Yes. Don't mix pronunciation or grammar with RTK.
It will slow you down too much.

Set aside time for doing RTK alone.

Also, if you use this web site, you can do RTK reviews on your iPhone or Android phone.
That way you can fill in idle time with reviews. A minute here. A few minutes there.
It all adds up.

Getting past the kanji barrier is the single greatest obstacle for most japanese
language learners. Once you're comfortable with kanji, picking up new vocab is trivial.

For example, many manga have the pronunciation written down for every kanji.
With RTK, you'll already know what the kanji mean. You'll just have to commit the
pronunciation to memory. MUCH easier than struggling to remember each kanji AND
pronunciation.

Anyway, good luck.

Start working on you pronunciation now, especially if you are planning on going to Japan this year. Don't work to much about compounds, as you progress you will learn them. There are books that are designed to help you work on your pronunciation.

I think some of it depends on how quickly you're going through RTK.  Knowing kanji from RTK won't help you at all with being able to have a basic conversation.   I would definitely want to spend some time on practical survival Japanese before travelling, but like someone else said, keep that study separate from your RTK study.

The grammar seems logical but completely different from the way of thinking we're used to. It's really hard to learn to think like a Japanese, but I don't think it's harder than learning kanji.

I know I'm preaching against the choir here, but don't you find it odd that you are trying to learn a language, but are avoiding learning the pronunciation?

Frankly, learning how to pronounce things and how to communicate with people should be your number one goal! I realize kanji is very useful, but it's still just an arbitrary system developped for writing -- you'll learn it as you go along anyway. But if you can't communicate with people, I don't see where the fun is. You'll be in Japan; you'll be able to read some of the signs, but you won't be able to communicate with anyone! Doesn't that sound odd?

AlexandreC wrote:

I know I'm preaching against the choir here, but don't you find it odd that you are trying to learn a language, but are avoiding learning the pronunciation?

Frankly, learning how to pronounce things and how to communicate with people should be your number one goal! I realize kanji is very useful, but it's still just an arbitrary system developped for writing -- you'll learn it as you go along anyway. But if you can't communicate with people, I don't see where the fun is. You'll be in Japan; you'll be able to read some of the signs, but you won't be able to communicate with anyone! Doesn't that sound odd?

He just said that he wanted to be literate, didn't even mention anything about his motivation or ability to speak.

Getting RTK done fast is great because then you can move over completely to the readings and vocabulary and start focusing on it, instead of having to do less of both at the same time. Also, since extensive reading is really the most effective way to learn through input (well, in my opinion), it's great to have RTK out of the way since a lot of very common characters appear at the later stages of the book.

Haha you sure did!

buonaparte wrote:

If you want to learn that 九 is baseball, 田 brains, or 里 a computer - go for it.

Meh, you can't say that! None of those meanings pop into my head when I see those kanji by themselves like that!

buonaparte wrote:

What I did:
1. I learned about pronunciation - I mean phonemes, long-short vowels, pitch accent, etc.
2. I learned kana
3. I learned all the bushu and their JAPANESE names.
4. I learned stroke order rules
5. I learned basic grammar (-u, -ru verbs, i-adjectives, the copula (de aru, etc), plain, polite, honorific/humble forms, basic sentence patterns

I took texts I liked - audio + transcript + translation.
+ mouse-over pop-up dictionary.
I just kept on listening and reading and NEVER reviewing anything.

And that's about it.

Awesome. Except that I would just stick RTK in there myself

buonaparte wrote:

I knew about Heisig and srs but I didn't like the approach, I don't believe in learning anything without listening. And I need something that appeals to me right now and here, be it a poem, a phrase from a movie, a fairy tale, or a joke.

As to when you should start speaking. Any time you feel like it. Damn it.

I feel exactly the same, I just think that while RTK was a bit like a chore, it was great smaller step that made it a lot easier to get into reading and learning vocabulary. Also, SRSs are just tools you can use to whatever extent you like anyway.

buonaparte wrote:

http://i43.tinypic.com/14wag7c.gif

That's so damn cute!

There are not that many bushu, they can be rote memorized easily enough. You already know most of them if you've completed RTK1 and just need to put a name to them.

It's not particularly important to memorize them, but it has a some value. You can look up characters by radical name (or a list of radical names!), and talk about character structure in words, and such.
I wouldn't make it a priority though... unless, of course, you were going to use bushu -instead- of heisig, then it's a priority!
Or if you were planning to save money by getting an electronic dictionary with no handwriting input function.
Or you just like studying kanji.

buonaparte wrote:

I don't believe in learning anything without listening.

Deaf people everywhere would like to have a word with you.

It's funny, though, because I don't believe in learning anything without reading. (Blind people everywhere would like to have a word with me, I'm sure).

AlexandreC wrote:

But if you can't communicate with people, I don't see where the fun is.

Here's an answer:

At first, I assumed that his ambition was to speak all of his languages—otherwise, what’s the point of shadowing? This turned out to be wrong. I also assumed that he might like to talk to people. That, too, wasn’t right. His goal is to read literature from all over the world, classic and contemporary, in the original languages. He had shown me a recent novel by a Dutch author. “Reading this puts me in tune with the living spirit, the resonance of the language,” he’d said, waving the book, “not being able to go to Amsterdam and go into a café and get a hash brownie and have them think that I’m one of them, not an American tourist.” He wants to explore his consciousness, to encounter a language as a living entity, and to collect the esoteric knowledge of these encounters. “Most of the languages I’ve studied I’ve never spoken, and I probably never will,” he told me. “And that’s okay with me. That’s nice if you can do that, but it’s rare that you have an interesting conversation in English. Why do I think it would be any better in another language?”

For me it's
1. listening to and reading good poetry, stories, and novels.
2. watching good movies.

Last edited by buonaparte (2012 January 11, 5:40 am)

Marble101 wrote:

Just as a quick question:
If you learn Heisig's primitives, is learning the bushu really that important (since a quick look at a list of bushu tells me that Hesig took a lot of his primitives from the list)?

And if it is, how does one going about it efficiently?
Do they use rote memorization? Or did someone invent RTK 1.5 for bushu?

Heisig's primitives aren't designed to replace the Kanji radicals, they are for making learning and remembering Kanji easier. It is the individual's choice on whether or not to learn the radicals. However, try not to mistake a primitive for a radical since every Kanji has only one radical.

I Agree pretty much entirely with Buonaparte except that learning bushu names isn't a priority nor is learning about minute details of pronunciation right at the start.

One undeniable thing, is that you are spending a bunch of time learning something that is not Japanese. And the value of learning it is questionable. It seems important, because when you test yourself on the kanji from the keyword, you get that aha I remembered the kanji feeling. But in reality when you actually have japanese text sitting in front of you, it's actually a much less useful skill than just having learned a heap of vocabulary and all the readings that go with it. It's pointless commenting on the usefulness of RTK without considering the other things you could have done with your time.

Last edited by nadiatims (2012 January 11, 9:01 am)