a JP keywords deck with a JP sentence deck. Then again, I do just fine with an EN keywords deck and a JP sentence deck.

I finished RTK1 about 3 months ago, and I've been doing KO since. I like KO. Nice source of sentences. I want to keep going with that and finish it, because it has a good vocab base.

The thing I'm trying to wrap my head around is how to switch to JP keywords as painlessly as possible, without doubling up on efforts I'm making in KO--I don't want to reinvent the wheel, or otherwise duplicate work.

On the upside, I already know a lot of the easy kanji, so that should make some bits of the process a lot faster. But I need to figure out what I'm going to put in those blank areas! (All I can say about that is hooray for EPWING dictionaries!)

The other idea I had was to raid the JLPT level 1/level 2 vocab lists for words that might show up, and toss those in as keywords wherever I can. 4 birds with one stone. Heh.

I need to keep thinking about this a little more, I think.

wrightak Wrote:I would like to promote this project so that more people can make use of the work that I and others did but I feel I've done a pretty bad job of it in my dialogue with you Leo!

Not at all. I'm sure many others find your work useful, and you should be commended for it. There are a lot of methods I don't find useful, but it doesn't mean they are wrong in any way.

wrightak Wrote:I think you're absolutely right about not thinking about keywords when you're writing or reading in Japanese. I wouldn't recommend that at all.

I see. I apologize for misunderstanding.

wrightak Wrote:All I am saying is that I am able to write much more fluently now that all of my Heisig flashcards have Japanese prompts rather than English ones.

That's great. I'm glad it works for you.

wrightak Wrote:When I am writing a sentence, I don't think about my 'Japanese Keyword' for each kanji in the sentence. I think about the reading and the meaning and thanks to my efforts with this project, the shape of the kanji appears quite readily in my mind.

I haven't written a sentence for a long time. But last time I did, in a class last December, I would hear the pronunciation, and an image would flash in my mind. No thinking about reading, meaning, or keyword. That's thanks to my reading and typing. The typing ability comes mostly from my reading ability. My reading ability comes mostly from RTK1.

wrightak Wrote:Before this project, I would have the reading and the meaning in my mind, then I would have to recall the English keyword in order to remember my story and write the kanji.

I tried a little bit of everything when I began reading and writing, and sometimes had similar problems. I never have these problems with my current method.

wrightak Wrote:I don't know whether you've finished RTK 1 yet or not but if you have, how are the keywords going to melt away when they're still in your flashcards that you drill every day?

I finished a long time ago. Unfortunately, my studies have been on hold for a while. So I've decided to continue drilling RTK1 since I enjoy it, and it's good practice. When I read, write, listen or speak, I don't think of keywords, or translate. In that sense, they have melted away. The exception is when I get new material, I sometimes end up translating/thinking of keywords a little, until I ged used to it. Then they slip away again.

wrightak Wrote:Also, if you write with a pen and paper regularly in Japanese (not on a computer), do you find yourself thinking about words like 'abdomen' and so forth in order to remember how to write the kanji?

Only sometimes when I do my RTK1 drills.

I've got your back, wrightak.

Wrightak-- I've been messing around with your Japanese keywords worksheet in Excel...

First, I listed everything by RTK1 number. Then I added all of the "missing" kanji. Then I added the RTK1 English keywords-- I got those from the RTK deck in Anki. Just exported it to tab-delimited, then imported to a worksheet.

Then I had an idea-- I grabbed my old copy of RTK2, went to the back, and started adding the RTK2 frame number to the worksheet. (It lists the kanji in RTK1 order in the back, with the corresponding RTK2 frame number... sort of. It skips a few hundred, for whatever reason.)

So then I saved it as a different file, because it's no longer just JP keywords, is it?

Then I took the RTK2 frame numbers, and resorted the list by RTK2... and you know what? If you really want to do the JP keywords thing... isn't it just easier to go with RTK2? (If you've finished RTK1, anyway.)

I think I'm still going to plunder JLPT and other vocab lists to replace some of Heisig's more questionable choices, but this way, you can use the RTK2 pure, semi-pure, impure, and downright nasty groups of radicals to just buzz through...and then you won't really need this site to review, and you'll have replaced all of the RTK1 keywords with proper Japanese.

