Just a quick post since I’ve been very lazy lately. I just wanted to ask: Is there anybody in the world that learned how to write Japanese with James W. Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji? And notice I didn’t say Kanji because I’m sick and tired of hearing people say, “Yeah, I learned like 2,000 kanji in like three weeks!” Wow, that’s awesome. Now you can start actually learning Japanese!
You see, thinking “logic” and being able to write 理 doesn’t mean anything. First of all, 理 isn’t even a word. 論理、理論、理解、料理、管理、修理、義理、心理学 are words and until you can write real words in real Japanese, I’m not impressed. So I’d like to know: Is there anybody that learned to write a reasonable amount of vocabulary using this approach? And by a reasonable amount, let’s say about 10,000 words which is the amount JLPT Level 1 claims to cover. (You see, once you change Kanji into actual words, you’re in a whole different ball game.)
*Not that I’m promoting it but you can download a portion of the first book to try out here.
No related posts.
I got burned out on Heisig and never finished the first book.
I prefer using flashcards and writing out each kanji.
I learned a lot of vocabulary by just reading manga and using a Canon Wordtank when I got stuck.
Heisig isn’t meant to teach you vocabulary, it’s meant to teach you how to remember to write individual Kanji characters.
I graduated from IUC this past June. We go through all 1945-ish of the jyoyo kanji, and gobs of related vocabulary throughout the 10 month program at our own pace.
A guy who did Heisig just before starting IUC, was able to finish all 1945 jyoyo Kanji in the first quarter of the IUC program. In addition, when it came around to 4th quarter and we were all checking how many we could actually remember how to read and write, he was without a doubt one of the star students.
I wish I had done it, now I have a haphazard way of remembering how to write kanji, and though I can read a ton, my writing is embarrassing sometimes…
Must… do… heisig…
I’ve never used the book, and I never will use the book because I think it’s a load of rubbish, but I think the book is not for people who are learning new words, but for people who know the words already but can’t write them to save their life.
To anyone who uses the book to learn Kanji, I say this – Good luck!
Hi Harvey,
Just wondering how did you check how many you could write? Did you have a huge list of words that contained all 1945 kanji?
I tried Heisig when I first began my studies, and while it was a great confidence booster at first (Look, Ma! I can write kanji!), it soon got to a point where managing the English keywords and English stories became too much of a chore. It was like re-learning English via nonsense tales and a new squiggly alphabet when what I really wanted was to learn Japanese.
I’m with Alex in that, after quite a bit of contemplation, I think that Heisig would be more beneficial to people who already know Japanese but for some reason suck ass at writing it.
That seems like a very rushed statement, Alex. What exactly is “rubbish” about it? Does it not do what it claims to do on the cover? i think it fills out it’s purpose perfectly. doesn’t it?
Going along with Harvery’s opinion here, the book does not claim in any way that it is designed for learning Japanese vocabulary, but rather to familiarize learners of Japanese with the very complex writing system and to attach some sort of underlying meaning to each individual kanji. To look at a page of written Japanese and think… “Ah, I have seen all of these kanji before,” is a comfort at least.
Tae, you picked out “理 = logic” as an example of how Heisig gives meaning to kanji. Using this, you can try and pick apart combinations of kanji (熟語)and have a guess at the meaning as such: 心理 (heart logic) you can see this as how Japanese describes quite simply, what is in English, Psychology.
Another thing that I think is very important with the Heisig approach is to complete the second book also. This will then give you the ability to actually read Japanese. Not just stare at all those kanji and go, “Huh, I have no clue how to read this.” Having studied the readings too, you are effectively leveling the playing field (to some degree) between learning Japanese and another language that uses the roman alphabet. IMO anyway.
I have only gone through a part of Heisig’s first book (or rather, it’s French adaptation, by Maniette), but I found it very effective. I mean, I can now write a word like 警護 without a moment of hesitation, which would have been unthinkable before (I could read it but certainly not write it).
Of course, Heisig doesn’t teach you any vocabulary, but it not only helps you to write the vocabulary you already now–it also makes it easier to remember new words you come across, because you know the meaning of each kanji, and you can associate a kanji compound with a series of English words. So no more confusing similar words like 制作 and 製作.
I’m a beginner student of the kanji and I had no idea what the Heisig method was, so I looked at the sample pages linked and I will most certainly not buy this book.
The approach seems quite unnatural to me. I think the key to learning is repetition in different contexts.
