ragdim
Member
From: Ohio US
Registered: 2012-06-16
Posts: 14
Here's a short question which I haven't seen asked yet: why do certain kanji on kanjidamage.com use different meanings than what is in most dictionaries and even on RTK?
For instance, according to kanjidamage, 載 means "appear in print", whereas if you look it up in jimbreen's dictionary, yamasa, or even here, you'll see the one and only definition of "place"? There are other examples -- some of which are simply synonyms -- but I can't be bothered to look them up atm.
Thanks.
Last edited by ragdim (2013 May 29, 10:30 am)
ragdim
Member
From: Ohio US
Registered: 2012-06-16
Posts: 14
yudantaiteki wrote:
The word 載る means "to appear in print"; that's sort of a meaning extension of "to load/place" so maybe that's why the others don't give it primacy.
That's quite a long stretch... Anyways, these loose meanings and outright substitutions for kanji are causing problems for me as I progress towards 3k kanji (I tacked an extra 1.2k kanji onto the pre-made kanjidamage deck).
An example of a substituted kanji is where any compound kanji that uses the kanji for "page" (頁) is instead called "head" (頭) within their mnemonics. So for instance the mnemonic for 願 is "Gandhi went to the plateau to beg with a lowered head" (the deck mnemonics differ from the site, but it still uses the same names for stuff).
It's clear why page was substituted for head in these mnemonics (they sound better, and also the site pretends that the page (頁) kanji doesn't exist, so why should it matter?), but it does cause issues when you're like me and you go to learn kanji not on the kanjidamage site.
Anyways, this is just some whining from me. Great site overall, and I still recommend the pre-made kanjidamage deck. Maybe I'll upload my version once it's finished.
Last edited by ragdim (2013 May 30, 9:15 am)
PotbellyPig
Member
From: New York
Registered: 2012-01-29
Posts: 337
Usually one kanji can have many ways in which it can be used. Even Heisig may pick the most esoteric sense in which it used because the more obvious keyword was already taken by another kanji. Keywords/Mnemonics are tricky though they are really useful in learning the kanji. Once I got a bit into the core series of vocabulary, I dropped reviewing the kanji (I had already finished RTK1). Many of the Heisig keywords, I don't even remember any more. When I think of the kanji, I think of the words in which it is used in instead. I finished core 10,000 recently. I think I stopped reviewing the kanji after about 2000 words or so if I remember correctly, about 3 months into vocabulary studying.
Katsuo
M.O.D.
From: Tokyo
Registered: 2007-02-06
Posts: 887
Website
I made a spreadsheet a while ago that compares the English names given to kanji by various sources. One use of it is to check at a glance if your main study source has chosen a unique or strange name. If so it might be a good idea to investigate further before committing that name to memory.
In the case of 載, which KanjiDamage calls "appear in print", another source (the most reliable one) calls it "load, put in print", suggesting that 載 has two main uses.
@reply#3: Incidentally, Heisig also calls 頁 "head" when it appears as a component in other kanji. "Head" seems to have been the original meaning of 頁 though it is now obsolete, according to Halpern.
