I think that you shouldn't worry much about the keywords.  They are there to act as memory hooks as well as give hints about the words.

- Questionable keywords: I know a few of the keywords chosen aren't entirely accurate ('carrier' actually meaning 'general' is the freshest in my mind). Question is, is there anything I can do about this? I feel me seeing a kanji, and knowing what it means in English, is something of a 50-50 chance. The fact that I've been taught to write them and differentiate between them is good enough, but still, are there any other cases I should check before I wind up insulting someone by accident?

Actually it is not very many cases where the keyword is too removed from an actual kanji meaning.  But there's little use trying to learn a more correct meaning - upfront.  Just learn it when you get to it.  Learn it together with one or more Japanese words.  Until you do that, the RTK keywords are there so you won't forget the kanji until you need it.

- Multiple keywords: '曲' mean both 'bend' and 'tune' apparently. I know Heisig chose to teach only 1 keyword per kanji, and I can understand this. However it could cause problems. How severe is this case? Does almost every general use kanji have more than one meaning?

Yes, most kanji have more than one meaning even by themselves, and when used in compounds they often make up tens to hundreds of different words.

Also most words have lots of idiomatic usage that can't be expressed by a single English word.

For example the kanji 出 (exit) is used for exits (出口 deguchi), but it is also several verbs like 出る (deru) which itself has tons of different meanings depending on context, including: to appear, to come forth, to leave, to exit, to answer (the phone or door), to be present at a meeting, to be bleeding (blood coming out), to lead into (e.g. a road).

So there is no need to obsess much about the keyword, because it is impossible to cover all the meanings in Japanese under one English word.  Not even one Japanese word .

I think you will find pretty soon that there is not much point in trying to read lots of Japanese using just English keywords.  Instead, you need to start learning readings for kanji & kanji compounds, in real Japanese sentence patterns.

I don't want to scare you though, I just want to let you know its not a problem .  The keywords & the ability to recognize and remember Kanji easily are a huge benefit to further learning.

What I'd recommend is reading the AJATT website and starting to use the sentence method described.  That's what I have done for a while.  I don't have the ability to immerse myself in seeing & hearing Japanese 24/7, but I have been doing sentences, and I've seen real improvement in my reading and comprehension ability.

What I wanted was to increase my vocab & my grammar knowledge, so I pick sentences that stretch my knowledge just a little bit.  E.g. just 1 or 2 new words.  Just one new grammar point.

I use various books for grammar points, for example 'A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar' and 'Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Japanese Communication'.  For vocab, I actually got a lot just from the grammar sentences, but also I am working through 2001 Kanji Odyssey.

I also have Kanji in Context, which is like 2001.K.O but a bit more comprehensive, however it's a lot harder to use than 2001.K.O because it is made for intermediate students (the sentences use lots of complex grammar, have no English translation, and there are no keys to quickly find kanji meanings).

Along the lines of what vosimura just posted, here is what I do:

As long as you start getting material from real Japanese stuff, anything you do will be worthwhile.  I personally like reading, and adding in sentences into an SRS (see AJATT method), when I don't know words.  The thing is, if you are just using the Heisig keywords, you may get a vague idea of what a sentence means, but unless you truly understand that sentence, you will not be able to learn from it.  At least that is the case for me.  If I know every word in the sentence (if necessary, I will look up example sentences for each word), and I read the sentence out loud and break it into logical chunks as I read.

Here is an example:
彼女は言動に細心の注意を払った

I didn't know 言動 or 細心, so I looked those up to find out they meant something along the lines of "manners" and "special (as in, to pay special attention to something)", which going back to the Heisig keywords pretty much makes sense, and I will make flash cards with example sentences using those words.  After that, I read the original sentence a few times and realized it should break down like this:
彼女は　言動に　細心の注意を払った

I try to specially memorize things like the fact that the verb 払う goes with 細心の注意, so that if I ever hear "細心の注意", I can predict that the next word they will say is ?払う".  I think the bigger the chunks of information you remember, the quicker and faster you will be able to read and speak and listen in the future.