By removing basically all Japanese from the learning process, Heisig is removing context. You’re left with learning what is just a list of useless information. Your brain knows the difference, it’s its job to remember useful information and forget the rest.
You have to make your brain’s job easier by using what you want to learn or you’ll forget it very quickly.
I’m totally not against using mnemonics such as stories to remember how to write kanji. But that’s not exactly new or ground breaking. Neither is using the meanings of individual kanji as hints to memorize the meaning of words that contain the kanji (for example, the meaning of 取得 is pretty obvious since it has “take” and “gain” together).
I just don’t buy the “method” that Heisig promotes. As soon as the book specifically mentioned that you shouldn’t learn reading with writing, I stopped reading. Also he claims that Chinese speakers pick up Kanji faster because they know how to write it already even if they don’t know the Japanese reading. Actually, they pick it up faster because they know all the words in the Chinese language, many of which are exactly the same in Japanese. (I know because there are words I see in Chinese all the time that I understand but can’t read.) The book only deals with individual characters.
All in all, the book sounds like crap to me which is why I was curious to see if it actually worked for anybody.
Just thought I’d leave my 2 cents: I’ve learned very little of the Japanese language at this point, possess a very, very limited understanding of its grammar, and know very few words in it — a statement that I could probably rephrase into “I know little to no Japanese.”
However, I agree with Yorkii about the ‘comforting’ part; in that, because RTK allows you a shortcut to remembering the forms of the kanji, one becomes at ease when encountering those kanji(s) in Japanese text. See, even though with RTK one may not know how the kanji would be used, or how it would appear in the context of a sentence, or how it would be read, however, when one encounters upon the kanji he need not learn the form anew — and that’s how RTK helps. (At the very least, for me, it does, a lot.)
Currently I’m working on improving my Japanese through the use of sentences, and RTK’s been a big help since I don’t have to learn new kanji as I go — I just have to rehash the ones I’m already familiar with and add a ‘sound’ (reading) to them. It greatly expedites my learning process, I believe.
Just to give my £0.02, I tried it out and it didn’t seem to be the thing for me really.
Does anyone know any good sites with japanese mneumonics for kanji?
I’m sure I saw one ages ago but I lost the link unfortunately.
RTK is an interesting beast — I got about a quarter of the way through the book before I stopped. It’s been about a year, and I just picked it up again. I’d say there are a few different stages that I get to with various kanji:
Fist, when you just know an English meaning, it’s useful for attempting to form a guess of words you don’t know when you’re reading. It’s an extra hint in addition to the context.
Later, it becomes useful when writing the characters, however I found needing to think through a story makes writing characters quite slow. If you’ve used a character enough recently, you can go on visual memory and be closer to writing it at native speed. If you haven’t used a character in a while, it can be effective for recalling it up. The biggest problem here is know what the right character is to remember. (Personally, I get to words like 運動 and 連れる and I’m not if the words use 運 or 連.)
My primary annoyance with the system is that I don’t like having the English meanings pushing in when I’m trying to immerse myself in Japanese. At best, it’s helping me guess meanings of unknown words in English, not in Japanese. Trying to transition to doing everything in Japanese has been (and remains) incredibly challenging.
Tae, I suck at writing the Kanji, I know because in school we had Kanji review quizzes in which we had to recall the Kanji and write them. Couldn’t do it. Most of the time though, when I couldn’t recall how to write them, my friend who had done Heisig could.
I would like to know if anyone who has met someone who has completed Heisig, and also has a formal Japanese language education, who would not recommend Heisig. I doubt there would be many.
Also, I have seen that people who have done Heisig are great at remembering the radical, or subtle differences in Kanji. Like, is it 博士 or 専士 or 拷問 or 拷門. Or 会議 or 議論 or 義論. This kind of stuff a Heisig grad excels at, because those differences are part of the stories they have created.
I dunno. I wish I did Heisig, and someday… I will!
Of course, Heisig alone isn’t going to teach you Japanese, and it doesn’t claim to, but as part of a regular study routine, it’s pretty powerful.
I prefer Hiroyoshi Tsugawa’s (津川博義) method, and you can use it with kanji compounds, also.
I just find Heisig explanations like the following ridiculous:
吾
There are a number of kanji for the word I, but the others tend
to be more specific than this one. The key word here should
be taken in the general psychological sense of the “perceiving
subject.” Now the one place in our bodies that all five senses are
concentrated in is the head, which has no less than five mouths:
2 nostrils, 2 ears, and 1 mouth. Hence, five mouths = I.
