Seriously. It's all about individual experience and what works for you. I was learning around 25 every other day (rotated with other study), including readings, before Heisig, but I wasn't learning to write many of them terribly well, and every single study session was a mass of just absolute pain. I looked forward to my other every-other-day Japanese, which were ALSO painful, just by comparison.
Now, going through Heisig, it's just moderately boring/inconveniencing to actually go through the kanji themselves, and a pure delight to learn the readings (in conjunction with vocabulary) afterwards.
Obviously, this won't be everyone's experience. But for me, I've gone from slow, painful torture to mild irritant + active delight. This choice isn't a terribly difficult one.

Extract head from Ass. Thanks.

yukamina wrote:

NightSky wrote:

yukamina wrote:

I'm saying RTK isn't the only method one can use to learn kanji quickly. The game was faster than RTK, but like I said it had problems in many areas.

Of course the huge problem both had is that you weren't learning how to read any of those characters. It's not difficult to learn at least 20 kanji a day including readings if you spend as much time as people here spend on Heisig.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but weren't you posting on TJP a while back, singing Heisig's praises and getting a bit of a hard time for it? The only reason I bring it up is that it was quite a long time ago, and if Heisig is as effective as you were saying you should have had it all finished quite some time ago The fact that you are still trying to get the keywords down (I say keywords, since it seems you haven't actually started learning to read Kanji yet) is quite interesting :]

Yeah, I was on TJP too :p
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I didn't finish RTK, but I did learn all the joyo kanji using both RTK and SFA. I finished last summer, and I've been working on reading and vocabulary since then. So, like I said, I don't connect kanji to English keywords anymore(which is why I couldn't review them isolated).
I'm not really so obsessed with Heisig, but when people bash a method(divide and conquer, mnemonics, etc) I like, I just have to say something!

What is TJP? In any event I agree with what people on here are saying. Use whatever works for you? If Heisig works great, if you have found something else that you think is better, then that is great too.

My personal view is that trying to learn all the kanji up front is only a good idea for some people. For others learning them alongside grammar, vocabulary etc (ie in the traditional manner) might be better. That way you can stay motivated by feeling you are actually learning some sentences you can use (especially important if you are living in Japan and need to communicate). Also you can starting read materials (such as manga) that may be aimed at younger readers. On the other hand I think stories are a great idea, and support a method that uses stories/mnemonics. I think the book by Bodnaryk is not bad, but it doesn't seem that popular. (Note the version I saw used romanji which may scare some off!!)  I have seen other books as well that I think have better memory devices than Heisig.

Anyway take my advice with a grain of salt, because my kanji skills are very bad. I studied japanese for a while, but my emphasis was on spoken japanese, so I only learned the kanji that were presented in the books I studied (JLPT4/3 kanji). And I've already forgotten some of those.

So I recommend people learn what is useful for you, and share your ideas !! The best thing people can do to help others is not to criticise but to share ideas, advice, stories, and facts to put into anki !

TJP is a web site "The Japanese Page", with a forum. Some of the people there are very stubborn, and very anti-Heisig.

I agree that people should use the method that works best for them.

NightSky wrote:

learning the readings and their form is far better than learning an english keyword and their form

But that is not the choice here.

The English keywords are not intended to be learned instead of Japanese readings. Keywords are a separate tool used to help learn the forms more efficiently. Saving time with kanji forms will allow more time to spent on readings and other aspects of Japanese.

Katsuo wrote:

NightSky wrote:

learning the readings and their form is far better than learning an english keyword and their form

But that is not the choice here.

The English keywords are not intended to be learned instead of Japanese readings. Keywords are a separate tool used to help learn the forms more efficiently. Saving time with kanji forms will allow more time to spent on readings and other aspects of Japanese.

With Heisig, you very much learn the meanings instead of the readings. Once you have finished, it may help pick up the readings, but you don't get that through Heisig (there is Vol2 of course, but that strikes me as a complete disaster)

It all depends on whether the time saved picking up the readings is more than the time invested having to learn useless English keywords*. For me I don't particularly find Kanji a problem, and can probably read at least 800 or so that I've just picked up in other ways. My time spent specifically studying Kanji is actually very close to zero, most of my study time has been spent studying words and sentences.

