It may be a record.  I don't remember seeing more stars on other stories when I was going through them.

Although I used the "Please do me a favor and put a needle through my brain & heart"

Last edited by vosmiura (2008 February 17, 6:08 am)

I think there's one with over a hundred. Can't remember where I saw it though.

Heh, my story for lose had 19 stars (I think), and I still flunked it the other day, because I confused "Lose" with "Defeat."

Did anyone ever come up with a list of confused keywords that are synonyms of each other? There seem to be a lot of them...

Nukemarine wrote:

Here's something I wonder: do heavily starred stories (say, 10+ stars) have a low miss rate compared to others? I have a feeling that after a certain point, people give starred stories a vote just because it's there anyway (pseudo groupthink). Eh, I'm sure some statician or other some time later will ask Fabrice for his data to do deeper research on the matter.

That's called positive feedback, and that's what I was saying earlier on this thread (I might have been too subtle here, but I love double entendres)

Last edited by DrJones (2008 February 17, 9:34 am)

Heh, I was one of the many people that starred the "Oz" story.  I loved it; I don't see how anyone could resist using it.  But, yeah ... unless it's beyond RTK1, I don't believe I've ever seen another story with so many stars.  I've seen quite a few that approach 30, however.  The "ring" and "send back" frames are also good examples of "superstar" stories.

I must say, however, that I have failed the "favor" card before, no matter how much I loved the story when I first saw it.  It was only once, but it was also one of the very few cards that I absolutely forgot outright ... meaning, I couldn't even remember PART of the story, or a single component, when presented with the keyword in the second stack.  That almost never happens to me.  It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between star number and failure rate.



As for flunking cards for getting them mixed up with synonymous keywords, however: is this something most people do?  I'm very curious.  Myself, if I'm presented with a word that I know for a FACT has a very close companion (nearly identical in meaning, like "matrimony" and "marriage," for example), and I'm not really sure which one the keyword refers to, I actually write out BOTH kanji in my review before flipping over the card.

If either one of them is correct, then I consider it a "passed" card.  At that point, I'll make a note of which one the keyword actually refers to, and try to remember it for later, but I don't think it's a strong enough lapse of memory to warrant a move back to the failed stack.  Heisig's keywords are a great tool, and everything, but as long as I know for a fact that I understand and recognize a kanji, I don't consider it a failure solely on the basis of EXACT keyword confusion.

Now, that's only if I anticipate the problem beforehand and make an effort to see if I can remember both.  If I failed to recognize possible synonyms before flipping the card, and end up writing only one (the wrong one) down, I'll go ahead and fail it then.  Even if I strongly suspect that I knew both kanji, and it was simply an issue of keyword mixups, I can't PROVE it to myself.

I do understand that Heisig himself seems to be very worried about swapping out his own keywords (RTK is peppered with cautionaries against not confusing "condolences" with "consolation," and so forth), but ... to me, if I do know the kanji, stroke order, basic meaning and all ... it's mission accomplished.  Heisig's method is a helper along the journey.  It's not the destination.  Heisig's words can seem awfully arbitrary at times, and ill-chosen.  They're even downright vague and inaccurate, in certain cases.  I see little reason to quibble over whether or not I can remember which kanji Heisig called "hear" and which he dubbed "listen," as long as I know both and understand they mean esssentially the same damn thing.

Are most people absolutely strict with keywords, or do they give themselves passes if they can remember both beforehand (like me)?

Last edited by dukelexon (2008 February 17, 6:20 pm)

I think we have to be sane about this stuff.

The nuance of the difference between closely related concepts in Japanese barely ever maps neatly onto the nuance of the corresponding concepts in English.

Whatever minute gap in meaning there is between, say, solicit, encourage and urge, I can just about guarantee it won't transfer over to the nuanced difference between those kanji.

Well, I do see what you're saying, Nac.  It's a valid point.  I believe it's a mistake, however, to assume that the slight variations present in the definitions of the English keywords necessarily apply accurately to the kanji that Heisig pinned them to.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the keyword's exact, nuanced meaning transfers over to the kanji itself only rarely.

To clarify: I'm not saying that the kanji themselves don't have nuanced differences in meaning, nor am I saying that the keywords themselves don't.  I'm saying that Heisig's choice of keyword for each kanji don't necessarily MATCH those differences.  It can seem sometimes, once you actually see the kanji in use, that he plucked certain keywords out of his butt.  That's not an exaggeration.

That's all I mean when I say that I don't want to be "held hostage" to Heisig's keywords.  I can learn the nuances between the kanji's exact definitions as I progress in my Japanese education.  At this stage, however, those nuances are not really conveyed very well by the RTK keywords.  The method is invaluable, as are most of the keywords ... I just don't think it's true that the keywords are the "best" English match for each kanji, and deserve any sort of special stressing over. 

They're an initial learning tool -- a way to loosely organize the information in your mind, and begin getting a vague idea of what sort of imagery a kanji is meant to convey.  The slight differences in the English keywords don't always accurately match the differences in the meanings of the actual kanji, and thus, I don't see how it's worth worrying about until I can verify the applicability of the keywords in the course of my own studies.

Last edited by dukelexon (2008 February 18, 10:17 pm)