Basically, the idea is to make sure EVERYTHING in your kanji story is an OBJECT rather than a concept or verb. For example, Heisig himself recommends using a memorable person for the "person" primitive. So, instead of a vague generic class "person" you have "Mr.T" which instantly improves the quality of the stories. Same with the "feeling" primitive which is a concept that becomes "Data". This method is commonly used with nouns but not so much with adjectives, verbs, etc.

So, why not try to take it all the way then. If you were to take a holistic approach to objects you wouldn't have "tall", "child", "round" and "dirt" as elements in the 塾 (Cram school) kanji because all those words are generic, they are not objects. In the true spirit of objects you would make (for example) "tall" into "Shaquille O'Neal", "child" into "Tom Hanks", "round" into an actual object like a "beach ball" and perhaps go as far as instantiating "dirt" with an object like an "excavator" or something. Perhaps your stories would become much more memorable and easier to visualize. The crazier the story the better it sticks.

So if you were to, figuratively speaking, join the "Object-oriented" sect you would never use a non-object primitive because that would be against your religion.

I noticed that a lot of the kanji I fail have abstract primitives. I have trouble with "previously" but not with "formerly" because my "formerly" is represented with Prince (aka "The artist formerly known as Prince).

There's still a snag with Heisig's keywords not being objects but that's probably fine. You see a keyword like "inter" and recall a story out of objects like "tree" and "eye". The real trouble starts when that "inter" is used in as a component in something like "frost" 霜. It makes for stories that may sound clever but can be difficult to recall because they're abstract. You can still memorize a story like "FROST is kind of an inter-weather, phenomenon, something between rain, snow and freezing temp’s" but you're really not burning a vivid image into your mind and increasing your chances of forgetting, thus wasting your time.

Anyway, I already learned most of my kanji with stories that employ lots of abstract concepts, silly plays on words and other non-objects so it's too late for me. Maybe someone fresh can take this idea further and make some kick-ass stories that are impossible to forget.

This came up when I searched for similar discussions: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1693
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=1602

I like the idea of RTK++.


About "inter", you can use Inter Milan

Quote:Football Club Internazionale Milano S.p.A., commonly referred to as Internazionale or simply Inter, is a professional Italian football club based in Milan, Lombardy.

Just imagine that the INTER is a bunch of trees with eyes running behind the ball.



For "frost" (霜) you can picture the Inter playing under the Rain. It's so cold that you can see the FROST over the grass.

I have this same feeling: most of the kanji I fail are related to abstract concepts. Consequently, I though of exactly the same (anyway, too late for me too).

Nonetheless, as much as I like that approach, I think it should not be taken too rigidly. I'm not going to delve into all the gory details, but IMHO you need both rigid objects (Mr. T) and "polymorphic" ones (dirt), or else you'll end up with stories that are too resembling and mix up everything. The rigid ones, as you already know, make stories much more memorable, while the polymorphic things let you play and transform the stories as needed. For the "thread" primitive, given the amount of kanji in which it appears and such, it's way better to have "Spiderman" than a simple, polymorphic "thread". In contrast, for the "dirt" primitive (omnipresent and ubiquitous) I'd say it would be way worse to have so much stories happening in, say, "your backyard".

In summary, I think there's a need for balance. That's not to say, of course, that we don't have to totally kill all the abstract concepts like "state of mind" (the worst of all, as everyone here knows ;-). So your RTK++ should include polymorphism :-PP

[Katsuo]

Sebastian Wrote:For "frost" (霜) you can picture the Inter playing under the Rain. It's so cold that you can see the FROST over the grass.

To strengthen this image: It's a cold, frosty day and the rain falling on the Inter Milan players instantly turns into frost (freezing them solid).