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All Japanese All the Time Method Opinion?

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Cainntear
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 Message 25 of 34
23 July 2011 at 8:45am | IP Logged 
leosmith wrote:
galindo wrote:
The main reason I dislike it is because it teaches false names for kanji components and fake
etymology, and encourages you to make up your own. The kanji system as a whole makes more sense if you learn the
real names for radicals. When you ask someone how to write the kanji in their name and they list the components, you
need to know which ones they are talking about, and RTK won't help you with that at all. Also, it's useful to know which
parts of a character contribute meaning and which parts were meant to be phonetic information, instead of assuming
all the parts mean something.

This is the old "why doesn't RTK teach xyz aspects of kanji too?" argument.

No it's not, his argument is that not about any "aspects" of kanji, it's about the fundamental nature of the kanji.

Whether it's important or not, I don't know, but the argument's more complex that you make out.

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Bao
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 Message 26 of 34
23 July 2011 at 11:59am | IP Logged 
leosmith wrote:
Bao wrote:
Did you actually read what I wrote?

Yes. Despite your disclaimers, your argument was independent of timeline.

Actually, it was not. I know that you want to read it that way, but that doesn't change that I went out of my way to make clear that I only see a problem with the method when, as you may want to put it, the timeline is wrong.
leosmith wrote:
Again, users do pretty much everything non-users do to learn kanji, but in addition, they do RTK.

That's exactly the point. People who use RTK to learn kanji up front, especially in the way described by Khatzumoto, do not do "pretty much everything non-users do".

Edited by Bao on 23 July 2011 at 12:00pm

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leosmith
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 Message 27 of 34
23 July 2011 at 9:28pm | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
No it's not, his argument is that not about any "aspects" of kanji, it's about the fundamental
nature of
the kanji.

He makes some statements about the "fundamental nature of kanji" in there. But the result is that he's implying
RTK doesn't
teach enough, or doesn't teach properly. And the point is moot because if you study kanji the same way he did,
but add
RTK, the "problem" is solved.

Bao wrote:
Actually, it was not.

You argued against translation and out-of-context learning, which is not restricted to upfront learning of RTK.
Add the fact
that there are so many people who have successfully learned this way, and you'll understand why I don't believe
your post.

Bao wrote:
That's exactly the point. People who use RTK to learn kanji up front, especially in the way described
by
Khatzumoto, do not do "pretty much everything non-users do".

Sure they do. RTK reduces the grunt work, but it doesn't eliminate any major steps required to learn kanji.
Perhaps you are
talking about people who never reach fluency?
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galindo
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 Message 28 of 34
23 July 2011 at 10:02pm | IP Logged 
leosmith wrote:
he's implying RTK doesn't teach enough, or doesn't teach properly. And the point is moot because if you study kanji the same way he did, but add RTK, the "problem" is solved.


Not that it matters, but I'm a she. As far as RTK not teaching enough or not teaching properly, I was mainly arguing against it within the context of Khatzumoto recommending it as a fundamental part of his method. I wouldn't mind if he said, "Hey, this works for some people, so give it a try." But he makes it out to be THE way to learn kanji, and he makes it seem like anyone who doesn't want to do it that way is just unmotivated. More than not teaching enough or not teaching properly, I simply don't see any added benefit from starting out with RTK as opposed to learning the kanji together with the vocabulary you learn. And I do think it's somewhat detrimental to make up your own stories for the parts of each kanji and the reasons they are combined in certain patterns, instead of learning the actual etymology behind them, because it reduces your ability to guess the meaning of an unknown character.



leosmith wrote:
RTK reduces the grunt work, but it doesn't eliminate any major steps required to learn kanji.


If it doesn't eliminate any major required steps, how does that equate to reducing grunt work? I think everyone will inevitably feel loyal to whatever method they used to learn, but RTK seems like much more work than the way I learned. I guess it can help people "get it over with" in a sense, but I do think it adds to the amount of work you have to do before being able to read. However, thanks to the order it introduces the characters in I think RTK can be useful as a way to learn to write for someone who has only learned to read.

Edited by galindo on 23 July 2011 at 10:03pm

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Lucky Charms
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 Message 29 of 34
24 July 2011 at 4:33am | IP Logged 
galindo wrote:
And I do think it's somewhat detrimental to make up your own stories for the parts of each kanji and the reasons they are combined in certain
patterns, instead of learning the actual etymology behind them, because it reduces your ability to guess the meaning of an unknown character.


I've never used RTK, so I don't know if they use any accurate etymology sometimes or if it's 100% made up, but I'm not sure that learning the real etymology is
neessarily helpful beyond a few common and straightforward radicals like "water", "hand", "movement" etc. I have Henshall's book, which shows the etymology for
each character and radical, and while fascinating I find the origins mostly obscured and unhelpful. For example, I don't know what a "winnowing device" is, and
it doesn't seem to affect the meaning of the kanji it shows up in anyway (for example, there's a lot of explanations like "it was used by mistake as a substitute
for another character that had the same sound in Classical Chinese".) Even Henshall will often write "suggest taking as BROKEN HAND" or the like, suggesting that
sometimes etymological accuracy needs to be sacrificed in order to create an easy-to-understand mnemonic.



Edited by Lucky Charms on 24 July 2011 at 4:36am

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galindo
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 Message 30 of 34
24 July 2011 at 5:32am | IP Logged 
Lucky Charms wrote:
I'm not sure that learning the real etymology is
neessarily helpful beyond a few common and straightforward radicals like "water", "hand", "movement" etc. I have Henshall's book, which shows the etymology for
each character and radical, and while fascinating I find the origins mostly obscured and unhelpful.


Yeah, and there is also a lot of disagreement about some of the etymology, so it's definitely not entirely accurate. But for me and some other people, it makes the system as a whole make more sense than labeling parts as "a slide" or "a man holding a baseball bat." Interpreting characters as if they were abstract pictures of modern objects just seems... wrong?


Lucky Charms wrote:
for example, there's a lot of explanations like "it was used by mistake as a substitute for another character that had the same sound in Classical Chinese".


That's exactly the sort of explanation that I find useful! I think it's very important for beginners to learn that not every part of a character means something.
And Henshall's mnemonics are the main thing I dislike about the book, along with the awful script.
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Bao
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 Message 31 of 34
24 July 2011 at 5:17pm | IP Logged 
leosmith wrote:
You argued against translation and out-of-context learning, which is not restricted to upfront learning of RTK.
Add the fact that there are so many people who have successfully learned this way, and you'll understand why I don't believe your post.


I don't expect you to believe my post - after all, I am not a guru or visionary.
And I am quite sure I made clear that everything I wrote is about learning kanji upfront, and nothing else. Are you having fun trolling a bit again?

leosmith wrote:
Sure they do. RTK reduces the grunt work, but it doesn't eliminate any major steps required to learn kanji.
Perhaps you are talking about people who never reach fluency?

I am quite curious, did you actually learn the jouyou kanji before you did any other work on Japanese? If you, did you write about the process while you were at it? If not, what exactly did you do?

Edited by Bao on 24 July 2011 at 5:24pm

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Cainntear
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 Message 32 of 34
24 July 2011 at 8:19pm | IP Logged 
Lucky Charms wrote:
(for example, there's a lot of explanations like "it was used by mistake as a substitute for another character that had the same sound in Classical Chinese".)

The existence of exceptions doesn't invalidate the general rule.

In fact, in many languages irregular formations gain in expressivity by contrast to the regular ones...


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