If you are looking for something to read, I recommend these a lot: レベル別日本語多読ライブラリー.  Since you have finished with Heisig, don't even bother with levels 3 or below, just 4 is good (and 4 vol. 2 is my favorite).  If you understand 75% of it the first go around, then great! that means you can learn 25% more from it, which I found I could do simply by reading them multiple times.  Even if the vocab they use is not that large, it will reinforce your grammar infinitely (as will reading any large amount of text, it's just that these are easy).

'曲' means both 'bend' and 'tune', that is true.

Actually there are many keywords for this kanji in the dictionary: bend, music, melody, composition, pleasure, injustice, fault, curve, crooked, perverse, lean.

However to know which of those 11 keywords is most appropriate, you have to look at the different words the kanji appears in to understand when to use those different meanings.

曲がり       まがり      curvature; warp; bend
曲がる    まがる    (v5r,vi) to turn; to bend; (P)
~曲    きょく    (n,n-suf) tune; piece of music; (P)
曲    くせ    (n) a habit (often a bad habit, i.e. vice); peculiarity; (P)

The most common usage is with 曲+okurigana like 曲がり and it has to do with 'bending' (ala Heisig).  But when its a suffix like in 古+曲 (こきょく) it means old tune/music.  When it is standing by itself 曲 (くせ) it is a 'habit'.

I hope that helps show, the way forward is to learn words and word patterns (and how to use them), not to learn multiple keywords per kanji.

Last edited by vosmiura (2008 February 01, 9:19 pm)

You've already gotten some excellent answers here, so I'll give you my very short opinions:

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

Questionable keywords

don't worry about them

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

Multiple keywords

don't worry about them

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

Hiragana words

To add vocab, since you probably need grammar too, work your way through a text, or Tae Kim's site, and learn all the vocab.
To get better at reading kana, work your way through a kana workbook, or just read it for about 30 min per day until you're comfortable.

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

What do you think I should do next?

I think the best, and easiest, thing to do following RTK1 is to use your new knowledge of kanji to learn how to read the words that you already "know" the pronunciations of.

Good Luck!

zazen666 wrote:

Hey vosmiura, how are you liking K.O. by the way?
I am plugging away at it everyday, and am just about 1/2 way thru book one.
I have noticed my eading and especialy understanidng of news go way way up. However, it does get a bit repitious. but I plan to keep working at it all the way thru book one then on to book two.
I am seeing major results, which is motivating me to keep at it....

Its working very well for me.  I'm noticing improvement in my reading.  At this point it is looking like a great follow up to the structured RTK for someone who needs some kind of structured task to chip away at (like me).

I spent a while trying Kanji in Context too which is similar in that it introduces Kanji in sentences, but I found it has similar benefits to K.O. except a lot harder to work through.

Last edited by vosmiura (2008 February 02, 12:01 am)

Hmm, good question.  I don't find it hard for me.  I don't think I came across any above JLPT3 level yet.

Having said that, it doesn't build up from zero.  It doesn't start with bite-size sentences, and it dives into various points of upper beginner grammar right away.  It also goes through lots of vocab quite quickly.

I'm not sure because it didn't apply to me, but I think a total beginner may have to start with more bite-size examples until they could understand the sentences fully.

If they studied some basic grammar & vocab while doing RTK1, then it should be fairly easy to move onto K.O.

Last edited by vosmiura (2008 February 02, 5:35 am)

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

Some great responses here. Thanks everyone.

Interesting though, no one's really advised I start learning how to pronounce the kanji, rather just go straight into this sentence method. Bearing in mind I don't know the readings, how should I go about doing this?

Most people don't "learn" the readings. I would say that actually volume 2 is not customary. Most people will learn readings by simply building vocabulary and then recognizing patterns.

So find words you don't know and look them up. Note the pronunciation and the kanji associated with the word. After time you will get familiar with the readings.

If you have a compound with two kanji you've never read before and you don't know which part of the reading applies to which kanji, look up one of the kanji in a kanji dictionary and find out its readings and then from elimination you'll have both (or if there is three kanji in the compound you might have to do this two times).　Jim Breen's kanji look up will suffice for this if you don't have any other dictionaries. Or another strategy is to simply look up words that use one of the kanji, notice the common phonetic sound that always appears where that kanji is, and 9/10 times it will be safe to assume that reading applies to it.

