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When should I learn the kanji? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 9 of 12 29 December 2010 at 9:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I learned the kanji the old-fashioned way without Heisig, because I only found out about his method less than a year ago. If I could go back and do it over again, I would've used his method in a heartbeat. It addresses so many of the aspects of learning kanji that had frustrated me as a learner:
1) Learners of Japanese are basically illiterate until they can read perhaps the most common 700 kanji. We can't enjoy materials made for native speakers, only for lower-elementary school children and learners. If we know at least the meanings of the kanji, we can start Japanese immersion (or at least casual enjoyment) right from the beginning, instead of putting off even simple readings for up to a year because of that wall. The pronunciation and usage can then be picked up in context, as they would be for any other language. 2) The traditional approach requires the writing, meaning, and on average two unrelated pronunciations of each character to be learned at the same time, which means that mastering these 700 or so characters is a long, frustrating, boring cram session for many (and this is just for elementary-school level basic literacy! You still have a few thousand to go before you're an adult after that!) For this reason, in response to paranday's first question, I'd have to say that giving up on kanji as 'all but impossible' is not only a reality, but a very common one. On the other hand, learning just the writing and meaning first, and then picking up the pronunciations and usages in context by jumping into real texts (the way most of us prefer to learn a language) makes the task much more feasible and enjoyable. 3) The kanji are traditionally taught in a really haphazard and counterintuitive order. Some difficult or obscure kanji are taught before simpler ones (which often show up as components of the former). We're not taught why kanji are written the way they are, we're not given insight into the quite logical and fascinating way they're put together, we're just told to memorize these difficult characters blindly and without understanding (and we're left to wonder, 'why do I keep seeing this component ム or 其 or 宀 or 殳 in all these characters that seem unrelated?') Please read the page 'why most kanji textbooks suck' on Kanjidamage.com (a website which teaches the kanji based on principles similar to Heisig's) for a more in-depth explanation of this point(the articles linked at the bottom are also excellent). Both Heisig and kanjidamage.com introduce the kanji in a logical way, where the kanji you learn are like building blocks that help you out with the next. 4) When we're taught hundreds or thousands of complex characters by rote memorization, we might be able to recognize them on sight, but it's hard to write them. On the other hand, if we learn them as being broken down into a combination of certain constituent parts, they become much easier to write. I'd compare this to learning to read English by learning the rules of phonics vs. learning each word individually by sight. Obviously both are needed to a certain extent, but without knowing these rules (for example, 'B b' makes the 'bbbb sound'), our learning would be a lot more labored, there would be more potential for mistakes and confusion of similar-looking words (稚, 推, 唯, 維, 催）, and our ability to predict/remember the writing of new words would be greatly reduced. And it's for this reason - the advanced learner's hopelessness in being able to distinguish (let alone write) all these similar-looking kanji that I would answer
with a resounding YES! Actually, as I hinted at before, while learning the kanji I came to many of the same conclusions as Heisig and the author of kanjidamage, and thought there must be a way to order these kanji and teach them more logically based on their constituent parts. I even dreamed that one day I'd be the one to devise that system and be hailed as the hero of all Japanese learners... but I'm not disappointed that these fine gentlemen have beat me to it, because they did a better job than I ever could have! The only criticism I could offer for the Heisig method is that the names/meanings he assigns to each 'primitive' (kanji building block, such as radicals) and the mnemonics he uses to combine them for each kanji are sometimes not the best for various reasons. But I think that it's in the nature of mnemonics that they don't always work as well for everyone else as for the person who made them... So my advice would be to use Heisig's principles, and the order in which he presents the kanji (which is the real genius of his program) while creating your own mnemonics. I'm interested in etymology, so I assign each of my primitives historically accurate meanings based on Henshall's book (though I've had to make comprimises in some cases involving convuluted origins and references to ancient farming tools). 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5084 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 10 of 12 29 December 2010 at 9:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I've found that it is better to focus on listening and speaking skills first. Learn to converse, using the most essential structures and vocabulary. Then, start learning words, and characters as they apply to words. That's what I've found helps.
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 12 31 December 2010 at 8:00am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Anything for you, old buddy. Superb post, btw.