Everyone works differently though, and I see no reason why maybe I won't want to give Heisig a go later on. Hence why I regularly find myself checking these boards to see how other people are doing

(*Useless in the sense that once you have the readings down and can actually read Japanese, these keywords neither need to be known or remembered)

Last edited by NightSky (2008 June 07, 8:38 pm)

rich_f wrote:

I'll put it this way-- without Heisig, I never could remember kanji. I took 6 semesters worth of Japanese, and I had a hell of a time ever keeping kanji straight, simply because the way kanji were taught is just awful for me. Rather than trying to keep 8 things straight, it makes more sense to learn 2-3 at a time. At least that's how it works for me.

<snip>

It's a quick and dirty system to deal an otherwise untenable approach to learning a language.

I think this is perfectly fine, and it sounds like you are a good candidate for the Heisig system. I'm not trying to tell you that you are wrong or that you should be doing it another way, and it sounds like whatever you do now is better than the system you were using before.

That doesn't mean though that any method other than Heisig is 'an untenable approach to learning a language', just that whatever you were using before was probably terrible!

I'm another person who thinks the keywords/mental images are invaluable as placeholders that will eventually fade away (even though I'm only about 3/4 through RTK). I know because that is how I was taught hiragana and katakana- using pictures that had the associated symbol in it. For example し　was a picture of a girl with long hair from the side with hiragana shi as her hair and you just remembered "She has long hair." Or お　was "On the green" because it looks like a golf green. み was "who is over 21- ME" etc. I'm actually struggling to remember more of them because I don't need them anymore, but they were INVALUABLE. I learned hiragana/katakana a year ago, I think the same thing will happen with kanji, and the reason you need your mental pictures as well. The stories and keywords will just fade away, serving their purpose. A year from now I probably won't remember many of my stories, but I will know 2000+ kanji.

lazar wrote:

NightSky wrote:

(*Useless in the sense that once you have the readings down and can actually read Japanese, these keywords neither need to be known or remembered)

You don't quite understand.... why do kanji students (Chinese people who have already mastered the kanji and know their basic meanings) have an advantage over others when learning Japanese? Because they UNDERSTAND what the kanji means

If you weren't so quick to get aggressive you may have spent the time to parse what I actually said correctly, which was that the keywords are useless to someone that actually understands the readings, and knows enough Japanese. In the same way that a Japanese person wouldn't read better if they knew English keywords.

Of course, thats very obvious. Which is why I worded it that way - because I didn't want to start getting into a debate about how useful knowing keywords is when you don't actually understand any Japanese. Though I'm sure one does learn faster when they are already more familiar, since that it is necessary to understand Japanese before you can read Japanese, knowing keywords is not very useful by itself at all. Knowing keywords does not bring one closer to literacy.

(I bolded that part because too many people don't seem to understand it, its not aimed at you directly)

So by doing Heisig, you're eliminating the huge gap kanji students have on you when learning Japanese,

I agree mostly.

hope that clears up your confusion.

Since you didn't even read the part of my post you quoted correctly, I'll take this advice for what its worth...

(ps. learning Japanese involves being literate, no matter how good your skills are in the kana, you're basically illiterate if you don't know the kanji)

Yes, and whats your point? I'm not telling anyone to not learn Kanji. I also live over here, have plenty of friends here, and am also painfully aware of the struggle for full literacy. I suspect I'm far more educated than you on the subject, dare I say it

One helpful final tip for yourself then. Compared to the rest of the Japanese language, Kanji is the easiest part. The main problem with Japanese is not Kanji, its that it takes so long to understand the vocabulary/grammar in the first place. Once you already know the words, learning Kanji is not difficult at all, and can be easily achieved pretty quickly. People need to stop blaming their reading problems on "there are just so many Kanji" - and start realising that their problem is that they just don't understand enough Japanese in the first place. Once you have the readings down for 600+ kanji, if you actually understand a good amount of Japanese reading becomes very accessible indeed.

Seriously, how many people here honestly believe that the hardest part of Japanese is the Kanji?

