Remembering the Kanji
Hi, I was just reading through your review of Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, and since at the end you asked for feedback from people whom this book has helped, I thought I would take you up on it.
First I'll tell you a little about myself. I started studying Japanese at University about 6 years ago, and I took classes for 2 years, after which I ended up having to quit school for a while. I went about 1 and a half years without having and real instruction in Japanese, and I didn't really study on my own. I would listen to some of the Japanesepod101 podcasts, and I would occasionally pick up my old text books and look through them, but I ended up forgetting most everything I had learned. Anyways I started back at another university and entered a 2nd semester Japanese course, and started back again. I've currently finished 2 years of courses there, and just finished the first "advanced" class this past semester.
I was really frustrated in the "advanced" class because I felt like I wasn't learning. I was making an A in the class but I lacked the ability to really carry on a conversation, or to really read anything. The thing that frustrated me the most was that I was not able to remember the things I had been learning (I was not using spaced repetition software at this time). In fact, I could probably read about 100 kanji, and was able to write less than 50. I was "supposed" to be able to know something like 500 kanji, probably, but I just didn't remember the darned things.
My method for studying, particularly for kanji, was to use flashcards. Every 2 weeks or so, we were supposed to learn about 20 Kanji. I would put them all on flash cards, and go through them with little success. After about 2 hours of studying, I would be able to see the kanji and remember the reading for most of them. Another hour or two of study and I could write most of those kanji. My main difficulty, was that to me, the Kanji all just looked like a bunch of random lines! I was trying to just remember the order that all these lines go in, and it was impossible! As I said, it took me something like 4 hours of study to be able to sufficiently know about 20 kanji, and then I would probably forget half of them by the next morning, and need about another hour of study to refresh myself! I would have the quiz or test, pass it, and then forget all those Kanji.
Anyways, that's when I found out about Heisig's method, which happened to be just over 2 months ago now. At first I was skeptical of it, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyways, because at this point, I didn't have much to lose. I blazed through the first 50 kanji in a few hours, and began to think that maybe there was something to this method after all. I finished 200 kanji in my first week, and another 200 in my second week. I'm currently up to about 1500, and am on track to finish exactly 3 months from the day I started.
RTK has done WONDERS for me. As I said before, previously the kanji had all just looked like a bunch of random lines to me. The way Heisig has arranged the kanji and created "primitives" from them has made learning them a breeze. I no longer see 20 random lines when I look at some character, but rather I see 2 or 3 primitives. Using Heisig's method I don't have to continually drill the kanji over and over hoping that an image of its shape will become ingrained into my memory. I can learn about 30 kanji in an hour, and still remember 95% of them the next day, because Heisig gives me something meaningful to remember.
I've seen many benefits from this already, but most of these benefits are not really visible or quantifiable. For example, one of the biggest things it has done for me was improve my confidence and dedication in learning Japanese. A little over 2 months ago I was studying Japanese a few hours a week, and felt like it was something I could never become fluent in, short of actually moving to Japan for a few years. Now, I'm spending an average of about 3 hours a day studying, without fail, and firmly believe that I can become fluent in Japanese. Whenever I used to look at Japanese text I just saw a ton of characters that I didn't understand. Now I can look at something and even though I can't read it, I know most of the characters I am looking at, so it doesn't intimidate me. To me, the study skills and confidence that I have learned from RTK are worth much more than the Kanji, though I don't want to diminish the value of those either. For the past few days I have been going back through my old textbooks and looking at all the words I've learned over the years. Now that I see them written in Kanji, and I actually know what those Kanji mean, everything is finally starting to click. Learning words with Kanji has become INFINITELY easier now that I am nearing completion of RTK.
Having said that, I'm now going to go through your review and point out some things that I disagree with.
For one, you say that some of the meanings are not the official meanings of the Kanji. I believe you may be confusing the concepts that he gives to his primitives with meanings. For instance, it is clear that 九 is not "baseball" and 里 is not a computer. These kind of ideas are not intended to be presented as a "meaning" of the Kanji, but rather they are simple devices to help you remember them and ease the creation of stories. The only meaning that you get is the "Keyword" for each kanji. As far as I have seen, these keywords fit the meaning of the kanji quite accurately, although there are some minor differences at times. You must consider the constraint that Heisig was under of trying to create a keyword that is only a single word whenever possible, and having different words for each kanji. Considering this, I think the keywords do a great job of conveying the rough meanings of the kanji.
