Go look it up in an English dictionary if you don't get any sort of imagery. That's helped me a few times.

Or, if you have some JP skill, look up the kanji in a JP dictionary, and see what compounds/words it pops up in. That will give you some idea of what was going on in Heisig's head at the time he wrote the book.

If that problem is that the English keyword isn't sparking any particular association, try finding a song that contains that word. For example, "All Along the Watchtower" has a line "Outside in the cold distance"... I use that for DISTANCE, which is a crockpot wrapped up in a scarf way down the road. Without that song hook, the word "distance" just doesn't conjure up anything specific for me. Some of Heisig's keywords are quite abstract and others have very close synonyms, so any way you can peg down the exact word and link it to something else will help. You can then go from that "something else" (a song, a famous quote, whatever) to a story with the primitives.

Or, if you're confusing a keyword with another similar keyword, try to find the element that makes it different and feature that in the story. I was confusing "bury" (soil + computer) with all those graveyard kanji a few chapters later (the ones with flower, sun, and St. Bernard), until I made it into a "Blackberry/BURY", which gave me both the computer and the word bury.

(ETA: I agree with Rich_f... I use a kanji dictionary to look up RTK kanji, typically a day or two after I first learn them. It does sometimes help with stories, but also keeps me from falling into the trap of thinking keyword EQUALS kanji.)

Last edited by annabel398 (2008 September 29, 2:09 pm)

General Advice: Try some different things and pay close attention to how you remember things. What works for some people does not always work for others. I found doing Heisig was not only great for learning kanji, but also learning more about my memory and strategies I can use.

Now for the concrete:
-For frequent primitives, try making characters instead of using the plain keyword. Characters carry heavy connotations/habits, and if you work with the keyword to somehow fit the character and make a good story it can be invaluable in remebering.

-Create stories that link together. I not only made up a character for 糸 (Thread -- I designated it Old Man Time), but created this whole elaborate series of stories. Because it has a chronology and certain themes/events, I can remember each of the stories better than had I made 30 stories that are not related.

-If you get drained, take a break and read a book, watch tv, or play some games (whichever you prefer). Things like these can inspire stories for you.

-Don't stress out over some characters that are hard to remember. The test of time will usually conquer them. The parade, march, arrow, etc primitives gave me so much trouble at first but they are crystal clear now.

If I have trouble coming up with an image for a kanji, I try to clear my mind and then think what is the first topic/thought/word that comes to my mind when I think of the keyword. Building a story out of this might be helpful.

Oh, and rote certainly doesn't hurt, but don't overdo it and make sure that you focus on the kanji when you write it!

Heart is really a *****. Not because of it being hard to write, and not really because heart is hard to visualize, but because of valentine and state of mind, and even more, the insane amounts of kanji it is used in, which makes it really hard to make distinct stories.

For the various heart primitives, I cheated and changed one of them into a fictional character. (For state of mind, anyway.) Managing primitives is a little different from visualizing kanji stories, though. It's sort of like herding cats.

If I didn't like a primitive (thread, fingers, person) that was too vague or showed up WAY too often, I made it into a person/character that would stand out in my mind. My brain shrieked at the idea of covering all of those kanji with "thread" in them using "thread" as the primitive name, and Fingers the Thief was much more fun than just plain fingers, because he got into a LOT of trouble doing all sorts of devious things to the other kanji primitives he inhabited.

Also, I noticed that some of Heisig's stories, while making perfect sense, just didn't stick or click with my brain, so I ditched them. The sooner, the better, really. He has some good ones, but the stories you make up on your own will almost always be the best ones for you. (Unless you suck at making up stories, in which case you should make liberal use of this site. )

Don't sweat it too much. They keywords are just placeholders, anyway. The idea is to keep the kanji "recognized" and in your head, so when you see them, they'll look familiar to you somehow. Sort of like how you see ? and think, "oh, that's an a with two little dots over it." You don't need to know it's called an umlaut to be able to recognize and write it. Same with RTK, IMO. You need to be able to see a kanji and think, "Oh, I've seen that one before." You don't necessarily need to be able to recall the keyword, because you're not really trying to keep those in the long run, anyway.

Squintox wrote:

Making your own primitives makes it 10x easier. I'm pretty sure most would agree that the "person" kanji were by far the easiest to learn.

Mr.T and Spiderman were the 2 best characters! I didn't use Data from the start but started to wish I did towards the later ones.

The troublesome ones seem to break down into a few categories:

Absolute blank.  When I see the word the associations I make have nothing to do with any story I can recall.

Getting somewhere there, but not quite.  This is usually with more than 2 primitives, or something with at least one primitive that's very abstract. 

I'm still working on it, but it's a bit disheartening when I'm reviewing and just getting nothing for ages.  It seemed so easy when I started.  And I didn't know any kanji before doing this so that's not a factor.

Plus, being a really hard kanji is a memory hook on it's own. Eventually you start to see the keyword and think "Gah, it's that #!$%& kanji!"
Hey, you just remembered it!
Yeah.

Yes, repeating the keyword several times in the story is especially good for those keywords you really don't have any special connections to or when you feel your story isn't clear enough on just what is the keyword. The keyword needs to be very firmly connected with your story so the story comes up right away when you see the keyword. Repeating the keyword is a very good way of achiveing this.