Grinkers Wrote:My biggest concerns right now are being able to maintain my kanji writing, because I really don't write that often, thanks to computers. I'm not too worried about remembering which kanji goes to which words when writing rare words. Of course I'd like to be able to do it, but it's not very high on importance with how little is written by hand these days. I figure it's close to me writing in English with a pen, I can't spell at all!

I currently don't do any SRS kanji writing, so I figured wrightak's new deck would be a pretty good starting point. However as far as long term, I'm not sure what I want to do yet. How much work do I want to put into being able to write by hand well (accuracy, special words, and/or speed)?

I don't know about the aesthetics of it (though I'm fond of my Japanese handwriting), but continuing to 'write' (in air or paper) is pretty valuable, for the record. Writing the kanji to memorize them, that is, if only a little bit and in conjunction with SRSing. Although I don't think stroke order is all that important except insofar as it allows for a logical internal consistency that allows a strong sensorimotor framework to be developed.

Related and Semi-related:

Involvement of motor cortices in retrieval of kanji studied by functional MRI
Dysgraphia: Cognitive processes, remediation, and neural substrates
Transient Functional Suppression and Facilitation of Japanese Ideogram Writing Induced by Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of Posterior Inferior Temporal Cortex
The Spacing Effect in Aircraft Recognition
Kanji Knowledge as Read-Only vs. Write-Only
Action Recognition in the Premotor Cortex
The case for sensorimotor coding in working memory
SR as Priming/Conditioning
Mental Time-Lines Follow Writing Direction
Language-based Rehearsal Loop in the Visuospatial Modality
Visual Motion Sensitivity and Literacy Skills in Japanese
Logographic Kanji versus Phonographic Kana in Literacy Acquisition
Visual presentation of single letters activates a premotor area involved in writing
Premotor activations in response to visually presented single letters depend on the hand used to write: a study on left-handers
Spacing practice sessions across days benefits the learning of motor skills

nest0r Wrote:Although I don't think stroke order is all that important except insofar as it allows for a logical internal consistency that allows a strong sensorimotor framework to be developed.

Thanks for the links, when I have some time I'll look into them. It's an interesting subject for sure, and I would LIKE my handwriting skills to be great, however everything has diminishing returns and requires time...

As for stroke order, I find it pretty useful to know in a very non-useful way. It's very nice for reading kanji from Japanese/Chinese people, because it's sometimes the only way to figure it out. Also it's nice to be able to draw in the air when I forget a word in Japanese.

Which is directly related to being able to write, and it helping being able to read (pretty obvious for most people here I think). Comparing with Japanese/Chinese, I write slower and with less "style". I have a feeling it'll be years of writing before that happens for me, but I really don't want to spend the years!

I'll be transferring a Japanese university next year fall, or 2010 spring (depending on lots of stuff), as a Japanese student. According to my friends, there's not much handwriting used... or Japanese after the masters level (I'm in physics/mathematics).

I'm guessing it's just like me and how I've lost almost all my English handwriting skills after high school. Aside from my name/address, I probably haven't written anything in English in years...

Thanks a lot for the links. I've always wanted to read about this kind of thing but never really knew how to dig up info on it. And I was lazy

More on topic...

I'd love to hear some of the experiences people have with using a JRtK deck long term! Does it help ingrain Japanese in your mind easier? Does it help reading? Writing? How about the people with intervals in the months/years? Do you still feel you have the knowledge during daily use?

Gogo SRS!

Grinkers Wrote:More on topic...

I'd love to hear some of the experiences people have with using a JRtK deck long term! Does it help ingrain Japanese in your mind easier? Does it help reading? Writing? How about the people with intervals in the months/years? Do you still feel you have the knowledge during daily use?

Gogo SRS!

I've used Japanese keywords for a long time (in conjunction with the english keywords) and it helps a lot, but only if you already know Japanese and is exposed to those words. For all the kanji I don't know any words for, I've added "common" japanese keywords... but it doesn't help at all because that word isn't telling me anything. For the words I DO know though, it makes it MUCH easier.

Tobberoth Wrote:I've used Japanese keywords for a long time (in conjunction with the english keywords) and it helps a lot, but only if you already know Japanese and is exposed to those words. For all the kanji I don't know any words for, I've added "common" japanese keywords... but it doesn't help at all because that word isn't telling me anything. For the words I DO know though, it makes it MUCH easier.

