Walking legs - 3 strokes - 夊
Taskmaster - 4 strokes - 攵

Blow the text up big to see the difference or use a magnifying glass with your copy of RTK1

They do look similar but I have no idea if their etymology is actually realated.

Try to think of the elongated stroke as a cane that the taskmaster uses to swat sleeping students.

My apologies for straying from the topic, but I'd just like to say that the subject line of this thread gave me a really amusing mental image of the taskmaster battling it out with a disembodied pair of legs for the right (pun intended) to appear in kanji.

By the way I think Heisig's use of taskmaster is a bit 'sexual' - is that just my imagination or is he really suggesting the taskmaster is a kind of demon lover?

Its kinda off topic, but is there any good alternative to that taskmaster primitive, or can you tell me how to imagine stuff like "awe"? Its always hardest with the newest kanji, but with this lesson 15 I feel like Im not going to come to good terms any time soon... I HATE THAT PRIMITIVE T_T

You could replace "taskmaster" with an actual person. I used "Hitler".

There are a few stories using "dominatrix" too...

lanval wrote:

is there any good alternative to that taskmaster primitive

Heisig wrote "conjure up the memory of some taskmaster (or taskmistress) whom you will 'never forget'".

So think of someone (real or imagined) who personifies this word for you. For example a strict schoolteacher from your past. Or one of the suggestions in the posts above. Personally, I use a circus ringmaster and have the first stroke as his whip.

攴 was the old form of 攵. Pictures a hand holding a whip to strike with. [ right side of this] for a semi old form (as you can see 攴 it looks closer to that form)


夂 was a pictograph of a footprint 
~semi old form
old form

Last edited by liosama (2008 December 28, 1:40 am)

zer0range wrote:

I'm curious - because my problem with these two kanji is mainly in identifying them when reading (as opposed to substituting one for the other, or messing up the strokes), will this present a problem later on, or will the context sort it out?

Maybe context will sort it out for you ... over time.  But it would be very useful to be able to visually distinguish the two.  They are not identical.  I don't see this as a permanent roadblock, but more like a traffic jam that may slow you down.

Wally wrote:

Maybe context will sort it out for you ... over time.  But it would be very useful to be able to visually distinguish the two.  They are not identical.  I don't see this as a permanent roadblock, but more like a traffic jam that may slow you down.

I feel the same way. Having learned close to a thousand Kanji and only having superficial trouble distinguishing between two of them in isolation.. well, I'll take that.

Thanks.

zer0range wrote:

I feel the same way. Having learned close to a thousand Kanji and only having superficial trouble distinguishing between two of them in isolation.. well, I'll take that.

Of course neither 'taskmaster' nor 'walking legs' are actually kanji on their own (well, not in RTK1, at least) -- so when you're reading you don't need to peer that closely to recognise a kanji anyway.

liosama wrote:

Task master is pretty much always on the right, and the latter is somewhere else. And they aren't even similar anyway, i have much more trouble sorting out katakana so vs n on the default font settings

Good point.  Taskmaster is a primitive that appears side-by-side with something else (as liosama noted, typically on the right) while walking legs is on top of 冬 or at the bottom of 麦 or both (in the middle) 客 of other primitives. 

That positioning difference may help cue you which to use and also help you notice the difference when reading.