That’s the most far-fetched explanation, and it takes more effort to remember that than just learning to write the kanji itself.
Keep in mind that in the introduction to the book Heisig says, “This is not just for beginners…[snip]” It’s not for beginners at all! Why would you teach 吾 before 私 or even 我?
While I neither support or disagree with Heisig’s methodology, I think it is very straightforward and “honest”.
He is not trying to teach everything there is to know about Japanese; he is simply trying to teach you how to write kanji (in book one, at least). From what I’ve read, he doesn’t seem to advertise doing much else, so I think you’re getting your money’s worth if you buy the book looking for mnemonic devices to learn kanji. Each learner will have ways of learning that are quick for them, so there’s bound to be people who benefit.
Also, sorry to be picky…
>First of all, 理 isn’t even a word.
Actually, it is: り or ことわり, both with their own meanings and usages. Though the later doesn’t have too much to do with the other kanji compounds you mentioned or Heisig’s keyword “logic”.
Ok, bad example. I could rephrase that to say, 理 isn’t even a word you would use normally. Or pick another kanji amongst thousands that are not a word by itself (however obscure it is).
Like a couple of other people here, I started using Heisig but stopped after a few months. I found that the stories and keywords were quickly becoming quite complex.
What I have realised though is that the kanji that I studied through the Heisig method has sunk in really well and I make few mistakes writing the 200-ish that I learnt, even if I haven’t used them for a while.
I’ll say it before, and I’ll say it again. Whether the Heisig method works or not for people is a moot point to me simply because I don’t think it’s anything but a crutch. I seriously believe the only thing the system does is add an unnecessary step to the internalization process. Of course, the idea might be that you eventually learn to walk without the crutch, but I don’t see there’s a need to have it in the first place. I’ll qualify it two ways.
First, I learned to ride a bike within a much shorter time than any of my friends who used training wheels because I sat on a bike and started pedalling. I fell a few times and got it, and that was that. Point being, my body didn’t need training wheels to learn to balance itself.
Second, and more suitable to the topic at hand, is the awful method of learning how to read music that to this day I will never forgive my music teacher for “teaching us”. It pushed back my ability to read compared to people I know who just learned notes for what they were so badly it frustrated me and I lost the urge to read until recently. Now I find myself (15 years later) STILL trying to unlearn that stupid mnemonic method.
So nothing against Heisig’s technique, or anybody who adopts it, but I think it’s just an extra, unecessary step in the process that you end up discarding down the road anyway.
On top of all that, Tae, you’ve gone on about the topic of compound reading and writing often, and I gotta say I think there’s a pretty strong argument against what you think. Simply that both the skills of recognizing individual kanji and reading compounds are necessary and different. The difference is very similar to phonetic reading versus sight reading in English. Both skills are important, and as such I would think you would be equally as impressed by those who have memorized and can read individual kanji as well as those who can sight read compounds. Both are two completely separate skills and, while I agree with your points about reading compounds, comparing it to reading of individual kanji is, well, pointless to this reader.
Learners need to know both equally. Take the phonetics of o, g, r, u and h. Knowing how to pronounce those letters and their possible sounds is very important. However, put them together and you can get “rough”. It doesn’t match with the phonics of the individual letters, and we don’t need to get into the history of why, but knowing the phonetics, as well as the sight reading is both equally important, and incomparable. Neither one is more impressive, more worthwhile or more important than the other.
Take care,
Raymond
very interesting website, very different from the others which talk about the same subject.
Take care
This is the first time I’ve ever seen negative things about the method, the rest of the internet loves this book.
I never realized it was for writing either, I just thought it was a useful way to get the meanings down, and one building block in kanji mastery at that. The 2nd book teaches the readings, and the third teaches beyond the jyouyou.
I don’t own the books, but I wouldn’t mind owning them.
Mr. Kim, how do you recommend studying kanji? Only in context?
As others have already said, the book has no pretense whatsoever to teach you “Japanese”. It is simply meant to be the first stepping stone to literacy. It helps you build your own, solid tools for when you start studying the language itself, and I think that it does it beautifully.
Of course it may not be a necessary step or the best way to start for everybody, but I can assure you that if you get used to the method and understand WHY it is useful, it will make your further studies MUCH easier (and without being boring!).
