Heisig's keywords are not definitions. RTK is just one step to learning kanji, it is not a complete method.

本 also means origin. 日本 is therefore the origin of the sun - Land of the Rising Sun.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2010 April 02, 5:51 am)

In short, RTK doesn't teach you how to read Japanese. It doesn't teach you how to read kanji.

What RTK is for, in my experience, is becoming familiar with each of the 2042 (3007) characters he introduces. It gets you comfortable seeing pretty much any random character you encounter, and sets up building blocks for becoming familiar with even more (should you choose).

A lot of times, once you become familiar with the kanji enough -- enough to realize 日 is more than just "day," for instance -- it can help you figure out the "meanings" of Japanese text. This is quite a step up from looking at random squiggles.

As for learning the pronunciations -- you can do what some people do, and add the onyomi in your story for the kanji. You can do the movie method. There are many ways to do it. However, a lot of people just say you will learn them through exposure, and learning a lot of new words.

As a (terrible) example, let's say you're at a party with roughly 200 people. The next day, what are you going to remember: everyone's names, or their faces and what kind of things they did? The next time you meet them, you can remember their personality, even if you can't recall their name. Then, as time goes on and you hang out more often, the names begin to "click."
I've found that this a similar situation as me and the Kanji introduced by Heisig.

Edit (add on): About their readings instead of a keyword: this would be relatively tough, I believe. Especially for readings such as ショウ or コウ, where there are quite a large amount of kanji corresponding to the readings.
And going the other way, (kanji -> reading), there are often multiple readings that can also change depending on the various word.
Learning the keyword (which isn't a definition, although in many situations can be used as a "hint") sort of puts you on a similar sort of level as a chinese person: you recognize and are familiar with the characters.

Last edited by Asriel (2010 April 02, 6:34 am)

Cardician, the biggest thing I noticed is to not worry about the fact that the japanese words don't necessarily fit the kanji meaning. Later, when you get past heisig you will see that it honestly doesn't even matter. Can you recognize and write the kanji correctly and easy after Heisig? I believe the answer will be yes, and that is the most important thing about Heisig imo. I finished heisig over 8 months ago, and I now know another 3000 kanji on top of that using a similar method to Heisig. I was able to tackled the simplified characters as I am currently learning Mandarin. Oh and by the way I can nearly read the newspapers already. (listening sucks more than reading though) But hang in there man.

Well, first of all, it's really hard to tell just how effective Remembering the Kanji is.  Why is that?  Well, the only way it's ever been thought of as good or bad is through anecdotal evidence from people who are doing it.  It's not like there are studies or something showing the effectiveness of RTK.  And, unfortunately, it just so happens that anecdotal evidence sucks.  It could be that if people studied Japanese the way it's usually done, on average they'll be just as good, if not better, than someone who did RTK.  Or it could be the other way.  At any rate, it almost certainly varies from person to person.  And, of course, there's no reason to believe that the traditional way of learning is better than RTK with no real data.

I studied Japanese for 3 years in college.  For about a year my class was basically just speaking and listening, and then I slowly started to learning kana and eventually kanji.  After college I moved to Japan, knowing maybe 350 kanji, and was doing self-study.  I happened to stumble upon RTK in a bookstore, and I looked it up online.  I've finished it now, a while ago.  I don't keep up with reviews at all, and here are my impressions looking back.

1)It helped me to overcome a boundary because I knew what I needed to do to improve.  Like an algorithm, all I needed to do to get better at kanji were simple steps.  Look at the book, see what the keywords are, make/find story, use SRS.  It's very simple really.  I was having a big problem beforehand because I didn't know what the hell I should be doing.  It was like 'should I write down the kanji?' 'how many times is okay?' 'is it okay if I can just read it?' 'should I memorize all the readings at once?'... and so on.  I was getting no where because I had no routine, and RTK gave me a routine in steps.

2)The keywords didn't help me at all, except for straightforward nouns.  I've forgotten the keywords almost completely, and that's fine.

3)It helped me to have a place in my brain for a kanji, but one that wasn't actually related to anything (even the keyword).  This seemed to help a lot.  A little before I was done with RTK I tried to start Core 2000, and I found it very difficult to remember cards with kanji I hadn't done yet in RTK.  Afterwords I could do them just fine, because I could start at a place which was already in my head and build pronunciation/meaning onto that.  Again, the key words were lost.

