I pre-ordered my RtK Volume I, 5th edition last month and it finally came in the mail today!
I checked the new edition against the errata from the PDFs* on the Nanzan Institute website, and it seems that everything is in order. Granted, there are about 130 pages of errata, and I couldn't be bothered to check all of the pages; however, I did inspect a good 30 or so pages at random points throughout the main sections of the book (excluding the indexes), and they all checked out clean.
I did notice many differences in the errata PDFs and the indexes of the hardcopy, but I think it might have something to do with the page numbering of the book differing somewhat from the 4th to the 5th edition. I don't know, if someone can go and verify this for me (for everybody, actually) and post on this thread, I'd appreciate it.
One thing that glared out at me was the "Note to the 4th Edition" contained in the 5th edition. Heisig didn't bother to make any comments about the printing of the 5th edition, and instead opted to just lift his "Note to the 4th Edition" and stick it verbatim into the pages of the 5th edition. I was a little disappointed in that, because I was looking forward to reading about all the changes in the latest printing from the man himself.
So as of now, all I know is that the errata for the key words, stroke order and stories have all been fixed in the newest edition of RtK volume I. Does anyone else know of any additional changes? Has anyone contacted the author and asked about the changes? Please share anything you know about the 5th edition. Not just changes, but comments, questions, etc. I'm curious, as I'm sure many others are. Thanks!
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*This isn't a biggie, but I just thought that some of you might want to know in case this hasn't already been called to attention before. Incidentally, in checking my copy of the 5th edition against the errata, I compared both errata PDFs ("3rd printing" and "cumulative") side-by-side and found that the "cumulative" one is missing some errata contained in the "3rd printing" one. I've listed the pages below. The first number is the page number printed at the top of the PDF of the "3rd printing" errata, and the number in parentheses is the PDF page number:
430 (26)
483 (28)
488 (30)
499 (31)
Last edited by densetsu3000 (2007 June 13, 11:25 am)
Kieron
Member
From: Seattle - USA
Registered: 2007-02-23
Posts: 63
These are all the changes I could find between the 4th edition (including errata) and 5th:
499 was rumor, now explanation.
563 was feminine, now female.
743 was masculine, now male.
773 was mountain peak, now mountain pass.
798 was public space, now hall.
859 was male, now man.
1122 was candy, now confectionary.
1908 was explanation, now interpretation.
Additionally, the "monk" primitive changed to "monk's cowl".
Megaqwerty
Member
Registered: 2007-04-05
Posts: 318
I would personally prefer that you keep the 3rd edition words for two reasons. First, they add more flavor to a particular kanji as there's a bigger base to build a story off (such as with nonplussed/visit). Secondly, there are some conflicts between RTK I 4th Ed and RTK III keywords, which the 3rd Ed keywords help to avoid. Granted, however, this is a minor issue (since none of the new keywords affect this issue, I believe).