And thank you Teango for starting another one of your excellent threads. I started learning Japanese in 2005 in a class offered at my job, since we were working with Mitsubishi. It was a very basic 16 hr class, and I was the only one who studied, so I got to practice with the teacher and the only Chinese student. I love Asian women. Since it was such an ego boost, I decided to be the only one in the class who learned the kana. I learned it, bought the kana version of our text, and started Pimsleur before the 4 week class was over. I was a very busy boy, so I gave myself 1 year to learn the language. I read some Amazon reviews about what one needs to learn Japanese, and found out that I needed to learn kanji. About that time I bought and read Barry Farber's masterpiece. I bought a kanji learner's dictionary thing, and started out to read the newspaper, as Barry suggested, even though my Japanese co-workers told me it was impossible. Turns out they were right, and I had no clue how I should learn kanji, since trying to do it by writing them millions of times wasn't working. Finally, I stumbled upon Heisig. The hype really sold me, and I made the book and Pimsleur the focus of my studies. Occasionally I'd do a chapter out of my text, but it was rare. My study time went from 1 to 3 hours per day very quickly. I completed RTK1 in about 6 months, with paper flashcards, in about 300 hours. I was on top of the world. Then several things happened almost at once. I found language forums, and got really inspired by someone to try RTK2. I put about 100 hours into it, got frustrated and quit. I hired a conversation partner, and began to speak. I discovered SRSs, and put all my vocab in one. I hit my year time limit, and decided to allow another year. I had a brainstorm, and decided to convert all my vocab to kanji. Thanks to Heisig, this went really fast. But it only covered about half of the Heisig characters. So I put RTK1 into my SRS to keep from forgetting. I won't bore you with the weird stuff I did after that, but here is the rest of the summary to give you some background on my opinions. My 2 years expired, and I decided to drop all limits. I was burnt out, so I backed way off of languages. Before the 3 year mark, I started studying Mandarin, and Japanese only breaks out of it's "on hold" status during my annual trips to Japan. My spoken Japanese is pretty good, but I can't read a newspaper. I'm sure if I worked on it for a while I'd be able to, but I made the decision to study lots of languages to use the power of time to help them settle in. So I became fluent in French in a little over a year, and most recently started Russian.
Let me just commend people who do a lot of research on a difficult language like Japanese before they start it. They are likely to be much better off than I was, no matter what method they use. That being said, I feel that a pure Heisig-only start is less efficient than a mixture. I think having a solid grounding in kana, followed by a solid grounding in the spoken language is better. I suggest starting Heisig as early as you want, but it is definitely the most effective when you can put it to use reading right away. In other words, for maximum efficiency, when you finish it you should have vocabulary that includes most if not all of the characters. I know that using an SRS makes for only short reviews, but even just 5 minutes a day adds up to a lot of wasted effort over the coarse of years or even months. No matter how fast you can do your flashcards, the kanji will not be yours until you can read and write them in the wild, and there is no substitute for that. There are lots of valid criticisms of the method, but the most important ones, like the one Qbe stated, depend on the individual. I feel that what I wrote doesn't depend on the individual. I also feel that there are a lot of little nit-picky ones that weren't worth repeating, since they are often the focus of other critics.
If the individual isn't suited for Heisig, as per Qbe, then it could certainly be a big waste of time. Other than that, if someone finishes RTK1, they could get it in their head that they have to force themselves to think of the English keyword while they read, thereby frustrating any fluidity in Japanese. Soon after, that frustration could cause them to quit. Unlikely, because Heisig warns against it, but possible.
This is nothing to worry about. People have been using L1 to learn L2 for centuries. One can argue that it's less efficient, which I would disagree with, but saying it's harmful is not true.
This is the first time I've heard this one. It's not true because all temporary mnemonics fade away, or stay in the background, when they stop being reviewed. Let me just summarize some stuff for your reference. 1) Users of RTK1 need to do everything non users do. They can't skip any steps. But they won't have to do as much of the grunt work when they encounter a "new" kanji in their other studies. Users believe that the amount of time they save on grunt work will, in the long run, allow them to become fluent faster than non-users. 2) Some people are not suited for RTK1, and some people can't seem to make other methods work for them. The reasons are many. 3) One can certainly argue that using RTK1 is less efficient than not using it, but the general statement "Heisig doesn't work" is false. 4) All arguments I've ever seen against Heisig in general (not including the individual cases) come from the critics lack of understanding the method or mnemonics 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| JimmySeal Diglot Newbie Japan Joined 5078 days ago 2 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Italian, Spanish, Mandarin | Message 12 of 12 31 December 2010 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Hello all! Long time Japanese learner and RTK adherent here.
There are obviously exceptions, but it's pretty close to the reality. Of all the non-Japanese people I know who are proficient in Japanese, the only ones who are proficient in reading Japanese have finished RTK1.
Certainly. After learning Japanese on and off for 7 years, I found I was treading water at around 700-800 characters and was forgetting them faster than I could remember them. Characters like 緑, 録, 縁, and 禄 baffled me and I had no idea how I was supposed to remember which was which. I couldn't understand why 良 had 7 strokes in certain characters, and 6 in others. RTK cleared up all that confusion and allowed me to recognize 2000 characters, and I know I wouldn't be where I am now without it. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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