Have you tried learning those "common" words by looking up example sentences (via dictionaries, online, etc), then adding them to a vocabulary deck? I'd imagine that'd help, but it'd be nothing like really knowing the word through lots of exposure and use.

I'll probably be trying this with the current JRtK pretty soon and see how it goes for me. It seems silly for me to learn English keywords for words I know in Japanese, but it's also silly to be failing Japanese cards because I don't know the Japanese words well enough.

One rather messy way to integrate RTK Lite (KO2001 vers.) with smart.fm in the KO2001 order (both linked in one of my comments above) that I can think of is--and this depends also on how energetic and motivated you are at the start:

Do Remembering the Kana. Perhaps start immersing yourself in Japanese media, even if only to develop a surface 'ear training' for the pitch/tempo/mora-timing/et cetera.

Do RTK Lite (KO2001 version) with English keywords, then as you progress, periodically check a 'mature' stack (or sort by intervals in Anki?). Select a batch of kanji from there, and find their corresponding words in the list of smart.fm/KO2001 sentences.

From there, while you're continuing to do RTK as usual, also start doing that batch of sentences, learning the vocab/readings for that kanji that you've learned to write and recognize so well in RTK. You'd also be reinforcing the writing/recognition in a new context (since I recommend writing a little bit while doing sentences, for kanji you are fuzzy on), so you wouldn't have to wait for the RTK kanji to become super mature before doing them in sentences.

When that batch of sentences has become somewhat mature, then you take the kana version of their kanji words and use them as keywords in RTK, perhaps highlighting or bracketing the relevant kanji's 'reading' section of the kana keyword, to emphasize which kanji you're focusing on. Maybe even add pictures, for instance the picture (or even audio?) from the smart.fm/KO2001 sentence? (Guess Anki'd make this easier.)

As for grammar, you could either only grade those sentences for vocab/reading (though I think listening/speaking/subvocalization is good too, because they have such clear audio), or deconstruct the whole sentence as you do it, since its grammar is basic. Ideally, I'd like to see an 'unofficial' smart.fm/KO2001 deck with the pictures from the site, and perhaps we could even get a group project that breaks down each sentence with grammar explanations or links to relevant sections of Tae Kim?

Also, I'd recommend from the start of RTK to be studying Tae Kim or Japanese the Manga Way, Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, et cetera. You wouldn't need to know the kanji to select example sentences for each grammar point there, you could just rely on kana (or romaji if that's all the reference has) and translation to grade the cards based on whether you understand the structure.

That really seems like too much for somebody who's just starting out to handle all that at the same time, just to start with JRtK. It'd be interesting to hear if somebody has success from doing something like that. It'd require some pretty crazy drive...

As a Japanese American, I was exposed to a fair bit of Japanese while growing up. English is my first language for sure, but I think over 20 years of Japanese exposure helped me a lot. The long version of my Japanese would be a whole topic on by itself. So in short, I was completely illiterate until this year and my Japanese is currently "decent". However "decent" isn't nearly enough to start a full JRtK without at least some new words coming up. "Decent" is also enough to potentially get a lot out of a JRtK endeavor.


Just from some quick looks at wrightak's online spreadsheet, it seems like there's a lot of new stuff and corrections. At least compared to the JRtK deck I currently have, which is dated 1.6 years ago.

1.6 years ago deck: どうまき // 182 胴 銅巻き
Currently constructing deck: どうたい // 胴体

However even that doesn't seem consistent with his new style of having only one kanji unknown per question side. I think somebody will have to internet-prod Wrightak.

久しぶり

Sorry for being absent for so long. Lots of things on.

The good news is though that I'm at the office all through this week (yes, including Christmas Day - aren't Japanese companies great?). Highly likely that the workload will be very light so I'm planning on doing as much as I can in my free time.

Once I've gone through it, I'm planning on sending out a list of the more obscure kanji to friends and colleagues and asking for their opinions. It may take a little time to get their feedback but I plan to break the back of the project this week...

wrightak Wrote:久しぶり

Sorry for being absent for so long. Lots of things on.

The good news is though that I'm at the office all through this week (yes, including Christmas Day - aren't Japanese companies great?). Highly likely that the workload will be very light so I'm planning on doing as much as I can in my free time.

