I have a friend who learned quite strong japanese in 2 years without heisig. He learned by a method called kumon. He oftens describes Heisig method as "alien" and that no matter how effective it may be, he'd no learn japanese with such an "alien" method.

I somewhat agree with him. Heisig is really alien. SRSs are alien. And I'm starting to get sick of alien stuff. I'll never leave the SRS, and I'll finish RTK. But after that I'll go straight to the sentences. I dont care if it faster, slower, better, worse. For a change, I want to learn japanese by "doing" japanese.

Dragg wrote:

Btw, I've never heard of Kumon.  Maybe you could tell us more about it.

I'm interested too, I tried googling for it and just found some school system for kids.

Dragg wrote:

I think you are absolutely right about getting rid of alien methods as soon as possible.

Strongly disagree. I would never stop using an SRS program, no matter how "alien" it may be. (I'd stop using one to study the kanji in RTK once they all come naturally, but I wouldn't stop using one to study Japanese.)

- Kef

Last edited by furrykef (2008 July 03, 4:58 pm)

mentat_kgs wrote:

I somewhat agree with him. Heisig is really alien. SRSs are alien. And I'm starting to get sick of alien stuff.

Actually, unless you live in Japan, are Japanese or live surrounded by Japanese speakers, Japanese IS alien for you, and you are an alien for the Japanese, as most of us are. Something being new or different doesn't mean that it is bad or wrong, you have to try different things and stick to the ones that prove useful for you.

I'll never leave the SRS, and I'll finish RTK. But after that I'll go straight to the sentences. I dont care if it faster, slower, better, worse. For a change, I want to learn japanese by "doing" japanese.

I think that the problem is not with the tools, but with the way you use them. Who says that reading or hearing real Japanese is forbidden before finishing RTK? Who says that you shouldn't watch to something you won't enter to your SRS? Who says that you should stick 100% to RTK as it is? Indeed, I think that listening and watching to real Japanese while entering some important sentences into an SRS and doing RTK with Japanese prompts sounds a great idea. The important thing is trying several tools/methods and taking the best of each one.

He oftens describes Heisig method as "alien" and that no matter how effective it may be, he'd no learn japanese with such an "alien" method.

If that works for him, great. If that works for you, great. If that doesn't work for you, forget about prejudices and just do what works the best for you.

Good luck and 頑張れ！

Transtic, you totaly missed the point about my post. I'm not saying japanese is alien. Just that Hesig's way is alien.

Altought I guess the only non alien to learn kanji is by being raised in japan and not go to school - because schools are alien too. But not many people do this, ehe.

I still think Heisig is the most efficient way for a foreigner to pick up kanji. And I advise everyone should try it. We all here know how powerful Heisig is. About the friend I talked about earlier: he is still struggling with kanji. Just in 2 months I already know more kanji than him - with much better recall rate and almost no mistakes.

And I do all that japanese hearing since ~10 years ago.

Dragg, you nailed what I said. I totally agree with you. Alien measures worked great so far. And if you are telling RTK2 is not alien, please explain it a little better. Because then it will be of my interest. I believe using SRS with sentences is a bit alien too but no way I'm gonna let go that. AJATT ftw!

Btw, I don't know much about kumon. I only know it is a method created for japanese descendents. It is not only for japanese. They learn math and other stuff too.

Windykat: The audio book resources thread here in this forum has a lot of parallel books. Most of them are from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I can't way to dig them after I finish RTK.

I agree with you that Computer is a much better "etimological" content than any other.

@ mentat

Since RTK 2 gives the groups of phonetically linked kanji, I think it is a fairly natural way, or at least a shortcut method, to learn pronunciations after RTK 1.  There are several studies that claim that native Japanese speakers often process these phonetic radicals/primitives to help when they are reading.  As somebody mentioned earlier, it is possible that you might be able to pick up many of the phonetic radicals yourself given enough time, but over the last few months of my reading after finishing RTK 1, I havent had too much luck with this.  Perhaps I am just not being patient enough.  Actually, I am not sure if these so-called phonetic radicals are explicitly taught in schools or not; its just my assumption based on their level of importance given in these studies.  Perhaps the signal patterns were learned unconsciously through repeated exposure.   Does anybody else know if signal primitives or on-yomi grouping are taught to children?

Here is an excerpt from a study called "Japanese Mental Lexicon" which briefly highlights what is known as the "speech recoding view":

"The idea is that activation of the phonological properties of a word is an automatic and integral component in the path of accessing the word's identity in the mental lexicon.  And there have been various forms of suport for this hypothesis.  Hirose (1992b), for example, presented subjects with kanji stimuli, differing in their combinations of left- and right-hand radicals and had them judge as quickly as possible whether sequentially-presented kanji had the same pronunciation or not.  Right-hand radicals played a significant role in phonological processing of kanji, in that kanji pairs which shared the same right-hand radicals exhibited the fastest reaction times, reminiscent of priming effects.  A second experiment employed pairs of kanji which had the same radicals on the left- and right-hand side of the kanji characters, respectively.  The left-hand characters had no facilitating effect on the phonemic processing of kanji, suggesting that the information carried by the right-hand radicals does play some role in the phonological processing of kanji for Japanese readers, but only for those kanji which have reliable phonetic radicals."

Based on this study and others, I think it would be well worth many people's time to at least study the on-yomi "pure groups" if not the other groups in RTK 2 as well.

Last edited by Dragg (2008 July 04, 1:37 pm)

Dragg wrote:

@ mentat

Since RTK 2 gives the groups of phonetically linked kanji, I think it is a fairly natural way, or at least a shortcut method, to learn pronunciations after RTK 1.  There are several studies that claim that native Japanese speakers often process these phonetic radicals/primitives to help when they are reading.  As somebody mentioned earlier, it is possible that you might be able to pick up many of the phonetic radicals yourself given enough time, but over the last few months of my reading after finishing RTK 1, I havent had too much luck with this.

I'm having no problem picking them up. I've been learning kanji in order of onyomi, which allows me to get the hang of them pretty easy. For example, I'll go through all the kanji with the reading of ジ, which has kanji that appear with 寺 often enough to notice.

RTK2 is learning kanji in groups that obey the signal primitives I think? Then it starts adding exceptions? I'm not sure exactly how it works past pure and semi pure groups.

I just go through ALL the kanji with an onyomi reading using my own methods. RTK2 using way too much rote for me, I think.

And yeah, I knew what you meant, dragg. But I think the whole discussion about picking them up was started by what I said at the top.

Edit: Oh, Dragg, after looking at RTK2 a bit more, I want to add that it would be helpful to know signal primitives in mixed groups. There less helpful, but still very useful and I think worth looking at if you want to use the second book. (Cause you said that people should at least study pure groups.)

Last edited by alyks (2008 July 07, 1:12 pm)