Does anyone have a method for remembering how the kanji are assembled?
Usually when I make a mistake it's because I write them stacked on top of each other instead of beside each other or vice-versa.
If I go over them enough they will eventually become ingrained, but I would be so much faster if I didn't have to worry about those.
Thanks guys!
mcaruso
Member
From: The Netherlands
Registered: 2010-09-19
Posts: 27
One thing you'll quickly notice is how many primitives have a specific "preferred" placement. For example, 頁 will always go on the right-hand side of the kanji. You'll find exceptions for these, but this can be a useful hint.
Other times, it might be useful to encorporate the placement in to your story. For example, 女 will often go on the left, but not in 妻 (wife). So for that story I used the image of *ten* *rakes* falling on the *woman* who is your wife. Heisig mentions this somewhere in the book, but I don't have it with me so I can't tell you where.
mcaruso
Member
From: The Netherlands
Registered: 2010-09-19
Posts: 27
In some cases you could resort to using different connotations for the same primitive to distinguish between positions. For example, for 糸, many people have chosen to use "Spider-Man" for the primitive when on the left, but "Venom" (his nemesis) when on the bottom. This can be helpful, especially to distinguish between 細 and 累, which have the same primitives in different positions. Try to avoid this if you can though, you'd be adding complexity to your primitives.
All in all I wouldn't worry about it too much, the SRS tends to take care of this stuff for you automatically.
SomeCallMeChris
Member
From: Massachusetts USA
Registered: 2011-08-01
Posts: 787
Yeah, I don't account for order if the order is where the primitives are naturally found (one primitive in an enclosure ; person, flesh, or tree to the left of another primitive, etc.) Kanji where the primitives are in the 'wrong' place or don't have a 'natural' order, I make sure to include them in the story as much as possible, if not in the imagery then at least in the short phrase I use to remind myself of the imagery (which sometimes makes for some awkward sentences, it's true, but it's important that rainbows are insect-crafted not crafted by insects... )
If I still mess up (write left-right instead of top-down or vice versa) I try to refine the story, or if I can see ahead that it will be a problem try to get into the story. As a general rule, if something 'moves' in a story it moves left to right. The exception being if something descends or ascends, of course, that's top to bottom. Sometimes I use the 'sinister' and 'right' puns on left and right if it's really troublesome, but you have to be careful not to mix up 'right' with 'righteous' or 'correct', but that's not usually been a problem.
Sometimes my 'story' gets discarded for a nonsensical listing of objects and their placement, which is nearly the same as giving up on the story and brute-force memorizing troublesome characters (this is usually the sign of a very bad sort of story, one that is too powerful to replace easily but that for some reason makes me think of the elements in the wrong order.)
By and large it's not a problem, though... so many elements have a natural location, and enclosures have an obvious 'inside/outside' implication... I don't think it's more than 5% or so of characters that even need significant attention to order. It is worth taking the time to include order in stories for those characters though.
Eye and needle is a little bit of a problem though. I've started using 'threading the needle' for the horizontal eye and 'eye of the needle' for the vertical eye, which has helped.
mekkanare
New member
From: WI, USA
Registered: 2011-08-10
Posts: 9
I did mine basically like Chris; writing the elements into a story based on the order that you write them, starting with upper left and going to lower right ( obeying any particular rules as noted in the book of course. ) For the sideways eye, I found it works to imagine it as if you're "squinting". For example:
環 [ ring ] "In order to see the JEWEL on the tiny RING, I had to SQUINT at it in my ATTIC as I was wearing my SCARF ( because of the dust )."
Why was the ring there? It could have been an heirloom, it doesn't matter. As long as you can make something that makes sense to you.
Last edited by mekkanare (2011 October 12, 9:52 pm)
kira80
Member
Registered: 2011-01-04
Posts: 23
As someone said above, many primitives are most of the time at the same place.
Whenever I fail a review because of a location problem, I use this list to check. For example, the kanji for "stubborn". If I don't remember where the head primitive is located (right or left), I look into its usage in other kanji, I notice that it's always on the right, and I remember that.