You also complain about his terminology of "primitives" instead of radicals. There is a clear reason that he called them primitives--because he doesn't use radicals! Many of the primitives that Heisig uses do happen to also be radicals, but they are not all the same. There are probably more than 300 primitives in Heisig's book.
It's a shame that you didn't find the book more helpful, but I know that it has been a godsend to me, especially in conjunction with the "Reviewing the Kanji" website, where people share their stories for each of the Kanji.
Wow, I think I wrote too much.
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About the time required to do RTK
First I wanted to say thanks for your website.
I wanted to say, I think when talking about how much time RTK would take, and comparing to what you achieved in X amount of time, it's worth putting them both on the same scale.
When doing Kanji in Context you used about 3~4 hours a day for 3~4 months right? With the help of the Reviewing the Kanji community shared stories, and putting in the same amount of time per day I think you would be able to finish RTK1 in around one month, possibly quicker as you sound like a good learner.
Also when some people say RTK is a lot of time when you don't learn any Japanese they like to add both RTK1 + RTK2 together, but these books are not necessarily used together. Most will only use RTK1 and then learning the readings can be done in other ways. RTK2 is not a course - it's just a guide.
I did RTK1, and then started learning words in context. Right after I finished RTK1 I got Kanji in Context but I found it too difficult to use at the time - example sentences had more grammar and were longer than I could handle. I instead focused on other books, building up vocab & grammar and eventually got up to the point where I could make use of Kanji in Context.
However, I recently found another book by Nishiguchi (the writer of KiC), more recently published than KiC, which is aimed at JLPT2 and as I am thinking to try that test this year, I started that book instead.
The book is 例文で学ぶ漢字と言葉.
It's essentially the same idea as KiC, except it's all in one book instead of separate reference & workbooks, and also it groups kanji by on-readings, which I find does help a bit when first trying to get readings in your head. Oh, and it's a lot cheaper than KiC.
As far as I'm concerned, doing RTK was a great help to me.
- Highly motivational. When I ran across RTK it was like a light at the end of a dark tunnel. I got real hope of becoming literate in Japanese, and I think I'm well on my way there.
- It clarified the kanji, made each one distinct and not easy to forget, and I can write them.
- The keywords often help when learning new words.
- As I learned more & more words I built intuition for guessing readings of new kanji and words. With RTK I also sometimes guess the meanings of new words. This intuitiion is of course not only good for guessing words but also memorizing them easier.
- Knowing the RTK system makes it easy to memorize writing any new kanji.
this book gives me confidance
as a person with learning disabilities i thought kanji was out of my reach.. ive tried many methods.. none of them were successful.. i felt stupid.. i cant memorize like most people.. flash cards do nothing for me.. i read the sample pdf and i suddenly was having alot less difficulty.. though my dyslexia makes me write the characters backwards and sometimes upside down.. and my poor fine motor skills make it difficult to make the small lines, i now feel that someday i will be able to at least read the kanji because of this book.. i cried the first time i read the sample pdf.. because i suddenly felt like i wasnt stupid and that i just had to learn it a different way than other people..
i dont believe that this is a stand alone program.. when i can get the money to buy the book (instead of renting from libraries) i will combine this course with my other kanji workbooks.. because right now i can only rent the book so i cant write in it.. when i buy it ill write my own little notes on the side of the pages so that i can improve the stories.. i think that combining the different books and other things i can do well with kanji.. but i think this book is key for me to do well with the other books..
i checked out that kanji in context book and i didnt like the learning style.. i tried to learn from it but i couldnt remember a single one after a whole month of re reading over and over.. i guess it just wasnt in my learning style..
if only as a confidence boost.. this book is great.. i would recommend it to anyone with learning disabilities.. it may not be efficient for many people but i cant learn the way most people can.. so what if those people think its inefficient.. i dont generally learn efficiently anyway..
it all depends on what kind of learner you are.. this book is making me learn much faster.. ordinarily i learn slow.. reeeaallly slow.. i think this book is allowing me to close the gap between me and other people who ordinarily learn much much faster and better than me..
i hope to get the second book aswell..
im sure that just like there are people like me who find it speeds up the process there must also be some people who find it slows things down..
Just DO it!
I had a Japanese lesson today where the instructor was trying to explain the phrase
猫のひたいほど
I didn't know what ひたい was, but when she explained that it was a forehead, I was able to write
額
while she was looking it up in the 電子辞書. That experience was good enough reason for me continue and try to complete the method!
