If I had a 十円玉 for every time I heard someone say, "kanji is too hard" or "I've been studying Japanese for years but haven't started kanji" or "I've been studying kanji for years but only know about 500 (if that)," then I could, well... probably buy out a 百円ショップ. For those of you who've been studying kanji school-yard-style, learning the stroke order, the English meaning, the Japanese reading (訓読み), the Chinese reading (音読み), and maybe even some sample words before trying to rote-memorize that shiznit and move on to the next, prepare to have your world turned on its head. I'm willing to bet you've gotten frustrated a few times. Perhaps you even gave up for a couple months, before working up the motivation and then studying a whole FIVE in one day.
This was me in Fall 09, having studied 663 kanji (and making a paper flash card for each) over the course of 3 years, including 2 years of studying Japanese in college, a semester abroad in Japan, and studying on my own. I'd always loved kanji, and people around me can tell you that I spent a good part of my day flipping through those flash cards for review. It was then that I stumbled upon the Heisig method at AJATT. I officially started the method on 11/17/09, and a good five months later by 4/27/10 I had learned the 2042 basic kanji (that Japanese students study in school through junior high school). Over time I naturally got more efficient, eventually peaking at 27 kanji a day (taking about an hour and a half), which if I had done from the beginning I could have finished in less than 2 months. But no matter how many you do in one day, the most important thing is to be moving forward everyday.
What did I do and how can you do it better? That's why I'm writing this.
[Heisig in Theory]
In Japanese, there are two basic writing systems: kana and kanji. Kana consists of 46 hiragana phonetic characters used for Japanese native words, and 46 corresponding katakana phonetic characters for foreign words, some titles, and occasionally for emphasis. On top of those 92 phonetic kana characters, we have kanji characters that are primarily used for meaning. There are THOUSANDS of kanji, of which maybe 10,000 are actually used today but only 3,000-4,000 on a regular basis. As of the recent addition, the basic 常用 kanji that students learn is a total of 2,141 characters.
If you were going the rote-memorization school method, it would take you 9 years in the Japanese school system, and at least 5 years in a fast-paced study abroad program. Are you willing to rack up that kind of time? Heisig wasn't. Long story short, Heisig was a dude who went to Japan and decided if kanji was such a pain in the butt he would tackle it first. A month later he had memorized the 2,000 or so characters, and came out with a method anyone could replicate.
The idea is to assign a mnemonic to each kanji character. A mnemonic is a device that assists one in remembering something, which is something our adult brains are really good at. For each kanji you will write a short 1 or 2 sentence story that ties it to its English keyword, such that if you look at the keyword you can reproduce the kanji and vice versa. The elements of the story can be found in the kanji themselves; most components of a kanji, such as the left part (偏), the right part (旁), the upper part (冠), the bottom part (足), and the surrounding part (構え) are actually almost always repeated over and over and over again. You give those components an image, so when you're presented with a kanji with many components, you have many images to use in your story.
Let's use one of the kanji above as an example.
偏
In Japanese, there are two basic writing systems: kana and kanji. Kana consists of 46 hiragana phonetic characters used for Japanese native words, and 46 corresponding katakana phonetic characters for foreign words, some titles, and occasionally for emphasis. On top of those 92 phonetic kana characters, we have kanji characters that are primarily used for meaning. There are THOUSANDS of kanji, of which maybe 10,000 are actually used today but only 3,000-4,000 on a regular basis. As of the recent addition, the basic 常用 kanji that students learn is a total of 2,141 characters.
If you were going the rote-memorization school method, it would take you 9 years in the Japanese school system, and at least 5 years in a fast-paced study abroad program. Are you willing to rack up that kind of time? Heisig wasn't. Long story short, Heisig was a dude who went to Japan and decided if kanji was such a pain in the butt he would tackle it first. A month later he had memorized the 2,000 or so characters, and came out with a method anyone could replicate.
