They follow rules. You will begin to notice patterns.

In general, get used to writing the left part of the kanji first in kanji with left/right radicals.

In top/bottom radicals, get used to writing from top down.

In top/bottom radicals which have a left/right kanji under it, get used to going from top, to left, to right.

Don't worry too much about it. Get used to writing it in the correct order and make sure to correct yourself if you make a mistake/you're not confident in your answer. By 2000 kanji you'll have it down.

Remember, it's ok not to master everything at once. Many things will come with time, and this is one of them!

(As far as tips go, try buying the paper edition of the "Kanji Learner's Dictionary" and look up kanji in it. Looking up words correctly in it will teach you correct stroke numbers and order since you need to know that to find the kanji. Electronic dictionaries are nice, but I think using paper kanji dictionaries at the beginning level can really help learners get a feel for kanji. I know it did for me.)

My favourite kanji is nitrate.
There is just something alluring about it, I scribble it in all my notebooks.

Thanks guys. Yeah, I guess it'll just take a while to sink it. It's not a serious problem, but it is the most common way I fail a review. Like today, for focus, I put FEW on the left and EYE on the right... such an bad mistake

Also, might I just say this community is freakin' awesome? This is really great. Makes Japanese a lot more fun in the beginning stages.

-Seth

I generally try to work them into the story whenever possible, or add an addendum to it to help me out if I'm failing a character frequently due to positioning.

For example, with the character for "farm" I would frequently mix up the position of the field and fire. So I just added a few details to the story, like the field being in the east to best meet the rising sun and the fire being in the west since the sun sets there and that's where you'd need a fire.

I pass the kanji even if i misplace the radicals.

But see what kitsu said above, stone only appears on the left in its 'mineral' like borrowed meaning, so for me, i personally find it useless to incorporate the story in the meaning.
硫 碑 砒 砿 硅. Why? Because i know that when the keyword is sulphur, ore, nitrate, or whatever the hell,  they surely have to contain stone in there, for they are minerals/chemicals, and the rest comes from my story.

All i can say is that you'll get a feel for things later on, which is another reason you shouldn't 'follow heisig to every letter'. Getting a feel for things is more or less similar to rote learning, you will get a feel for the kanji placements after writing them and srs'sing so don't worry.

The sukoshi (few) ontop of eye in focus comes out from error, if you look at the etymology of the character, it was tsuchi (earth) instead of sukoshi, and its earliest known form was  屮 (of which 屮屮 ==> 'grass' radical) likewise, with 賓 which also contains 'few' ontop of something, i checked the etymology and it turns out that the previous forms didn't have sukoshi there at all.

Finally, i checked 劣 which also had sukoshi ontop (sorry i don't know proper bushu terms for positioning yet) One form does have it ontop, though another differs slightly, and that is all that exists so far for that character.
雀 - i think has kept its form from 'the beginning'. But that is about all, the rest, it only appears on the right.

So you see, any 'exceptions' of generic placements usually arise from error, and you will get a feel for them. There are countless other examples which i can't think of right now, but making up a story to coincide with placement is a waste of time, learn some etymology instead and you'll give yourself a genuine reason as to why placements are where they are.

You may forget WHY exactly they are there after time (i had to re-look up 賓 if sukoshi there was a mistake or not over time, but who cares, i still got the feel for the character when i wrote it).

Mind you, im only at 780ish now, but having henshall + chinese etymologied + checking traditional form for nearly every single character i've learnt i can say with confidence that i wouldn't worry.

Last edited by liosama (2008 December 05, 3:17 am)

FloconDeNeige wrote:

Hey I was JUST thinking of making a thread about this =O And tonight i'll get to 200 kanji ^^

Anyway. I find i also fail a lot of kanji simply because of placement. It's soooo fustrating! But I find it useful to write out the kanji about 5 times or so now. I know the book says not to do so because it's rote learning, but i don't see it that way. When i review I feel like i have more of a natural feel for the right placement of the kanji. I also get more success also

You should definitely write out the Kanji on paper for the following reasons:
1. To catch mistakes (much more accurate than writing on your palm)
2. To improve your handwriting
3. To help memorize the kanji

Just make sure when you are writing, you are going from keyword/story to kanji and not just copying the shape of the last one you wrote.

FYI, I am almost finished with my second notebook of 20,000 kanji (for a total of 40,000)...

I found that making the placement a part of the story was very helpful. Heisig sometimes calls radicals different things based on their placements (heart, for example, becomes a valentine). But for ones that sometimes appear to the right or above with no radical name change, you might have trouble. It might not be worth remembering another radical name if it's not used very often.

Like I said, making the placement a part of the story is really useful. In addition, I usually tried to always tell the story in a way that used the names of the radicals in the order they should be written. So, for example, 'focus', I might imagine a baby laying in a crib looking up and focusing on a few objects hanging on a mobile. So I might tell the story as "focusing up on a few objects helps a baby's eyes get strong." That still has a couple extra words so I might only say "focusing up on a few objects helps the eyes."

Using words like up, down, in front, behind helped me. Just be consistent with how you use them and up/down/etc. imagery.

But really, if you're just starting out, don't worry. Things really do start working themselves out as you get along. Things that seem hard now will seem like nothing a few hundred cards later. You start to get a feel for things.