For those of you who want to try RtK, I highly recommend using this site called Reviewing the Kanji:
http://kanji.koohii.com/
I had found that previously, when I tried RtK, I had gotten stuck around Lesson 23 for a couple reasons:
1. There are a whopping 130 characters in that lesson
2. Heisig drops his stories - so you have to come up with your own images for something like 643 Sacrifice is Cow..righteousness.
The lack of ready-made-stories could be a serious drag because it takes time to come with something creative and shocking enough to stick to my mind. This is where the website comes in. Students using the system share their stories. You can copy their stories or modify them - they're ranked by popularity for easier searching.
This is a GREAT timesaver - enough to break that nasty 600-700 character barrier that many people, including me, get stuck on. Also, you get to benefit from the creativity of others (and there are many creative, memorable stories better than the original Heisig stories).
Good luck.
- Ken
My RTK experience
I have lived in Japan for 3 years now.
After 2 years, I had been studying using Minna no Nihongo and trying to learn kanji. I didn't make much progress. I'd guess I learned 400-500 kanji to some degree, only able to write a fraction of them. And all of them were easily confused.
So last spring and summer I did RTK. Finishing the books has basically taken my Kanji ability to a whole new level.
While RTK did help my writing, I'd say the most valuable thing has been a familiarity..dare I say, intimacy, with the 2000 kanji in the book.
Now I spend zero time learning kanji, and all my time learning readings and grammar and whatnot.
I almost never see a word where I'm not familiar with the kanji. So now picking up new words and readings is orders of magnitude easier than before.
Last summer, I'd estimate that I was around 3kyuu level and a year later I think I am good for the 2kyuu. (Though I need to finish off all the grammar points and start reading a lot more...that'll be my project for this summer vacation!)
One measure of my progress is that my Anki deck has 1400 unique kanji in it. Considering that 90% of the cards are "mature cards" that means I've gotten readings for most all of the those kanji well learned. A year ago, there is no way I could have read 1400 kanji.
I do agree that if you are on a time deadline, starting RTK might not be a good idea...but if you have time, the time you put into it will pay many dividends later.
Also, I saw on your site you mentioned that you thought "minna no nihongo" did a good job of teaching kanji...I couldn't disagree more! In the first vocab list of the first book, it has 歳. Sure it's easy enough to learn to say なんさいですか。 But I think expecting students that are learning これはペンです。 to be able to learn to write a relatively complicated kanji out of the blue is pretty unworkable. I think most people will have an experience similar to mine...no matter how much I wrote it, I couldn't remember how to write it. And I had a fleeting ability to recognize it. I spent a lot of time struggling over the other complicated characters presented randomly in Minna no Nihongo. Sure I learned some of them...but the time and effort was definitely to the detriment of other aspects of my Japanese learning.
Another one chiming in
Hello,
I know that this thread is really old, but I wanted to put my thoughts out there for anyone on the fence between KIC and Heisig. I think this is an opportune time for me to do so, because I got up to about 600 kanji using Heisig about 3.5 years ago, and am at a similar place in KIC right now. This is where things start getting tough, but I have confidence that KIC will see me through the end of the 2000-kanji long tunnel I'm in.
The appeal to Heisig is that you don't need any Japanese knowledge at all to start using it, and you can use the knowledge you already have (English, mnemonics) to make what feels like serious progress. When I started using Heisig I was almost 3 years into my Japanese studies and had already "studied" hundreds of kanji, only to have them slip from my grasp when I saw them several months after I had used them in class. I knew I needed a systematic way to learn kanji as an adult... basic repetition of random kanji in whatever vocabulary I needed to read some passage of literature, was simply not cutting it.
So, I started using Heisig because I liked the logic of it, I liked the organization, I liked the emphasis on writing AND recognition, and yes, I liked the primitives. It was nice to learn every tiny little part of a kanji, to have access to some sort of meaning for every stroke. To be fair, I still reference Heisig now and then if I find I simply cannot remember some radical or primitive, and I want another way to look at it. I found myself staying interested in the kanji, enjoying learning them and getting a distinct pleasure from recognizing their meanings when I saw them.
However, as much as I was happy to feel smart for remembering these distinct meanings, and for being able to write kanji that had eluded me before, it was frustrating to know the meanings but not the actual words (kanji compounds) I saw everywhere around me. It started to seem pointless to have this beautiful system if the sum outcome of time I invested left me no more literate than the "methods" we had in school (ie, memorizing vocabulary words and promptly forgetting them). In this case, my recognition and writing skills were improving, but they had very little real connection to my understanding of Japanese and my ability to use it as a literate adult. I was frustrated by knowing the meaning and writing of "decameron" but not how to use it, or how to understand it when other people used it. (DISCLAIMER for the Heisig fans: I know that the book doesn't claim to do this. I just realized that I wanted to learn the meanings and writings AND be able to use them, all at once and in a streamlined fashion).