The idea is to assign a mnemonic to each kanji character. A mnemonic is a device that assists one in remembering something, which is something our adult brains are really good at. For each kanji you will write a short 1 or 2 sentence story that ties it to its English keyword, such that if you look at the keyword you can reproduce the kanji and vice versa. The elements of the story can be found in the kanji themselves; most components of a kanji, such as the left part (偏), the right part (旁), the upper part (冠), the bottom part (足), and the surrounding part (構え) are actually almost always repeated over and over and over again. You give those components an image, so when you're presented with a kanji with many components, you have many images to use in your story.
Let's use one of the kanji above as an example.
偏
Heisig's English keyword: partially
Components/images: person, comic book (door + scrapbook)
Story: The person reading the comic book is only PARTIALLY interested
You're learning, 1. how to write the character, and 2. what it means in English. At this point, some people have a kick-jerk reaction to this, saying "but what good is it going to do us if we don't know the meaning in Japanese?" Think about it like this: you will be armed with "English Kanji," the same advantage that Chinese and possibly Korean learners have. If you look at a newspaper, after only applying this method and not even knowing kana, you WILL be able to understand the basic gist of the articles. Hell, there are people who study Japanese for years and can't do this. You can do it in months.
Components/images: person, comic book (door + scrapbook)
Story: The person reading the comic book is only PARTIALLY interested
You're learning, 1. how to write the character, and 2. what it means in English. At this point, some people have a kick-jerk reaction to this, saying "but what good is it going to do us if we don't know the meaning in Japanese?" Think about it like this: you will be armed with "English Kanji," the same advantage that Chinese and possibly Korean learners have. If you look at a newspaper, after only applying this method and not even knowing kana, you WILL be able to understand the basic gist of the articles. Hell, there are people who study Japanese for years and can't do this. You can do it in months.
[Heisig in Practice]
You will need three things:
1. Anki (SRS computer program)
2. Reviewing the Kanji (website)
3. Recommended: Remembering the Kanji (book, sample chapter)
The core of this theory is the RTK book, written by Heisig, but why isn't it mandatory? Because the unaffiliated website above is literally a community created around Heisig's book. While the book only uses keywords and stories that Heisig came up with, the nearly 40,000 members of Reviewing the Kanji are free to post their own story ideas that are actually really clever and easy to remember. I learned by using the book and I can attest that there are some great ideas there, and he explains his theory in much greater detail than I did. But I've met people who only used the free website, and they're kanji fluent too.
So once you assign a keyword and create a story, how do you study it? Flash cards. But not paper flash cards, that's too inefficient; this is the 21st century and we have computer programs that use proven psychological algorithms (spaced repetition) for things like this, yo. That's where Anki comes in. Reviewing the Kanji has it's own virtual flash card program within the site and you're welcome to use it, but Anki has much more customizability and I can guarantee you'll use it for much longer. Actually I'm planning on writing a separate post on SRS programs like Anki in the future, but you can start using it right away to learn RTK. EDIT: Here is that post.
1. Download and install Anki
2. Recommended: watch videos and read info on using Anki on their website
3. File > Download > Public Decks
4. Download the one at the top: Heisig's Remember the Kanji (RTK) 1+ 3
5. Open the deck and start studying
What you need to know: Anki is a memory program that can help you remember just about anything.
You will need three things:
1. Anki (SRS computer program)
2. Reviewing the Kanji (website)
3. Recommended: Remembering the Kanji (book, sample chapter)
The core of this theory is the RTK book, written by Heisig, but why isn't it mandatory? Because the unaffiliated website above is literally a community created around Heisig's book. While the book only uses keywords and stories that Heisig came up with, the nearly 40,000 members of Reviewing the Kanji are free to post their own story ideas that are actually really clever and easy to remember. I learned by using the book and I can attest that there are some great ideas there, and he explains his theory in much greater detail than I did. But I've met people who only used the free website, and they're kanji fluent too.