I’ve studied Japanese for only 3 years and just started going through the book this summer. I find it to be a great help because it teaches you to recognize the kanji. Yes, it does not teach you words, but in a word, you can recognize each individual kanji, which makes the word easier to remember in both speaking and writing.
Learning 2000 characters COMPLETELY out of context is obviously nonsense. And for all you people using other study methods while you use heisig, you are doing it wrong. Heisig says himself in the introduction that it is counterproductive to use other study tools while you are using heisig. This technique must especially be questioned in the digital age where being able to write kanji is nice but hardly necessary.
While I think having little stories can be useful, I personally looked at the book and found the method too isolated from real life to be useful. However on this web page: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/....._mnem.html
there are the very brief summaries of stories behind the first 1006 kanji (elementary school level) and I’ve found it useful to use the stories for a few kanji that I always have trouble remembering.
Actually I was mistaken, these are the Henshall stories, not the Heisig. I’m not sure I understand the differences between their systems.
Hi Tae Kim,
I do agree with you. However, I’ve taken a look at Heisig’s free sample of Remembering the Kanji, and it actually does have interesting (easy to remember) stories for different characters.
If I had to learn kanji again, I definitely wouldn’t want to cram them into my head TWICE: separately for remembering/writing and learning their actual meaning vocabulary-wise.
Now, on the other hand, I think that what Heisig has developed is a very useful tool for complementing one’s existing resources. You could apply Remembering the Kanji to just the characters that you’re having the most trouble remembering.
Best regards,
Sho
yea, i heard about people trying tolearn kanji that way, and I even looked at it, and I as like this is never going to help me learn vocab. I meen sure. 象 is a nice kanji to learn and all, but….id rather use it in something like 気象, or 捨象.
I just learn by JLPT levels. Make some flashcards with a plethora of information ont he back, learn the basics of each kanji, once you no how to say 下, i can go out and learn all the various words kanji make up, you know like 下宿. BUt even then, You know Half the kanji doesnt use other kanji you know, like 大きい.
Knowing kanji is still only helpful if you actually know how to create words, PRONOUNCE those words, and use them CORRECTLY in a sentence.
Wow, I didn’t expect to get such a large response! I think I’ve made my mind up about Heisig. On the plus side, based on the comments, the book appears to help you come up with mnemonics to remember how to write kanji. It might also boost your confidence by at least being able to recognize a large number of kanji (even if you don’t know how to read it or what it means). It might even serve as a good base to launch your kanji studies.
However, I strongly disagree with the method Heisig himself describes. He claims that learning the reading with the writing is counter-productive but I believe it adds more associations and aids in memorization. Plus, looking up words without knowing the reading is frustrating and time-consuming. Also, while he never states it outright, his introduction highly suggests that his method will allow you to “write the kanji with native proficiency” a task that is “presumed insurmountable”. I doubt learning to write 2,000 characters without knowing the readings will magically enable you to know which kanji to use for the tens of thousands of compounds and what they mean.
In conclusion, I think the book might be slightly useful for some (though not to my personal tastes) but it insinuates that it does much more than it could possibly be capable (as in “I learned to write kanji like a native in 2 months!”). Which is why my initial reaction was of distrust and distaste. I am also very much against systematic approaches and flash cards because they are inherently boring and has a risk of reducing motivation. Readers of this blog should know that my philosophy is that language learning should not be painful but an interesting and rewarding experience. Going through a list of 2000 characters one-by-one seems like a chore to me no matter how you do it.
I’m surprised no one here has pointed to Khatzumoto from http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com
He used Heisig and is fluent. He might have something interesting to add.
I learned 400ish kanji the “normal” way and never liked it. I always had trouble remembering exactly how to write the characters, and staring at a block of Japanese text and only recognizing maybe 30% of the characters was disheartening after all that work I had done.
I used Heisig’s method and loved it. I can use real Japanese to learn new vocab, can write with little hesitation, and I don’t have to go back and relearn how to write words as their kanji comes up in the frequency list.
Traditional flash cards are boring. However, using a Spaced Repitition System makes learning things so ridiculously easy that its worth the small amount of time. I also found that making up the silly images for the kanji was interesting enough to push me through all 2042. And how can you learn the kanji without plowing through them one-by-one? No matter how many readings/words you learn alongside the kanji you still eventually have to get through them all, and I think its better to get them out of the way, even if only for the motivation.
As for looking up meanings for words that you don’t know the readings, that’s what we have rikaichan and similar tools for
Of course, everyone’s minds work differently. I would suggest to give it a try even if one is skeptical.