4)I'm much better at writing kanji than almost anyone I know (even the three people I know who are very very advanced/fluent in Japanese).  This is all RTK.

5)It was much easier to work on pronunciation and meaning after RTK, and it was easier to jump into more natural material.  I was reading Doraemon manga while doing RTK, and at that time the keywords would actually help me often, but this stopped happening eventually and I became able to read more in a real way.

That's basically the short and skinny of it.  I would still recommend RTK to anyone, and I would probably be better with kanji if I kept up with reviews.  In general, kanji are not a problem for me at all anymore.  When my friends talk about how hard kanji are, I don't feel like I relate to it.

In terms of my Japanese studies, my five best resources have been, in order
1)the textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language, taught with a damn good teacher and a small class
2)Remember the Kanji with Reviewing the Kanji
3)Jay Rubin's "Making Sense of Japanese"
4)Core 2000/6000 with Anki
5)Read Real Japanese series

So RTK is pretty up there.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2010 April 02, 8:40 am)

cardician wrote:

Well thank you all for your responses. And I apologize Jarvik7 if I came across rudely. I do admit however, I am no good at reading in between the lines. So you got me there

Anyway, I guess I was under the wrong impression of RTK. Thanks for pointing it out. I'm not going to stop and plan to get to 3007 as I'm sure knowing the Kanji has some value. It just seems odd to me because the way I'm learning the Kanji is by associating words with shapes. Yet apparently those words don't actually mean anything and their only purpose is to help us remember the shapes. Later we will learn to associate the shapes with actual meanings? I don't know, its just hard for me to wrap my brain around I guess. That and I'm still trying to figure out how the whole language works together.

Fortunately time should continue to make things clearer. I just have to have patience, which I'm certainly not known for. Thanks all.

It's a question of definition. A kanji is a concept and can generally not be connected to one meaning or even several. It's not that the keywords in Heisig are incorrect and you will learn the "real" meaning later, it's that you will come to realize that the concept behind that keyword might not correlate all that awesomely to the concept of the kanji.

It's like explaining one word using another. It gives you a good hint, but doesn't really tell you much else. Like if someone asks "What's a carrier?" and you simply answer "boat".

cardician wrote:

Anyway, I guess I was under the wrong impression of RTK. Thanks for pointing it out. I'm not going to stop and plan to get to 3007 as I'm sure knowing the Kanji has some value.

Note: I'd really recommend stopping after 2042 kanji.  There's no real reason to do 3007 before you actually know a lot of Japanese.

You said that often compound meanings have nothing to do with the meanings of their Kanji. I don't think so.

Yes, there are compounds that seem to have nothing to do with their Kanji but these are not the majority. More often than not I can guess the meaning of a compound from the meaning of its Kanji, even if I am not sure how to read it.

Sometimes of course you cannot go by Heisig's Meaning (see 日本 above). But you will learn, moslty through exposure, that Kanji have several meanings that evolved over time. This just means that sometimes it is harder to guess the meaning of a compound from its Kanji, but it doesn't mean that it's not possible.

Also, keep in mind how our brain works. You remember/learn things by making connections with things you already know. The more connections you make, the stronger a bond will be formed. Thus, if you go out and start memorizing/learning vocabulary without being able to relate the characters to anything, there is a high possibility that will you remember almost nothing and won't recognize the word again once you see it. Thus, by doing RTK (or a similar system), you will create anchors that will help you to relate vocabulary words to something and thus remember them more easily. This occurs subconsciously, and therefore also holds even if the meaning of the word has nothing to do with the Kanji meanings.

In terms of learning readings, keep in mind that readings are way more irregular/varied than meanings are. Many Kanji have more than 5-10 different readings, used with different compounds. Even IF you memorize all the readings instead of meanings you still wouldn't be able to read since you don't know how to pronounce a certain compound. You are much better of with meaning, because this gives you much stronger connections for memorizing compounds. The readings than come mostly with the compounds, not the Kanji itself. And once you know enough compounds, you will automatically know the readings of the Kanji.

Hope that answers your questions.