So once you assign a keyword and create a story, how do you study it? Flash cards. But not paper flash cards, that's too inefficient; this is the 21st century and we have computer programs that use proven psychological algorithms (spaced repetition) for things like this, yo. That's where Anki comes in. Reviewing the Kanji has it's own virtual flash card program within the site and you're welcome to use it, but Anki has much more customizability and I can guarantee you'll use it for much longer. Actually I'm planning on writing a separate post on SRS programs like Anki in the future, but you can start using it right away to learn RTK. EDIT: Here is that post.
1. Download and install Anki
2. Recommended: watch videos and read info on using Anki on their website
3. File > Download > Public Decks
4. Download the one at the top: Heisig's Remember the Kanji (RTK) 1+ 3
5. Open the deck and start studying
What you need to know: Anki is a memory program that can help you remember just about anything.
[Heisig with Efficiency]
I recently began studying more kanji, and am now using a "Lazy Kanji" method. And you thought it couldn't get easier! It still utilizes the Heisig theory, but changes the order in the flash cards. Instead of the front being the keyword and the back being the kanji (and possibly the story), the front is the story and the kanji and the back is the meaning (the main keyword, the Japanese readings, and any other English meaning I can find). The reason is that you'll often find yourself looking at a kanji and wondering what it means. The original Heisig method of keyword kanji assumes that in the process the opposite will become a cinch. But the problem is the single keyword Heisig has chosen. This "Lazy Kanji" leaves a blank at the keyword in the story, and you'll judge yourself on how well you can guess any of the meanings. The point is to make it EASY, make it FUN, and Anki will take care of the rest by making you remember it.
One more thing to say about the stories. The more vivid the imagery, the more personal and crazy the stories (even by just writing it yourself), and the better linked to the meaning, the easier it'll be to remember in the long term. I made the occasional mistake of writing nonsense stories arbitrarily, and I'm paying for it now by not remembering some kanji very well and having to re-write the stories. That's why even if you use RTK, I recommend you check Reviewing The Kanji as well just to make sure your stories are solid.
[Learning Japanese]
The way I see it, Japanese has two steps to learn to fluency:
1. Kanji with Heisig
2. A solid and sustained Japanese environment
If you can do those two things, all you need are the motivation and a memory program to glue it together, then it's only a matter of time.
Alright, that's all folks. Sorry for the occasional rambling, and good luck on your Japanese studies!
Read on:
One more thing to say about the stories. The more vivid the imagery, the more personal and crazy the stories (even by just writing it yourself), and the better linked to the meaning, the easier it'll be to remember in the long term. I made the occasional mistake of writing nonsense stories arbitrarily, and I'm paying for it now by not remembering some kanji very well and having to re-write the stories. That's why even if you use RTK, I recommend you check Reviewing The Kanji as well just to make sure your stories are solid.
[Learning Japanese]
The way I see it, Japanese has two steps to learn to fluency:
1. Kanji with Heisig
2. A solid and sustained Japanese environment
If you can do those two things, all you need are the motivation and a memory program to glue it together, then it's only a matter of time.
Alright, that's all folks. Sorry for the occasional rambling, and good luck on your Japanese studies!
Read on:
Sorry if I missed it at some point in the post but does Heisig still have you learn readings? I wouldn't want to sacrifice that if I tried it, which I do want to do.
ReplyDeleteHeisig has 3 books. He technically does cover readings in book 2, but the keyword method that I explained was from book 1. Book 3 continues with 1,000 more kanji that are in general use, both with the keyword method and the readings in the back of the book.
DeleteHowever, I can't recommend learning the readings with the kanji the first time through, and in isolation of real-life examples. I consider the English Kanji keyword method a decently fast "Step 1" in learning Japanese. So I realize now that in this post I only covered the general gist of why we're ignoring the readings in Step 1. I mentioned it as if it were more apparent than it is and went straight to why and how you can "memorize" the 2,000 in a short amount of time.
I don't want to spoil the surprise of "Step 2" too much since I'll cover it in a later post, but the point of English Kanji is to make a very small step in kanji to remove a lot of the initial intimidation behind the sheer number. That small step will make jumping right into real, intense, in-your-face Japanese much more approachable. In a nutshell, your readings will come from Japanese input with actual examples, not isolated simply based on a single kanji.