I’ve tried a bit of Heising and you do learn how to write characters, which in it self is useless. Since some kanji have more meaning then one, the meaning I first learned through Heising tend to get in the way when I try to learn the other meanings.
If you intend to have any practical use for this you need to learn to read both on and kun-yomi. Making up stories takes too long, as people before has said.
For me, the best way so far has been to learn a word or name, say 東京 and then learn that 東 is east and 京 is capital. That way I know that 東 is both ひがし and とう, and that 京 is both みやこ and きょう. And since I know from documentaries that Ieyasu called Tokyo his eastern capital, I remember all of this. Then, by adding to this “system” I learn both on and kun-yomi and also their meanings quite fast and relatively easy. And when I read, this comes more or less naturally.
Basically it’s a matter of getting the brain to make as many connections towards a kanji as possible.
From this short example, to remember 東 I have: East, ひがし, とう, Ieyasu. Four links in my brain to this kanji.
Then, when similar kanji’s come to play, you just keep adding links. In my brain I can get from train, to sha, to tou with no problems. True, sha and tou isn’t exactly the same, but sha with two “tits” (that’s my personal mnemonic for those two diagonal lines at the bottom) instead of the bottom line, and there you have it. Weird, I know, but this is how my brain works.
By the way, flashcards is not only boring, but have never taught me anything that I can use.
While the merits of Heisings methods are sort of lost when it comes to kanji, in my opinion, it is great for learning the kana. One reading, one meaning. Great to use stories to learn them. Once they are learned, you will soon be able to shed the method since you’ll be able to read and write kana by sheer repetition in just a few weeks. (Depending how often you use them of course)
I guess, my conclusion is that Heisings method is great for learning how to remember how to draw pictures, but not so good for learning how to read, write or understand sentences.
For everyone who gives Heisig dirt for not teaching vocab, that’s not the point!
Okay I’m done defending Heisig now. I need to get off my butt and buy the book myself.
By the way to give some perspective, I have already passed 1-kyuu, work as a full-time translator, and I -still- want to do Heisig. I really think there is long lasting value there.
I gotta say, I thoroughly enjoy both sight-reading and studying individual kanji. To rephrase, the point I’m trying to get across is that neither is better or worse than the other. They are both different and both have their uses. If you have to pick one, pick the one most useful to you. However, if you know both, even better.
Using study tools, and using personal methods of study that don’t work for one person doesn’t inherently mean they are painful methods.
I like both, and me and my friends enjoy playing flashcard games like karuta, etc. using both individual kanji and compounds. Do we prefer it to reading, or studying compounds, or learning in context, etc? Heck no. But we do like it just as much, and the way you study can make all the difference to the fun factor.
I agree, learning shouldn’t be painful. But at the same time, learning tools shouldn’t be subjected to painful criticisms or comparisons either.
Enjoy studying and if you find value in a tool or method, enjoy using it.
I agree that we should all use the methods and tools that work best for ourselves but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t compare and criticize them. People just starting out might not know the pros and cons of different studying methods. Plus, there is a common misconception that studying languages require “hard work” and “dedication”. I’ve seen many people give up on Japanese because it is “too hard” and I think a large part of the reason is that they went about it the wrong way and were making it hard.
There are so many products on the market that try to fool you and take your money by making outrageous claims like “become fluent in Japanese in [X] months” and Heisig strongly suggests that his method will allow you to write kanji like a native. Just read his introduction. But we know better because just learning how to write the kanji doesn’t directly translate into learning how to read and write vocab. You still have a lot more to go before you know which kanji are used in which compounds, what they mean, and how to read it.
I just wish Heisig was more honest about what his book does (aids in memorization of writing individual kanji) and perhaps described what else needed to be done to actually attain the level that he suggests to have attained by just using his method alone.
Hi,
I just wanted to throw in 2 cents. I am currently preparing for the 二級 after a while away from Japan and Japanese; I read about 800 some kanji already, but I am re-doing Heisig after stopping a few years ago (life got in the way). I’m at about 1200 kanji in his system now, doing 60-70 a day with the SRS at kanji.koohii.com.
I studied Japanese formally, both at university in the US and in Japan at Yamasa, and self-study with Kanji in Context, and I have found Heisig’s first book the most effective of all. It is what it is: a way to learn a root meaning (most important) and the writing of the characters. Good old hard work gets it done, sure, but his method, esp. with an SRS, reduces the hard labor.
