chamcham wrote:

No. I didn't say that RTK is associated with knowing kanji.

But if you can recognize all the kanji in a drama script or novel, it changes
everything completely. You progress from learn new kanji individually to
combining them into words. So my suggestion is to learn all the RTK1 kanji.
Afterwards, vocab is simply a matter of combining kanji with hiragana/katakana/other kanji). In other words, kanji is a basis for vocab. So get the kanji done first, and then work on recognizing words.

That doesn't necessarily mean that is it faster to do RTK and then Vocab. 

Once you reach this level, you can focus on vocab.
Grammar can be learned at any time.

Number of kanji in a drama/novel IS relevant because it is an indicator of the level of literacy required to understand them. If you only know 1200-1400 kanji, it's possible that you can get to a level where you understand most Japanese TV dramas (and possibly other types of shows). Novels, on the other, are a whole different level.

No, that's not true.  Knowing kanji (i.e. doing RTK) does not equal knowing vocab.

It doesn't take a lot of time to finish RTK1. There are even people that finished it in 1 month. When you consider all the lifetime Japanese language learners that never finish
the daily use kanji in their whole lives, 1-3 months (or even a year) is a small sacrifice. Especially, if it says you time re-learning kanji down the line.

Okay lets take that one guy that finished in 14 days.  He said he did about 8 hours of studying a day (so lets go ahead and say 5 hours just to be fair).  5 hours x 14 days = 70 hours.  If you factor in reviews after those 14 days, it is probably well over 100 hours.  JLPT Level 1 says you need around 900 classroom hours to pass.  That one government thing says you need around 2000 hours to be fluent.  1/10th to 1/20th of your total study time is a lot of time.  It's time that you might not need to spend (although it might pay off in the long run based on the student).

As for not having to write them, if you can't write a kanji, how do you know that you really know it? You run the risk of confusing it with a similar kanji if one exists. I think that's where writing becomes valuable. You can pick out differences in similar looking kanji because you can write them. This saves you the embarrassment of writing/typing the wrong kanji, or (even worse) pronouncing the wrong word. Both will make you look stupid in front of native speakers.

How do I know that I know it?  I know it because I know it.  I don't need to do RTK to know the difference between 緑（みどり） and 縁（ふち／えん）.

Also, looking stupid in front of native speakers is going to happen at one point or another.  No reason to really fear it. 

Also, like I mentioned before, avoiding the kanji in RTK Lite will have an impact on reading names. In fact, the comic above contained a kanji (樹), that is not in RTK Lite. But it's used for the name 弘樹 in the comic.

Not studying the reading will also have an impact in reading names.  RTK will not help you with that.

Yes, RTK is not required for everyone (and it probably isn't for everyone).
But, if it is for you, you're doing yourself a huge favor by putting in the time and completing it.

I totally agree with this.  I feel like you should have bolded this entire paragraph. 

Personally, I still feel like RTK Lite is a cop out for people that are too impatient to finish RTK1, which doesn't bode well for their future learning IMHO. But, in the issue of fairness, those people deserve to have an option for their needs. If there isn't already, there should be an RTK Lite set that just includes the kanji that in RTK1, but not in RTK Lite. That way, someone who did RTK Lite can go back and learn the rest.

I feel like this is pretty rude.  I really want to encourage other Japanese learners, even if they don't want to do all of RTK Lite.  They may enjoy actually learning Japanese a lot more than just going through all of RTK.

I agree with Partner and Undead, that RTK Lite is a valuable and appropriate variant for many.

I agree with Chamcham that full RTK is powerful, and appropriate for those who are aiming to exit RTK attempting mainstream materials such as novels and newspapers.

I agree with Uisukii that getting that initial entry for a character in your mental index is important.

Hyperborea wrote:

Classroom hours. That's much different from total actual hours maybe by at least a factor of 3 or 4. So, that drops the RTK down to maybe 1/60 or 1/80 of your total study time. That doesn't seem like a bad investment.

Even 1/60 or 1/80 is still a lot of time!  It's time you don't need to spend doing something boring. 

I think Mushi summed it up well.  I just want to add that you don't need to do RTK, or feel like you need to do RTK.  There are also no studies (that I'm aware of) that prove RTK + Core whatever is necessarily faster than just Core whatever.

I think RTK is a great resource and most serious learners may be better off having done it (if you want to learn to write the kanji), but it shouldn't be touted as something you have to do.  If you don't want to do it, or don't like it, then you should just skip it.  hershoreline shouldn't be made to feel like (s)he isn't a serious learner for not doing RTK, or that he is going to fail at learning Japanese just because he didn't do RTK.

Last edited by partner55083777 (2013 January 07, 4:23 am)

I'm sure one could be a serious student of Japanese without RTK, but if one were also serious about learning to read Japanese wouldn't RTK at least  be an important part of one's studies?
For example, right now I'm working through Japanese for Everyone, which is said to introduce around 400 Kanji--hardly sufficient if I want to become literate. Plus I could see myself taking another 3-4 more months to complete it--that would be a few hundred kanji over the next few months.
Perhaps that is sufficient at my stage and perhaps I could put off learning additional kanji until the intermediate level. And perhaps RTK lite is the way to go until I reach a more intermediate/advanced state, and I should invest more time learning grammar and vocab. I don't know. Maybe the best way to go is to play it by feel, i.e., getting a feel of where my time is being most usefully spent as my studies progress.
But you're right, one shouldn't be made to feel that RTK is necessary in order to be a serious student of Japanese.

Last edited by hershoreline (2013 January 07, 4:10 pm)

partner55083777 wrote:

Doing all of RTK is not going to save you any time in the long run.  (...)

That's true for some people and not for others. Obviously, some people have learned Japanese before Heisig's first edition came out. But then, some people managed to learned Japanese before the 日葡辞書. They just had to work a wee bit harder.

Doing all of RTK in the first year of trying to learn Japanese would have saved me approximately five years of frustration. Five years during which I never managed to learn more than about 2000 words, kept confusing characters and could only read painfully sloooowly with the helpf of a dictionary, doubted my own language learning abilities (after becoming fluent in three other languages already), missed an awful lot of opportunities to meaningfully interact socially with people in Japan (which was a more expensive place to visit in the late 1990s than now), and decided not to major in Japanese. Obviously, during those five years I also met lots of people who did just fine in Japanese without ever having heard of RTK. As for the "you don't need those rare characters" argument, one of the first manga I picked up was 銀河戦国群雄伝ライ and that was full of uncommon kanji from page 1 on.

I'd say, just give it a try without RTK, see how far you get. Maybe just memorize the traditional radicals, for some people that's enough to develop an eye for kanji. If you're doing fine without RTK, pat yourself on the back that you have a pretty good memory for funny little symbols on paper and get on with your language learning. If not, give RTK a try.