Forgive my ignorance but what makes certain words more difficult to learn than others?

A word is a word, surely?

I looked at the first page of core2000 step 3 and it seems quite exciting... case, political power, prime minister, utilization, corporation... maybe because I'm a politics graduate

Perhaps the list consists of vocabulary that most users might find boring in their native language so learning them in Japanese might take extra motivation.  I do know that in Step 2, a lesson took me about four minutes.  In Step 3, that jumped to around 20 minutes.  I have read Step 4 returns to easier (more interesting?) vocabulary. I jumped ship to KO when I reached about 95% for Step 3 though.

harhol wrote:

All interesting points, but personally I think I'd be more likely to remember something if it was obscure, complex, weird or otherwise unusual.  At least that's what I've found so far with Heisig: the kanji I forget the most in RTK are simple, common ones like gone and from. Medical terms would probably be tricky but core2000 (apparenty) deals with the 2000 most common words so they shouldn't feature. I think in theory certain words should be harder to remember, but I don't think it always works out that way. Of course we're all different....

Core2000 is based on the 2000 most common words used in the financial industry. Big difference from the most 2000 words used in normal life.

You never learned words from RTK. Forgetting kanji that he gave common English keywords is a bit different.

I'd say a likely reason that you find yourself remembering the obscurely keyworded kanji better is because you have no idea what they mean even given the meaning, so you spend more initial effort trying to figure it out and remember it. That still means it was harder compared to the kanji for (for example) "1", which you would just look at for a second and then move on.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2009 June 07, 2:58 pm)

thank you all for the advice! even though I've already got used to the idea of using the Core. What I have learnt so far (steps 1 & 2) seemed quite reasonable... maybe just skipping step 3 would do? ^^
I like the core because it covers really huge range of vocabulary, it's just... consistent, I can stick to it and  not worry for vocabulary lists anymore, apart from those made by myself basing on texts / example sentences etc. I'm not particularly eager to switch to the other lists actually... are you really convinced that this is useless?

[edit: the typos haunt me.]

Last edited by inayana (2009 June 07, 6:01 pm)

harhol wrote:

Jarvik7 wrote:

I'd say a likely reason that you find yourself remembering the obscurely keyworded kanji better is because you have no idea what they mean even given the meaning, so you spend more initial effort trying to figure it out and remember it.

I'm a native English speaker...

and?

Thanks Harrow! I've said a few kanpai's since finishing RtK. Perhaps unsurprisingly, even after a few days I missed the adding of new material! Haha- so I decided to dive into Kanji Odyssey, albeit at a very leisurely rate to begin with.

My Heisig deck in Anki has now become an "anything and everything Japanese that I want to learn" deck- and I want to get as far through KO2001 as possible before autumn when I hone in on my goal of passing this years JLPT2.

Congratulations guys!

I just wanted to stop by when I noticed the Core 2000 Step 3 conversation here.  I am about to start step 3 and when I first saw a post saying it was bad I was like whew, glad I saw that so I can skip it; then I noticed it was political and business oriented words and I realized that would be a horrible decision.  Recently I've been struggling (i.e. failing) at trying to play 逆転裁判 (Gyakuten Saiban) even with full knowledge of the English version.  Now all of a sudden I want to learn these words and see if I can put them to use.  I've been in a bit of a lull after finish RTK1 because KO and Core2000 both seem like work and not play to me.  Maybe finding a story/game that might use the words being learned could make them more enjoyable to learn.  I find for myself that I get an urge to work harder at studying after I see a real usage of the words and readings I am learning.  For example I was on wikipedia reading an English article with some Japanese words in it and my eyes went strait to the kanji and read them without even looking at the romanji.  Like one of them was 猫娘, even though I've known the romanji version of the word for years I never realized I knew the kanji and could understand why they chose those kanji just from Core2000 step 1.  Now I just wish it was a word that wouldn't make me look weird. *sigh*  Sidenote:  It was the result of a conversation of me and a friend of why American "otaku", as they call themselves, always refer to 猫娘 as 猫 and not even 猫耳.

Edit:  Okay so 猫 isn't step1, but darn it people should just know that one 8(

Last edited by klaoth (2009 June 10, 3:23 pm)

終った！  I've let my review pile fester for the last week or so; it's in the hundreds and I've got months of review to go, especially for the last couple hundred that haven't sunk in yet.

BUT I FINISHED!!!  F#ck yeah, two thousand and forty two!

I know there's a lot of advice on "what now" on this forum...it's actually a case of perhaps too much advice--I don't know where to start.

But for now, I'm treating myself tonight by getting drunk for the first time in months.  Hooray for me!

Oh, I so so feel you on that one. I went through the same thing, and my outlook on the situation occasionally wavers from the positive. Thanks for writing this:

aaronvanvalen wrote:

I enjoy nothing more than this. I wouldn't say those years not-studying Japanese were a waste but I am happy I started doing it now.
...<snip>...
Whoohoo.

Especially that last part.

Username :    chully
Kanji Count :    2042 / 3007
Total Reviews :    13424
Joined :    14-10-2008

やった！

Finished at last, even after stopping for 7 months.  If nothing else, the fact that I stopped adding but kept reviewing made the last 6-700 fairly easy as everything else was already in the in the last stack.  Although I've forgotten most of the Japanese I learned a year back.  Oh well, time for ファイナルファンタジーＶ.

Hi!
Finished today June 15, 2009! wow! 2042 kanji!
Just wanted to say thank you to all of you for your stories, definitions and ideas.
Although, i never posted in the forum i do tend to read it often since most of you have already asked and answered many questions.

I cannot imagine being able to finish RTK 1 without this site. It's a fantastic resources!
thank you to all of you who make this site possible!
Now, onto to the next step....sentence mining, core2000, etc! It's all good! I can now at least understand Kanji and feel confident!!

It is done. June 20 2009. A week after my birthday, but damn what a great present. Due to big changes in my life, a period of ill health in January and an overall lack of self-discipline, a three month task ended up taking eleven months, but none of that matters now. It's such a wonderful feeling to be here.

Thank you so much to everyone who makes RevTK possible. Thank you ファブリス for all your efforts on the site. Thank you to everybody to contributed stories. Thank you to everyone whose everyone whose posted on the forums. And of course, thank you to the great James Heisig himself. I really appreciate the efforts each and every single one of you and I wish you every success.

Hee hee, now the real fun starts.

Woot! Got to the end a few minutes ago. Built up speed to 100 kanji a day near the end so there's going to be ALOT of reviews to do. I'm still happy I finished regardless. Its a little depressing that the rest of the RTK deck goes up to 3007. It makes me want to do the rest! But I have a feeling those will be rare kanji that I can learn as I go along.

How do I check when I did my first review in Anki? Its a little hard to tell from the graph.

Last edited by Nii87 (2009 June 20, 11:34 pm)