My uni courses stopped after teaching 400 or so characters by rote; at Yamasa, they cover 300 or so in electives, and after that just stop. Meanwhile, Henshall’s system is similar, but based on historical etymologies. What is important about Heisig is the order in which the characters are learned, along with the understanding (explained at the beginning of lesson 31) that the stories eventually disappear. The order serves to reinforce what one has learned before, as each new kanji is made up of what’s come before. The stories will vary from person to person, but his framework mimicks, I think quite effectively, the way memory works.
And I must respectfully disagree with Tae Kim that Heisig is dishonest. He emphasizes throughout the book that the method only matters as a first stepping stone, and that it only works if you learn all 2042 kanji he presents. He has other, I think less effective, techniques for learning vocabulary and compounds in the second book. I know other systems make outlandish claims, for marketing purposes, about learning quickly; Heisig I think makes much more restricted claims, and ones that are borne out in using the system. And his ultimate claim is quite similiar to what Tae Kim says in the first paragraph of post 34: “I’ve seen many people give up on Japanese because it is “too hard” and I think a large part of the reason is that they went about it the wrong way and were making it hard.” Heisig takes out the grunt work. What better ways are there of learning kanji, other than rote?
Finally, I picked up Heisig in a store when I first started with Japanese a few years ago, read the intro and flipped through it, and based on that cursory glance, decided it wasn’t for me. I wish I had known better then.
Best,
BillyClyde
BillyClyde,
Great, I wanted to ask supporters of Heisig some questions and I hope you come back to give me some of your feedback.
Could you please explain what you mean when you say, “I read about 800 some kanji already” and “I’m at about 1200 kanji in his system now”. What do you mean by “reading” a kanji? I doubt you mean all the words that can be formed by combinations of the 800-1200 compounds.
Basically, I’m wondering how Heisig will help you eventually to learn how to read and write 10,000+ or however many words a native Japanese adult knows. I’m not being sarcastic, I really want to know how the method will help your actual reading and writing ability, not just for the individual characters.
And good luck on your 二級. Assuming you mean JLPT, you do know they don’t test any individual kanji but only actual words, right?
Tae Kim,
By “reading” a kanji, I mean that I understand the meaning and can read it aloud when I see it as a word or in a compound, 音 and 訓読み。If I don’t know the word, then I can make an educated guess at the meaning or have a chance of saying it right. Of course, kanji like 生 make life harder, and I have noticed that if I’ve been away for a while, it takes time to ramp back up– I’m starting regular study now after being away from Japan for 6 months, and I’m rusty. BTW, I got to the 800 by repetition and constant input.
But back to 生、when I was using Kanji in Context, it presented 7 readings (though there are more) to memorize in an early lesson. To proceed in that system, it implies mastering those 7; I wore out on that system around 500 or so, in part because I was spending effort on learning readings I wasn’t encountering day-to-day.
When I say “I’m at about 1200″ in Heisig, I mean that I have stories for 1200 kanji written and am in process of studying them. These are largely not the same kanji I can already read, though many are, and I do learn stories for kanji like 私、回、and 着, in order to reinforce the system. Some of the stories are fixed in me and aren’t going anywhere; some are leftovers from when I first did this three years ago; some need refinement and further study. But I find that I can recall and write kanji based on just seeing a keyword without putting too much work into the stories, and that for some, the stories have gone, and it’s just a keyword, or its gist, and the kanji connected. That’s the goal.
As a side note, some stories are better than others, the more outlandish or vivid sticking around better than the more obvious. I think many of the user stories on kanji.koohii.com are rather literal, and probably those users will need better stories in the long run. When I don’t remember a kanji, I tweak the story or revisualize it. At this point, I have roughly 85% of the cards in “remembered” stacks in a Leitner system.
Ultimately, Heisig’s system seems like a coathanger for eventually readings. Being able to write them is a bonus. I know it is a categorically different task than learning 10K+ vocab words’ readings and nuances, but it is what I consider a necessary first step to be able to do that as effectively as possible. I doubt I would be able to remember those 10K words without Heisig.
And I don’t mean this sarcastically: what do you suggest that’s better? How did you learn the kanji, through repetition? Heisig will help me eventually learn those words (I expect) by making a compartment in my memory for each kanji, and a network of connections to get me to it if it seems foggy. Memory is primarily about connections, I think, and Heisig uses imagination to create a robust network of paths other than the muscular memory of just writing the things over and over.