I know this sounds sort of obvious, but, well, I just sort of realized this as I was messing around, ya know?

The only things that need to be done are to finish resorting the ones that for some bizarre reason didn't get frames in the index, and to change the vocab... Okay, changing the vocab to make sure you get the readings to work out is going to be a pain, but in the end, well, I hope it'll work.

I figure I'll create a sheet full of 2級, 3級, and 4級 JLPT vocab, and try to find good vocab out of that, first. I'm also going to skip using sentences for this, for now. I'll keep doing KO and other sentences, but this is just going to be my "RTK1" deck of sorts.

I think. >_>a

Rich, outstanding. A spreadsheet that has the JLPT and RTK numbers and RTK2 frames and RTK2 word choices reads just uber cool. In addition, I'm still of the opinion doing in 1k character blocks (JLPT 2, JLPT1, RTK3) works out more efficiently so such a spreadsheet is always useful to create that option for those that choose it.

I'm assuming that following the post RTK phase, each RTK character will have a card that's:

Kun keyword to Kanji (with example sentence)
On keyword to Kanji (with example sentence)
Kanji to Kun keyword
Kanji to On keyword

Only a thousand or so kanji will have kun keywords IIRC. So it won't be this massive deck.

In addition, seeing the popularity of Kanji.Odyssey on these boards, could those numbers be attached to the spreadsheet?

Keep in mind that RTK2 deals with *on*-yomi only. It barely touches kun-yomi. Okay, they get a chapter in the back, but for the most part, you'd be replacing RTK1 keywords with on-yomi keywords. (Hmm.)

Also, the JLPT vocab I picked up here: http://www.spurrymoses.com/jlpt/
is *not* a complete list, and the author does *not* vouch for accuracy. And the whole thing comes out at ~6700 words.

That monstrosity is in a separate sheet. I'm using it simply as a place to search first for a possible word to replace an RTK2 word that has the same sound-reading. So if I'm looking for a reading for チュウ, then the replacement word has to have the same reading (or else the whole thing is kind of pointless.)

When(ever) I finish, I'll have a deck like this:

RTK2 frame number
RTK1 frame number
Kanji
Example Word
Example Reading
RTK1 Keyword

Now, real problems are starting to pop up now that I'm dealing with the structure of RTK2 as well. The groups only work for so long... then readings are just based off of learning vocab. And some frames have 2 kanji, and other kanji have 2 readings in one frame.

It's kind of a mess.

It's going to take some time to finish indexing all of the kanji, too. And I still have Wrightak's chosen words/readings/sentences in there as well. Some are on-, but the kunyomi ones will throw the RTK2 thing off. So those will have to be replaced as well.

The main problem is that I have to go through the list and the book, frame by frame to find all of the RTK1 kanji that Heisig DIDN'T put in the cross-reference index. (Lord knows why, but it's starting to really irritate me.) I've got about 500 or so kanji to place, and then there are kanji that show up in multiple frames... bleh.

I wonder if the new version of RTK2 fixed that... that would definitely make life easier.

Ah, I see. You're going for an Uber-RTK spreadsheet. Guess it makes sense not to get bogged down in the Kun-yomi then.

Yeah, it's a mess at times.

Then there's RTK3, but let's not give you nightmares yet.

Heh, yeah. I just figure that getting RTK2 out of the way on-yomi wise and also getting away from using English keywords would kill 2 birds with one stone. Combine that with a little vocab I can use on the JLPT, and it looks like a winner to me.

I understand the urge to want to find the "holy grail" of decks, but I think I'm already adding enough complexity to the task as it is. I don't want to overwhelm my poor brain.

I figure I'll pick up the important kun-yomi through KO, and KO can also reinforce on-yomi I pick up while doing that. It should help me pick up the pace in KO, too.

That's part of the reason I was thinking about this, too-- my progress in KO has been slow for a while, and I want to try to find a way to make things go faster. I also want a better shot at JLPT 2 this December. I don't think my chances are good, but with a little extra effort, I might get close enough to hope. It doesn't matter much either way to me-- my ultimate goal is JLPT 1, so if I flunk 2, I won't sweat it too much. I just want more experience points.

And yeah, RTK3... *shudder* I have no idea how I'll approach that. That can wait for a year. Or two.