私は日本へ行く

Captal,
Japanese gramar is simple, but it is lots of trouble for us ocidentals because it doesnt fit in our grammars.
You have to learn it by your experience, not by mixing it to yours.

NightSky
That's brings us to Heisig. It is a path for us, that cant understand much japanese to be able to take down real, adult level, japanese text as early as possible: so we can learn from our experience. Learning grammar from furigana books is not that much help.

Brasil (and maybe portugal) has a different culture towards languages than most other countries.
We learn grammar since primary school. 12 year olds already know every gramatical class of our language, every verb inflection, every spelling rule subordinate clauses, etc.
They can break down the sentences and identify ever grammar function in every phrase. I've seen grammars from other languages and portuguese grammar is the most organized and mature.

For me, a Brazilian, it is very easy to pick a spanish book and read it. Spanish and portuguese are so similar that sometimes whole sentences are allmost the same.
French is not that simple, but I've just read a grammar book, got a general notion about the language and was ready to read french texts. French grammars are very well written too.

English was easy. It is also close to portuguese. My english may sound weird but that's what I got by studying it by a method that is not ajatt. I learned it by the grammar, so it is full of flaws and I sometimes confuse it with my own language.

Now, I have plans to study german after finnishing with japanese. German is not that close from portuguese, but is kinda close. And I'm gonna use ajatt!

So NightSky, I crawl in japanese, but I have some experience with learning languages. None of them are like japanese. All of them were reachable trought text from the begginning. In all of them I could take my time to decipher texts.
Japanese doesnt allow it. And I miss that. That's why I want to learn all the kanji before learning real japanese. RTK gives me that.

Last edited by mentat_kgs (2008 June 07, 10:09 am)

I think mentat_kgs said it very well.  For someone who is not learning Japanese by living in the country and being surrounded by the language and gaining many new experiences with it, it is very difficult to associate japanese sounds with kanji.  Hearing a phrase in a real situation is a powerful way to understand the "meaning."  So when it comes time to learning kanji, you just have to associate the kanji with the sound that you remember, and the meaning is derived from your experience.  In that way, you can skip the English portion completely.

People like me however, don't have any experiences to relate the sounds to, so I substitute the English keyword for the "meaning."  That way, I can relate the kanji to experiences I have had in English, and consequently understand the meaning.

However, there is another powerful benefit to using Heisig that most Japanese learners (maybe even Japanese people) would benefit from, and that is a thorough breakdown of all the kanji into their respective pieces, and consequently, ability to build up the pieces into any kanji, and therefore, ability to handwrite all kanji as well.

Something some people in this thread need to learn:

tl dr (too long didn't read).

Stop arguing about learning and instead just go learn. You'll have more fun!

NightSky wrote:

One helpful final tip for yourself then. Compared to the rest of the Japanese language, Kanji is the easiest part. The main problem with Japanese is not Kanji, its that it takes so long to understand the vocabulary/grammar in the first place. Once you already know the words, learning Kanji is not difficult at all, and can be easily achieved pretty quickly. People need to stop blaming their reading problems on "there are just so many Kanji" - and start realising that their problem is that they just don't understand enough Japanese in the first place. Once you have the readings down for 600+ kanji, if you actually understand a good amount of Japanese reading becomes very accessible indeed.

Seriously, how many people here honestly believe that the hardest part of Japanese is the Kanji?

Hehe , as you could see, it was 2:40 am for me, so I merely skimmed what you wrote... Sure if you have knowledge of the readings and writing of the kanji, then Heisig is pointless for you, no?

As for your last question- kanji are the biggest barrier to learning Japanese for me and pretty much everybody I know, the grammar is pretty easy to learn, especially if you listen to audio tapes or something to get the gist of how it works (so far, assuming in second year it doesn't suddenly explode with ridiculously complex grammar structures), and the vocabulary fits in with that even better- especially with SRS.