And yes, I am taking JLPT. The classes I was in at Yamasa were geared to it, so I have some idea of what to expect. (Namely that I am poorly wired for the type of listening questions they ask, but that’s another conversation.)
My intentions are to finish creating stories in a couple of weeks, as long as my personal life doesn’t get in the way (it might) and then both to continue reviewing and begin hammering compounds and grammar in context, using example sentences from the Unicom books in an SRS, and scouring those Meguro lists. I’ll let you know how it goes; I hope that I will have a much easier time than if I hadn’t completed Heisig.
Thanks for the wish of good luck–
best,
BillyClyde
It sounds like this Kanji in Context you are talking about is anything but. I suggest not learning Kanji at all but instead work on your vocabulary in the context of real Japanese, whether it’s with conversation, written works, whatever. The vocab will start to tie the Kanji together for you. For example, learning 病 as びょう is not natural and not very useful. Instead, let’s say you learn 病院. You review the stroke order and get familiar with the characters in the compound. Then when you learn 病気, things will start to click, especially if you happen to know 気分, then 部分, 分析, 部屋, 屋台, 台風, 風 and so on. Instead of silly stories in English, you’ll have a bank of vocabulary and real context (conversations, something you read or watch) to solidify the memory. Plus you can pick material that interest you to help maintain interest in your studies whether it’s making Japanese friends, dating, reading manga, magazines, books, blogs, whatever. Finally, instead of single useless characters, you learn real words, their connotations, proper usage, and basically everything you need to communicate in Japanese.
Like you mentioned, there are far two many readings for 生 that you’ll hardly ever need. So it’s pointless to learn them until you find words that you can actually use like 生ビール、生涯、生理、生む、生きる、生える. Until you learn those words, there’s no point in learning the readings.
I think Heisig is upfront about
what the method does and does not do.
I think by now there are a lot
of people who have used Heisig. Probably dome of them have gone on to
learn how to combine and read
the Kanji. Some of them might
even stop to look at the forums
at http://kanji.koohii.com/
from time to time. You might
try posting something there to
find such people.
Thanks for pointing that out. I think it’s telling that there are 192 topics for RTK Volume 1 but only 26 for Volume 2 AND 3. So it seems far less people are able to plow through up to the point where you actually learn real and useful words.
Tae Kim,
The lack of discussion for RTK 2 & 3 could be that people have a decreasing need to mull them over in an online forum once they get that far. Or that 3 is long out of print, and 2 addresses a different problem, less usefully, than 1. At any rate, low forum traffic’s correlation to the preponderance of “silly stories in English” or the lack of “real and useful words” is tenuous.
And I wanted to address one thing in post 38, that “… when you learn 病気, things will start to click…”
They never clicked for me like that, until I began using Heisig, after which they truly have clicked. I suspect that because they clicked for you early, you see no need for this method. However, merely learning lots of vocabulary, which I have done, never got me to sort out kanji so that I didn’t feel I was always relearning things.
From this perspective, “learn compounds until they click” seems like a glib answer, one that doesn’t address the real problem of kanji for learners of Japanese. Heisig does, systematically, in way that is not “crutch,” as Raymond says, but the most efficient way. I unhesitatingly recommend it to new learners; I doubt I can convince you of its worth because you never needed it. Fair enough.
BillyClyde, thanks for your comment. I’m surprised that the breakdown method didn’t work for you. I’d just like to confirm in what contexts and fashion were you learning vocabulary? “Merely learning lots of vocabulary” is anything but a mere task. By learning vocab I mean breaking down from sentence to word to character. In the beginning, this means looking up each unfamiliar characters, checking stroke order, practice writing, etc. And also seeing how it works in the sentence as a whole and maybe even look up other example sentences. Or in conversational settings, it means talking about how to use the vocab, in what contexts, how to write it, and what the individual characters mean.
The amount of working depending of course on how hard the vocab is and how much you know already.
Many Heisig users make arguments like it’s not practical to rote memorise thousands of kanji. It would seem to me that many a Heisig learner is introduced to the world of radicals for the first time when using Heisig. If you have the base knowledge of radicals, learning Kanji is more like putting the pieces of a puzzle together rather than rote memorisation. And learning the radicals takes but a fraction of the time that going through Heisig does. (you also avoid learning silly English stories)
Okay, one more and I’m out.