It (studying itself) sounds arduous and immense now. And if you're a very beginner, well, it is. But the best advice I can give you is to keep going at it and trying and you will succeed. If you're doing self-study and have very little knowledge of Japanese, the beginning can be very slow when you have little knowledge of the language or how to solve problems/questions you come up with. But slowly over time you will build these skills and become much quicker and studying will become less of a chore and more of a fun thing.

And also, for sentences, you'd need a pretty good grasp of Japanese grammar. It's been a long while since I looked at Tae Kim's guide but I'd finished the Essential section. Should this suffice?

Do as much as you can, at least up to　ばかり in the advanced section.

I dunno what sentence sources would be good for a beginner, but I think you should use something that has a translation. So you actually know what the Japanese sentences mean...
Anyway, I think the first half of RTK2 is great if you have trouble with on-yomi. You aren't learning readings in isolation, you learn them with the example words. I had sooo much trouble with on-readings before RTK2. I was always like, "Is it かん,　そう,　しゅう, maybe　きょう?" @_@ I think they're so indistinct, with so many kanji read the same.

If you already have a very basic grammar grasp (verbs, how to change them, how adjectives work etc) I highly recommend this and this.

They have a lot of information. Aside from all the grammar information, the introductions are useful to help you get a good grasp or idea of Japanese grammar. There's a lot of info, so it's not very user friendly, but if you use it conjunction with something like Tae Kim's guide (so you find the basic grammar points online, and then look them up in the books) it should be fairly easy.

I'm still at a very intermediate level, but so far my experiences with studying Japanese have shown me that it's really all about being careful with particles (sounds obvious enough, but start reading authentic Japanese and in a long sentence you might forget the particle something took because it was two lines ago) and arriving at the realization that Japanese really works by taking everything and modifying nouns.

Last edited by sutebun (2008 February 03, 11:57 am)

I would recommend listening to Japanese shows as much as possible.
After a while, you'll get an idea for which words are more important than others.

And you'll learn new vocab all the time. Even if you're not sure of the pronunciation, you can check the dictionary to see if any words make sense in the sentences you hear.

I find that no matter how much grammar I study, I don't remember it very well.  That's why I feel like once you have gone through the grammar once and have a general feel for it, the best thing to do to reinforce it is just read easy Japanese.  I studied grammar at an online school for a while, and it definitely helped, but not until I started reading the graded readers that I mentioned above was I able to actually process the meaning of a sentence in a reasonable amount of time.  Other good sources of real Japanese text are things like the passages in Genki II (like the biography of Yoko Ono, etc.).  I suggest something like the graded readers and these passages because they are longer, which helps you get a better sense for what a sentence may mean through context.  My suggested strategy is to read through something like that once, not worrying about understanding every sentence exactly, then the second time you read through, things will make a lot more sense because you have an idea of what to expect.

Another good source of text passages is something somebody recently suggested: 子供ニュース.  However each article has some very specific vocabulary related to the topic.  I noticed, though, that if I looked up all the words I didn't know for the first couple of sentences (which sometimes is a lot), then I don't have to look up many words at all for the rest of the article, because the words are repeated over and over (which is a good strategy for learning vocab).

As for looking up words you don't know the reading of, that was always a mind-bender for me too.  If it is on a website, you can use the rikaichan plugin for firefox, if it is in a book, sometimes books have furigana, but otherwise, you pretty much need an electronic dictionary where you can draw a word using a stylus.  I recommend the "Kanji Sono Mama Rabuhiki Jiten" for the Nintendo DS, and that is how I always look up words.  With rikaichan sometimes I tend to gloss over the kanji, but if I force myself to draw in on the Nintendo DS, then I really pay attention to what I am doing.

chamcham wrote:

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

I understand it's customary to go onto Volume 2

.....

You could always go to RTK: V3. It's just more of the same.

This site has all of the RTK3 Kanji.
So why not just finish that off?

I don't think that's the most beneficial thing to do right away, since it would take a long time until most of those RTK3 kanji would be useful to your study.

There are a few kanji in RTK3 that are quite commonly used, so I just learn those using Heisig's method, as and when I need them.  Same if there's any kanji I need which aren't in RTK3.