Heisig's method is illogical and ineffective ...

But it works. It works well.

Mr. Heisig did NOT invent anything. He took the Chinese (or Japanese) radicals, added some more, called them 'primitives' and used some stories in English to remember the kanji. Nothing more, nothing less.

Incorrect. Dr Heisig did an enormous job of ordering the kanji in an appropriate way to aid learning, and fleshing out a story method that works for those who will approach it with an open mind and put the work in.

buonaparte wrote:

Sure. But the point is why - etymology:
色is a pictograph of a man inserting his phallus into a woman from behind → sex; lover; mistress → looks; appearance (← motive factors stimulating the sex drive) → color (← complexion ← appearance).

Mr. Heisig somehow fails to mention it.

It's not like that's the etymology of that character.  色 is thought to be one of the characters that is an idiograph, but there are a bunch of theories as to what it is an ideograph of.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 August 31, 1:38 am)

buonaparte wrote:

yudantaiteki wrote:

They're the same kanji because the word いろ means both color and sexual related things.

Sure. But the point is why - etymology:

This is pretty much circular logic.

buonaparte wrote:

Mr. Heisig somehow fails to mention it.

Is this sarcasm, or do you not understand how RTK works?

buonaparte wrote:

Tzadeck,
I believe the theory to be true. Otherwise how on earth would all of us be there?

What?

Last edited by JimmySeal (2012 August 31, 4:32 am)

buonaparte wrote:

All I want to say is I didn't want it to work for ME.

It was kind of obvious anyway, but explicitly stating your bias from the beginning may have been helpful.

buonaparte wrote:

I just find it somewhat amusing when people say that Mr. Heisig is the Alpha and Omega, as far as learning kanji goes.

If you think people memorising dictionaries is remotely typical, then it's no wonder you find it "amusing". Beginners aren't interested in abstract posturing about kanji-learning and people who "invent" their own methods; they want a well-defined technique to follow that provides quick results with minimal effort. RTK offers this and it seems to have worked for a large number of people, who probably do think it's pretty awesome as a result.

Personally, I think RTK would've been pretty crap before SRS existed. Learning to read would've been a nightmare. I also think other well-structured modern books stand as good a chance of working when SRS is utilised for memorisation. Having a system is the "Alpha" of kanji learning, not necessarily Heisig's. If my friend was beginning Japanese, I wouldn't be telling him about some genius who got confused about the relevance of Chinese readings after reading Wiki or someone who claimed to memorise a 5000-character dictionary, I'd be looking for a book with the best reviews that would take up the least amount of his time.

buonaparte wrote:

Mr. Heisig did NOT invent anything. He took the Chinese (or Japanese) radicals, added some more, called them 'primitives' and used some stories in English to remember the kanji. Nothing more, nothing less.

Exactly! And that's what I like about RTK. He opened people's eyes on the right way to learn Kanji, that's is through building more complex ones from simpler ones and radicals, without ANY additional thing to learn. Just you and how to WRITE Kanji from memory!

If I'm just starting learning Japanese, why would I learn the names of the radicals? Learning Kanji isn't an easy task, why would I tackle the real meanings and pronunciations with it?

RTK is the only method I've heard about that minimizes the effort in learning Kanji.

frony0 wrote:

Buonaparte, is there any standardised list of the top x kanji and their etymologies that can be used to learn kanji instead of RTK? I'm starting to wish I did your method instead, but it does sound very laborious to find the etymology of each character manually...

The Henshall book has the etymology for all the Joyo Kanji.
I bought the book but reading the etymologies just didn't work for me.

RTK is what saved me and it's the only method that really worked for me.
It doesn't matter if it's illogical or not. It just plain works.
For evidence, read the "The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me"thread (http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=90). How many methods do you know
that helped as many people pass the kanji barrier?

The cumulative order of kanji and primitives is RTK is one of the most beautiful parts.
Each lesson is built using the primitives and kanji presented in the previous chapters.

Lesson 4 will only use the kanji and primitives from Lesson 1-3.
Lesson 5 will only use the kanji and primitives from Lesson 1-4.
And so on.
When he runs out of new words, he introduces new kanji and primitives in that lesson.

That's an extremely efficient method. You don't have to flip forward
and backward to look for specific radicals. Also, there's no need to learn
all 214 radicals beforehand. Just learn as you go.

I tend to find that most people who complain about the RTK method either:

a)barely read the book (and think they know everything about how RTK works)
b)read the book, but made no real effort to understand everything (i.e. making shortcuts)
c)never read the book

Few people have legitimate reasons (but they do exist).
Just read previous threads.

But I think this thread is kind of silly.

It's kind of like being in a room full of successful world class pianists and telling
them that piano sucks, while your piano skills are non-existant (sometimes because they have no discipline) and they also suck at guitar, rhythm, and music theory. Basically, they
blame everyone/everything EXCEPT for themselves (when they are the problem).

If RTK is not for you, that's understandable.
But don't go around saying it sucks if you never gave
it an honest chance (i.e. making it well into part 3).

Some people here have committed all 2000 Kanji in 3 months or less with 80%-90%
retention. That's basically a summer vacation (for those kids in school) and you won't
ever have to worry about kanji for the rest of your life. Some people spend their whole
life trying other methods and never get that far.

Lastly, there was a comment of RTK being dry with no humor. Did they read all the stories on this site? Many are pretty damn funny. I even laugh at some of my stories sometimes. You're allowed to inject humor into your stories if you want. The stories are supposed to be related to your life or way of thinking.

Last edited by chamcham (2012 August 31, 10:13 am)

As someone who did RTK 1 and 3 and then went on to learn japanese to a high level, i feel qualified to say that it's overrated. As a reference for stroke order it's good and the ordering is nice. Stories and keywords are unnecessary though.

If I were to learn any other script in the future (and I have), i wouldn't bother making up stories  or bother drilling them from english keywords. This is only necessary when cramming info into your brain for the short term, which is only necessary because RTK makes it necessary by its very design. Basically doing RTK is necessary for doing RTK. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. For actually learning japanese though, which is something that's gonna take longer than a couple of months, it's completely unnecessary.

RTK is a wonderful bootstrap.

While I wouldn't say everyone must do RTK or that is required, it's really awesome for getting yourself to the level where you can actually start reading native japanese material. For many people, kanji is what is holding them back.

Once you start getting into native material, it will actually reinforce RTK, which might explain why you don't have to study RTK daily at that level (as long as you keep reading constantly). After a while, it'll reach a deeper level where the RTK knowledge is subconscious even if you don't realize it.

Also, when you finish RTK, it's a good idea to start replacing the English keywords with Japanese words.

Last edited by chamcham (2012 August 31, 2:29 pm)

I think the best part about me doing RTK was that it forced me to make a habit of studying Japanese EVERYDAY. Nothing is hard, it just takes time, lots of it.