Eventually I gave up on trying to force myself to remember these English meanings, and some other guy's mnemonics, alongside all of the actual words I was learning. I started writing down all new vocabulary, entering it into Mnemosyne, and testing myself as often as possible. This was a start.
Then I bought KIC on a whim, knowing from reviews I had read that it would require a lot of effort on my part. That was fine with me. What I found was a bare-bones approach that is logical like Heisig, but without all the non-Japanese noise. Every single kanji was there, grouped with similar kanji or kanji that appear often in compounds, along with practical examples. Magic! The time I put in now is similar to what I was doing with Heisig, but rather than spending all that time constantly thinking in English, I am learning new vocab and remembering it too. I recognize more than just the kanji when I see a sign, I *understand* the word and I can read it aloud. Above that, I can picture the kanji in a word when I hear it spoken. Only 500 or so kanji into the method, and I feel like I'm really starting to get a foothold that I can use to propel myself to fluency. When I was at this point with Heisig, I was having fun, but I was thinking in English all of the time and I honestly don't think I would have had that real "foothold" feeling until about 1000 or 1500 kanji into the method.
For those of you who really want to learn the writing, KIC can get you there if you put in the effort. Here's what I do: I skim the bottom of the lesson page to see what kanji will be covered, and guess at the readings and meanings of them. Often, I look up the kanji in my electronic dictionary to see what kinds of compounds it ends up in, and to see the root meaning of the kanji, etc. Then I go through each example, making a flashcard for all of the ones I am not confident that I can both read and write. On one side of the flashcard is the kanji (or, more often, vocabulary word that includes the kanji), and on the other is the hiragana for it, followed by the sentence or phrase that KIC listed, with a blank for where the word would be. If I find that KIC's example doesn't work for me, is too wordy or difficult to understand, etc, I look up another one in my dictionary and use that instead. At the end of the lesson, if I feel I haven't sufficiently covered all the kanji listed at the bottom, I make up a new flashcard that uses that kanji. The beauty is that you can learn the *language* while you are learning the characters, and the method is open-ended enough that you can add or take away wherever you want. This is also the beauty of making one's own flashcards, so you aren't wasting time on things you don't need.
When I study the flashcards on Mnemosyne, I do them in both directions so that I study the writing as well as the reading. Since I already have a lot of language study under my belt, sometimes I surprise myself by being able to write the kanji the first time around. Other times, I have to sit there and work on it, compare it to similar kanji, write it over and over. Whatever works. I do find that studying the writing of them makes the reading much easier to remember, and I think I'm making serious progress toward real fluency as an adult.
I think that both methods can be helpful to adult learners, and both methods require a lot of effort on the part of the student. Both can make a serious difference in one's comprehension of kanji, but in my experience KIC is a much better value for your time. If your Japanese is at zero right now, maybe Heisig would be the more interesting and less intimidating choice. But if you are at the low intermediate level and above, I would definitely recommend KIC instead. All you need is patience, curiosity, and a few good dictionaries. I use an English-Japanese kanji dictionary by Kodansha, a very thorough electronic dictionary, ALC, wwwjdic and rikaichan online, Mnemosyne for making flashcards and KIC for the organization and examples. If you are a total beginner and you want your learning to be as integrated as possible, I would still recommend KIC over Heisig. Just slog through those first 300 kanji or so in whatever class or method you can get your hands on. Learn the kana, get a good grasp of basic grammar and a functional vocabulary. You're going to need to do this anyway to accomplish any level of usable Japanese, so it's not a bad place to test your diligence and commitment to the project of learning. From there, you can make KIC work for you by using its organization, and trading out the sample sentences when you don't understand theirs.
And that's all I have to say about that! Happy studying, everyone!
I was perhaps in a similar
I was perhaps in a similar position to you when I started Kanji in Context (I had only been in Japan six months, but I knew about 1000 kanji). I worked through Kanji in Context in a similar period of time (about four months)-- but when I was finished, I knew not only at least one reading for each kanji, but the most common words in which they appeared.
So it's not just that I think Heisig's method takes a lot of time, but that in the end it's not very efficient, because it assumes that most of the kanji have relatively the same importance, which they don't.
As far as Minna no Nihongo, it's certainly not the greatest kanji text, but it teaches you to recognize the characters well enough I think. Writing really depends on your teacher's ability to explain radicals.