EDIT: And yeah, Wrightak's work has helped me a lot, because it will keep me from omitting any RTK1 kanji that either don't have on-yomi or aren't treated sufficiently in RTK2.

rich_f Wrote:First, I listed everything by RTK1 number. Then I added all of the "missing" kanji. Then I added the RTK1 English keywords-- I got those from the RTK deck in Anki. Just exported it to tab-delimited, then imported to a worksheet.

Hi Rich, I wish that you'd posted earlier because some of the work you've done has already been done for you. The master spreadsheet has all 2042 kanji, frame numbers, English keywords, on and kun readings and a range of candidate Japanese keywords for each kanji. If you go to my website, you can download it from there:

http://wrightak.googlepages.com/afterrtk1

Quote:Then I took the RTK2 frame numbers, and resorted the list by RTK2... and you know what? If you really want to do the JP keywords thing... isn't it just easier to go with RTK2? (If you've finished RTK1, anyway.)

An interesting proposal. If you decide to do this I'd be very interested to hear how it goes. Remember though that RTK 2 is designed to help you remember the readings and not the writing. This project is designed to help you continue practising the writing of the characters but using different prompts. So when you see the prompt, you have to remember your story and how to write the character.

When I started introducing Japanese prompts, I initially reviewed the kanji randomly and then by frequency and I eventually found that the RTK 1 ordering was the most efficient for me. I never considered the RTK 2 ordering so I'll be interested to see how that goes.

Also, this project was designed to supplement and not replace RTK 2 and other study methods so a large number of prompts are kun-yomi and not on-yomi. RTK 2 is almost exclusively on-yomi so after you've finished what you're doing, you'll have to figure out how to tackle the kun-yomi. With my deck of Japanese prompts, I've covered a huge number of kun-yomi readings and I can now move on to on-yomi with RTK 2 or whatever.

Creating a large data file with all of the Heisig information contained it will definitely be useful though so please make it generally available.

@Wrightak

Yeah, I used that file on your site as the basis. Then I added in "missing" kanji, keywords, etc. I started debating how to tailor the JP vocab in the cards to my needs, and then I started messing around with RTK2 frame numbers. That's when I realized that this could be a "two birds/one stone" deck to get through RTK2.

The process for now will be to keep reviewing RTK1 while I do RTK2 with this deck, then once I have this deck down, stop reviewing RTK1, because the RTK2 deck will contain all of the RTK1 kanji.

At first I wasn't too thrilled at the approach of RTK2, but the pure and semi-pure groups are very compelling arguments for the method. The whole "signal primitive" idea intrigues me. It's not perfect, but with Anki, it should be good enough. I'm not using it for sentences, just for keywords.

For sentences, I'm going to keep mining from KO, and use that to focus on kunyomi.

rich_f Wrote:Yeah, I used that file on your site as the basis. Then I added in "missing" kanji, keywords, etc.

This is the bit I don't quite understand because the master spreadsheet doesn't have any missing kanji or missing English keywords.

Quote:The process for now will be to keep reviewing RTK1 while I do RTK2 with this deck, then once I have this deck down, stop reviewing RTK1, because the RTK2 deck will contain all of the RTK1 kanji.

It sounds like an interesting approach and the only thing I'd say would be to never stop practising the writing - whether your prompts are English or Japanese. I agree that the RTK 2 methodology is very interesting but like you, I've been thinking hard about the best way to integrate it with everything else. Please let me know how it goes and share the data!

Ah, yeah, I used the old excel spreadsheet, and didn't use the google doc at first, so I created a lot of unnecessary work for myself.

I just finished adding all of the on and kunyomi from the master list on google.

I resorted everything by RTK1 numbers on my sheet, but forgot that I had multiple entries for some RTK kanji that show up 2-4 times in RTK2. So I had to do a lot of cut/paste/copy work to get everything lined up correctly. Still faster than typing it all in again.

Anyway, everything matches up now, but I still have another 500 or so kanji to index for RTK2. I'm tempted to order the new edition of RTK2, to see what has changed.

I'm using your spreadsheet too, wrightak, and I'm planning to add Japanese sentences for every kanji. Mostly I'm just cutting and pasting from ALC, but when it's done I can share it if anyone wants it. It'll take months, though.