Once I've gone through it, I'm planning on sending out a list of the more obscure kanji to friends and colleagues and asking for their opinions. It may take a little time to get their feedback but I plan to break the back of the project this week...

Exciting update! Thanks for all the hard work you are doing. (man that sounds awkward in English... おつかれさまです)

I'm working through your spreadsheet turning it into my own tailored deck and it's working great. Thanks for the idea and head start.

wrightak Wrote:久しぶり

Sorry for being absent for so long. Lots of things on.

The good news is though that I'm at the office all through this week (yes, including Christmas Day - aren't Japanese companies great?). Highly likely that the workload will be very light so I'm planning on doing as much as I can in my free time.

Once I've gone through it, I'm planning on sending out a list of the more obscure kanji to friends and colleagues and asking for their opinions. It may take a little time to get their feedback but I plan to break the back of the project this week...

Sorry for bugging you through an email. It's great to have an update, and even more great to see the project is alive!

Cheers for wrightak!

Grinkers Wrote:Sorry for bugging you through an email.

No worries at all. Sorry I didn't reply.

Just to give people an interesting update on how things are going. I mentioned before that I was planning on sending out a list of the more obscure kanji to friends and colleagues. I sent out a list to my colleague and his annotations appear below:

裳 時々使う　衣装　意味　：　Cloth
臨 時々使う　臨時　臨月　　　意味：　Proximity
穀 よく使う　　穀物　意味　：　Grain
糧 よく使う　　食糧　　：　Food
伯 ときどき使う　　伯父　意味：　Uncle
仁 ときどき使う　仁義　仁愛　　意味：　humanity justice
侮 ときどき使う　侮辱　侮蔑　　意味：　disdain contempt
伐 あまり使わない　　伐採　　意味　：　tree trimming logging
俊 ときどき使う　俊敏　俊足　　意味：　agile nimble
囚 ときどき使う　　囚人　意味　：　imprisonment
丙 使わない
旋 使わない　　　周旋　斡旋　　procurement
尉 使わない　　　大尉　少尉　　 echelon of an army
斤 使わない
槽 使わない　　浴槽　　　bathtub pool
錯 使わない　　錯覚　錯誤　　false illusion confusion
奔 ときどき使う　　奔走　奔放　　意味：　scramble free-wheeling
墳 使わない　　墳墓　古墳　　意味　grand tomb big grave
暁 ときどき使う　あかつき　意味：　dawn
弘 使わない
附 使う　　付の古い字体　　意味：　attachment adjunct
窒 使わない
酪 よく使う　　酪農　　意味　：　dairy
爵 ときどき使う　　男爵　伯爵　子爵　　意味：　echelon of aristocrat
梓 使わない　　上梓
薫 ときどき使う　薫風　薫製　　意味：　aroma fregrance
彦 ときどき使う　意味　：　robust nad healthy man
恭 恭順
亜 亜熱帯　亜流 意味　：　sub- semi-
函 ときどき使う　　意味　Box
脹 ときどき使う　　膨脹　　　意味：　expansion inflation
媛 使わない　　才媛　　意味：　female
塑 使わない
虞 使わない
朕 使わない　　意味　：　天皇　Emperor
丹 使わない

I should have told him that I didn't need the meanings - must have wasted some of his time. He's a graduate of Tokyo University and I chose to send the list to him because he's very studious and loves to teach me about Japanese. It's interesting to see all of the entries where, in his opinion, the kanji isn't used. Some of these are useful primitives, like 斤, so you can see why Heisig included them. There are one or two, like 塑, where it's hard to work out why Heisig chose to stick them in the book. Perhaps they're joyo, I don't have a list to check.

I would have to say he's wrong about a number of the 使わない entries. For example 弘 is a very common first name. 丹 is used in 丹念 which is a pretty common word. 伐採 is also a pretty common word. I've also seen 斤 on bread packages pretty frequently.

塑 is joyo btw..

Interesting. Never seen 丹念, added to the list - thanks!

伐採 had already been contributed by someone, but the dictionary entries on them were pretty skimpy and I decided to stick it in the "tricky" list.

What are you using for your judge of how common these words are? Are you saying that you've seen them in books/articles/whatever?

I've seen them in middle school level reading material yeah (including 伐採, which can be translated simply as logging).