What I like about Minna no Nihongo is that rather than teach you the simplest characters, it teaches you the ones you are most likely to need.
Just thought I would chime
*whoops, it seems I posted this reply in the wrong spot, I meant for it to go at the end*
Just thought I would chime in with an update now that I have completed RTK. I wrote before:
My method for studying, particularly for kanji, was to use flashcards. Every 2 weeks or so, we were supposed to learn about 20 Kanji [compounds]. I would put them all on flash cards, and go through them with little success. After about 2 hours of studying, I would be able to see the kanji and remember the reading for most of them. Another hour or two of study and I could write most of those kanji.
Being finished with RTK, I now decided to go back to this method and see how it worked. I took the same type of material and reviewed it the same way. As I said, before it would take me 1-2 hours to be able to see kanji and produce the reading of them, for about 20 compounds. (and by this, I mean to go through every card without missing any)
Now, I completed that same task in less than 10 minutes. The reverse (writing kanji after seeing the reading) was accomplished in another 5 minutes.
Of course, the material was only held in my short term memory, but that's the same as it was before. The difference, is that it's now just a matter of memorizing some simple information, no different than memorizing a list of English words.
I see this as akin to a child learning the alphabet before they learn to read and write. It only makes sense, doesn't it? When someone starts hiragana and katakana, are they told "just learn to recognize the words and then you can learn the characters in context"? That wouldn't be a very effective way of learning the hiragana and katakana, probably. So likewise, I think it makes a lot of sense to become familiar with the kanji before you go reading them and making words with them.
One major difference between
One major difference between kanji and an alphabet, though, is that kanji in Japanese have multiple readings, and there are hundreds of common 当て字.
Particularly for 当て字, the learning process is usually "just learn to recognize the words" and learn the reading that way. For native speakers, this is also the case for relatively rare kanji.
Studying Radicals vs. the "primitives"
Thanks for sharing your experience with Remembering the Kanji. What I'm curious to know is whether you learned the kanji radicals at any point before studying with Heisig.
If you had learned the radicals first, I doubt you would have seen the kanji as random lines, and probably you would have found them much easier to remember.
So, it's not that I think Heisig's information is worthless; it's just that I think there are better ways to approach the study, such as studying radicals. The other advantage of learning the radicals is that you can then speak with Japanese people about Japanese. Heisig is a slight step backwards in this regard.
And I do think there are problems with the meanings Heisig gives the kanji. The keywords seem to fit the kanji quite accurately at first, but Heisig's self-imposed constraint of "one kanji, one keyword" is a real burden when your vocabulary exceeds a few thousand words. Of course, you can always pick those meanings up later, but the question in my review is: when is the best time to learn such things?
Of course, everyone learns a little differently, and so I'm glad you're having success with the method. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts in a few more months when you get around to the readings, which I think is the biggest problem with Heisig. Remembering to write the kanji is important, but for most practical purposes being able to read is far more important, and here I haven't heard from someone who was really helped by Heisig. But, I'd be glad to hear it worked for someone.
None of my teachers ever
None of my teachers ever made a big point of trying to explain radicals, and if anything they were just casually mentioned when talking about the kanji. None of my books ever really got into them either.
Another thing that probably contributed to my failure with the traditional method was the order that the kanji are introduced in. There's really not a lot of logic to it. Even if I had been learning the radicals all along, the kanji are introduced to you in a really jumbled up and unrelated way. So even if I were to learn a certain radical at some point, I may never even see that radical again until about 50 kanji down the road. Heisig has carefully arranged the kanji in a way that really makes a lot of sense for efficiently learning them. He might introduce you to a new primitive and then proceed to teach you 50 new kanji by combining that one primitive with other primitives that you already know. Everything just continues to build up from a solid base, rather than jumping all over the place.
Of course for the keywords themselves, they are intended to fade away once you learn the real readings and understand the characters. For learning the readings, I have picked up some books called 2001 A Kanji Odyssey. It sounds like they are fairly similar to the Kanji in Context books that you like. Kanji Odyssey has organized the kanji according to frequency of usage and also grouping some related kanji together. It gives you readings and useful words for each kanji, and about 3 example sentences for each one *with English translations*. Unlike Kanji in Context, they don't assume you will know a certain amount of kanji from the start. However, Kanji Odyssey only provides example sentences for the 1000 most common Kanji. They claim that those 1000 kanji will allow you to read 90% of materials though. Once I finish with those books I think I will probably be advanced enough to learn the other kanji as I encounter them.
I'll keep you updated on how I do.