I dont think that learning with french keywords is going to affect you after you are done with RTK1. Since english keywords (or french, spanish, german) are just going to be replace eventually with japanese.

I dont see why you shouldn't switch to french. I do RTK in spanish and doing fine with it. You are going to probably remember better the kanjis that had a strange keyword in english.

And you can still use the stories in this site as the meanings of the keywords are similar (and there are also stories in french).

Now I dont know if you would have trouble with the 500 ones that you already know. Maybe you could stick with the english keywords for them. Or try change them and see what happens (I dont see nothing wrong with a little trial and error).

Thank you both.

I'm still undecided though. It worked pretty well so far, and as the saying goes, don't fix what ain't broken.

To be more specific, one of the problems I have with English is, when I try to go from kanji to keyword, it doesn't work.

For example : 嬌 . In my mind, I have this image of a woman looking at a super-good-looking angel, perhaps Maria and Gabriel. But what's the concept exactly ? Is she "fascinated" or in "awe" ? But then I look at the answer and I realize that no, actually the angel was the focal point of the story, not the woman, and the keyword is "attractive".

Now perhaps the language isn't the problem at all, and it would happen just the same in French. Perhaps the answer is simply to set up and Anki deck to review the other way around...

I think you should have started with the French version of the book, because much of the power of the RTK method is to associate the kanji with a native word that is so thoroughly known that there's no question of understanding the keyword (and for that reason, it drives me a little nuts when he uses words that don't have that strength; I'm sure for him all those years ago, they were great keywords... but for the general public some of his keywords are a little tough to work with.)

Anyway, what I'm trying to say, is working in your native language would be easier... how much easier is hard to say as you appear to be thoroughly fluent in English. However, you're 1/4 of the way there now, and some of the keywords in the French version might be -very- different and you'd have to relearn those with some difficulty.

However, first... in the introduction, Heisig recommends only drilling from keyword->kanji and not the reverse, so you shouldn't worry too much about this. Later you will drill kanji->japanese word and that will be much more important.

Second of all, I think the problem with the reverse is your chosen story image... while I can see how attractive can cue the story, it seems very hard for the story to cue 'attractive'. But I wouldn't worry about this either, as kanji->keyword is relatively unimportant. The keywords keep the kanji separate in your mind, but they aren't a real definition of the kanji, only a mnemonic.

Sooo.... if you are learning keyword->kanji without much trouble, then keep it up. Only if you think your native language would make keyword->kanji -much- easier would it be worth starting over.

Last edited by SomeCallMeChris (2011 September 14, 9:10 pm)

No, it isn't half a lie. Keywords are like an approximate meaning. This is necessary when using a single word because kanji are like letters in compounds, and the full meaning of a kanji is the sum of its occurences, in which the meaning is often quite different. That's why "moon" also means "flesh" and "month". But Heisig, when he hesitated to attribute a keyword, often chose the etymological solution, because he felt it was closer to the drawing. Most people argue it would have been more logical to take the most frequent meaning in use, true, but still there's a consensus on the first 2042. Mostly, the keywords are sound.

And when you'll see compounds, you'll guess the approximate meaning most of the times, that bit is true.

Last edited by EratiK (2011 September 15, 4:35 pm)