But yeah, all I saw was that you said keywords were pointless, keywords being the backbone of Heisigs method in my opinion, and for somebody who already knows the readings (didn't make sense to me at 2:40am, why would you be in RTK forums haha)

Hmm, lots of feedback as I expected. I'm not trolling or looking out for arguments here, but its definitely something I enjoy discussing. I'm also trying to be fairly open minded and I don't think my posts have been superly overly negative here....

mentat_kgs wrote:

So NightSky, I crawl in japanese, but I have some experience with learning languages. None of them are like japanese. All of them were reachable trought text from the begginning. In all of them I could take my time to decipher texts.
Japanese doesnt allow it. And I miss that. That's why I want to learn all the kanji before learning real japanese. RTK gives me that.

After Heisig, you *still* wont be able to decipher text in this way. Sorry.

Katsuo wrote:

With Heisig you learn Form, Meaning, Readings, Vocabulary.

RTK1: Form & Meaning
RTK2: Readings & Vocabulary.

"Heisig", as a term, can be confusing as sometimes people use it to mean RTK1 only, other times both RTK1 and RTK2. I suggest using "RTK1" or "RTK2" when referring to the specific books.

I'm talking specifically about RTK1 here. Mainly because most people don't seem to go into RTK2, and secondly because I can't believe that trying to learn readings out of context is a good idea at all. Though I'm not sure of the benefits of RTK1, I consider RTK2 to be outright detrimental.

For example, I'm confused by the following sentence:

NightSky wrote:

With Heisig, you very much learn the readings instead of the meaning.

If by "Heisig" you mean "RTK1" then it's the other way round -- you learn the meanings, but not the readings in that volume.
On the other hand, if by "Heisig" you mean "RTK1 & RTK2", then the statement is still not correct, as you learn both readings and meanings.

Sorry, that was a typo on my part. I've changed it back. I was also referring to RTK1, I'll try to be more explicit from here on.

It all depends on whether the time saved picking up the readings. . .

I think the big time saver is the forms. The method enables you to easily distinguish individual kanji, and quickly learn any new characters you encounter.

I agree completely. Actually I'd say its perhaps the only benefit, as through this new familiarity and ability to easily distinguish Kanji picking up the readings does become much easier

nest0r wrote:

NightSky, I doubt you're going to find many people who agree with you here on the RTK forums. I can't say I believe that you know how to read and write Japanese very well, judging by your general thoughts on the language, and I don't see you convincing many people otherwise.

I'm certainly no expert, but I would love to know what it was I said to make you think that. I suspect your line of thought was something along the lines of "Kanji to me looks really hard, this person says other parts of Japanese are more difficult, therefore, he doesnt know what hes talking about"

Seriously, I'm very curious about that remark.

Dragg wrote:

I am another person who honestly thinks Kanji is the hardest part of learning Japanese.

Previously, I tried learning Kanji through rote memorization via flashcards and writing practice.  I would simultaneously learn the "on" pronunciation with each one, and I had planned to pick up the "kun" readings later on.  I also practiced reading using resources like mangajin around the same time.  It took me almost a year of hard work to learn about 800 Kanji this way, and it was very hard to keep them stored.  After a few months of hiatus, I forgot all but the simplest kanji (i.e. One or two simple radicals per kanji max)

Yes, that method of learning Kanji is definitely terrible, and will be beaten by almost any other method hands down. The problem with that method is the same one Heisig has, which is that you are learning everything completely out of context.

Just learn words!! Learn new words, look at what Kanji makes them up, stick it into an SRS, and before you know it you'll be able to read it. Don't bother adding information about the Kanji itself, just whack it in and keep reviewing (This would work even better for those who have already completed RTK1)

Now I am learning both the on and kun pronunciations simply by exposure to compounds in quality sentences.

Yup, this is exactly what I advocate. But of course RTK1 is not a requirement before a person can start doing this

Its actually very interesting to see almost everyone believes Kanji is the most difficult part of Japanese. My only worry is that having spoken to plenty of people about this, that way of thinking is usually far more prevalent in beginners than people that have more experience.

No offense intended here and I'm not trying to say you all can't speak Japanese or something similar. All I'm saying is that learning Japanese is really really hard, and perhaps after people have got to a more intermediate stage they realise that Kanji isn't really the biggest problem after all. Then again, for those that reached a more intermediate stage and still felt Heisig would have give a large boost, then by all means its probably a good investment of time

(Apologies for the length of my posts, I feel its polite to actually respond to peoples comments/questions properly)