Jarvik7 Wrote:I would have to say he's wrong about a number of the 使わない entries. For example 弘 is a very common first name. 丹 is used in 丹念 which is a pretty common word. 伐採 is also a pretty common word. I've also seen 斤 on bread packages pretty frequently.

I have to agree. I've learned through experience to be very cautious when people tell me, "Don't bother learning that" or "I've never used that in my life". Invariably, I end up running into the very thing they said to ignore later the same day.

I've recently had to read or use - 旋 (on business), 尉 (in Murakami's Bird Chronicles), 斤 (with my wife), 錯 (all over the place), 伐 (about 5 or 6 times a year in my local area).

GreenAirth Wrote:I've recently had to read or use - 旋 (on business), 尉 (in Murakami's Bird Chronicles), 斤 (with my wife), 錯 (all over the place), 伐 (about 5 or 6 times a year in my local area).

Thanks for the feedback. Could you give me some examples of where you read or used the above kanji?

Here are a few examples.

媛: This appears in the name of a prefecture, Ehime-ken (愛媛県).

丹: I see this often in 伊勢丹 (Isetan department store). And sometimes in sushi shops you'll see "uni" written as 雲丹.

梓: This is the first name (Azusa) of a woman I know. Maybe it's very rare though, not sure.

仁: I see this on almost every Chinese menu and every conbini/supermarket sweets section, in 杏仁豆腐 (annin dofu).

Wrightak, thanks for sharing your work on the J-keywords. I just started reviewing them over the holiday.

I saw 梓 very frequently (several times daily) in material I was reading in late 2008/early 2009. Then again catalpa is a common keyword in traditional Japanese poetry (which is what I was reading)

wrightak: Are you working on keywords for RTK3 and common non-RTK kanji too?

@DavidZ Thanks for the tips. Those examples hadn't come to mind before, even though I already knew all of them. (Apart from your friend's name of course!)

I think that goes to show that unless it's quite common, it's difficult to look at a kanji and roll off words that use it. It's much more natural to recognize vocabulary instead. After challenging my colleague on a few of the words where he wrote 使わない, he quickly changed his mind.

I really appreciate everyone telling me how often they see kanji, but I'd be much more interested in the context/words that they see that kanji in! If you can give me some concrete examples/words/sentences that don't come from a google search, I'm always interested.

Jarvik7 Wrote:wrightak: Are you working on keywords for RTK3 and common non-RTK kanji too?

I've been adding some to my personal deck but they're not in the spreadsheet. At the moment, I'm concentrating on RTK 1, and I'm very close now. The harder ones require some thought though, which is why I appreciate the suggestions on this thread.

I'll soon put together a deck similar to the previous one but with a better selection of words. The other big difference will be that each card will test one kanji only. The previous deck tested all of the kanji in the word.

After that, if there's demand for it, I'll put some effort into assembling example sentences, and notes on the kanji and word. The notes could include info on when the word is used, a deeper explanation of its meaning, it's appropriateness in different situations (formal/written/casual/spoken etc.) and whatever else is felt to be relevant. I'll definitely look into hosting the data on a wiki or on a new google spreadsheet with free access to anyone so that this exercise can be crowd sourced. Doing it myself would take ages.

Sorry forgot to mention. After I've released the deck, the first thing I'll do before assembling the example sentences and notes, is provide some feedback on word frequency. If you're viewing the spreadsheet, you'll notice that I've added a new column with a number from 1 to 5. The idea is that 1 will be for kanji that are super easy and you should learn quickly and 5 will be for rare kanji that you can safely ignore until you encounter them. The rest will obviously be in between. I'll try and tag this info to each card in Anki, therefore people can suspend category 5 or prioritize category 1 etc.

OK, I have a few concrete examples showing characters from that list in use:

From ねじまき鳥クロニクル　第３部 by 村上春樹 -
中尉は抑揚のない機械的な声で、再び一斉射撃の態勢に入るように命令を下した。

And another from something my wife was writing about a couple of weeks ago -
食パンは３斤分を売っているのだが、一度に３斤は多すぎる。

She also wrote about tree cutting last summer -
伐採した木の枝を積み重ねておいた。

Yeah, 中尉 is pretty common.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Yeah, 中尉 is pretty common.

Yeah they are. Now 中佐 are fairly rare. There're only three 中佐 on my base, one from the 陸上自衛隊 and two from the　海上自衛隊.