Tae Kim: In talking about learning vocabulary, I still think “checking stroke order [and] practicing writing” is glib. That’s the step where, for me, Heisig comes in. Like I said before, I’ve done it both ways, and yes, I’ve done it from sentence down, and yes, I find it clicks much better after Heisig– because his system organizes and simplifies that step.
Christopher: Personally, I discovered radicals the first time I cracked open Hadamitzky-Spahn, but that didn’t help me learn kanji very well. Heisig’s system systematically and efficiently teaches “the base knowledge of radicals” you describe, and how to use them as building blocks. And rote memorization isI of course practical if it leads to literacy, but for my learning Heisig is far more practical and efficient.
Finally, I would add that many of the anti-Heisig arguments are rooted in part in the notion that his system adds an unnecessary step; I disagree, and as I’ve argued, it cuts out rote learning and has long-term benefits. I do feel the pro & con arguments are going in a circles a little at this point.
The other part of the con- arguments seems to be a desire to avoid being “silly.” The system works; the stories aren’t silly. And besides, why is it so important to make this awful task so serious?
Hello, i’m also using the Heisig method (french version) by now.
I borrowed it from my sister’s shelf and I have to say that it saved my ass!
I was never good at remembering stuffs the “dumb” way (you know repeating things over and over, learning out of context, flashcard, etc). I also nearly gave up learning kanji for a while after trying many “classic-pain-in-the-ass” methods. Then now, thanks to this book, my will to learn kanji went back and i’m ready for the big task.
I also tried Tae Kim’s mentioning breakdown method, learning compounds kanji by context. But as BillyClyde, it never works for me.
The thing is that when I’m outside of the context where I happen to learn those kanji, then I’m lost.
I hardly can recognize a compound kanji that I already learnt in a different context. Plus it’s so much time consuming to decrypt all the kanji you don’t know that you soon have to give up or are overwhelmed by too much informations. Even fun stuffs becomes boring and frustrating when you have to look up in a dictionary for many words and then breaking them in single kanji and it takes forever. It feels really painful.
I’m not saying it doesn’t have to take time and effort to learn something well, but at least it has to be effective in the long go.
I think this methods is good when you have good basic of kanji and you know your kanji individually. Learning compound kanji is just another link to connect between those individual kanji that are firmly tie in your head.
And that’s just what this book do, no more, no less (at least it works for me). Like it is written on the cover “Remembering the kanji”, not “Knowing the kanji” or “Learning the kanji”. Ok, this sentence may sound a little dumb but I’ll explain the diffrence between “remembering” and “knowing/learning”.
For me, there’s so much things to know about a single kanji, that I have to split it in many steps:
- The writing
- The meanings
- The readings
- The compounds kanji
After you’ve done all those steps you can say that you know a kanji.
So what the Heisig’s book is doing is tieing the writing and one or two meanings (sometimes more) together with a short (yeah sometimes silly) story so you can remember it well and for a long time. So in that way, you’re not overwhelmed with too much informations, you’re concentrated on remembering the kanji. And it works, I even don’t need to review the kanji everyday and i can recognize them in any given context.
Some may say it’s useless to know few meanings of a single kanji and no readings, but as i said, this is just the first step. And there’s no more frustrating thing than putting much effort on learning a kanji and not remembering it few weeks after because you don’t use it often.
The Heisig method is really trying to print the kanji in your memory so you can’t forget it easily.
Sure, it depends on how the short stories have an impact on you. But if you’re not pleased with the book’s stories, you’re free to make your own (to a certain extent) and that’s what i’m doing.
And at the time the kanji are well sticked in your brain, you can attach to it all other informations you need to complete the learning of those kanji (other meanings, readings, other kanji).
One other good point about that book is that it points out and explain all the subtle changes in a caracter writing and how some complex kanji are composed by many more not-so-obvious simple kanji that you’ve already learnt before.
Like in 然, the first 4 strokes comes from 月 or in the caracter 猫, the key comes from 犬, etc
So learning a kanji of +15 strokes doesn’t feel like you’re learning a new caracter from scratch. It feels natural. So you have less things to remember. You just have to link together all the basics which is less painful than remembering a whole new kanji.
Well, even though I may sound praising that book, i’m really not.
I know it’s not perfect. It may not suit to everybody’s way of learning. But it does its job.
My frustration about not remembering a kanji is now gone.
What I can reproach about that book is some out of nowhere stories that don’t give you a clue about anything. In that case just make your own (besides that, past the half of the book, the stories becomes less and less, leaving you making your own). But I recommand you to read the book once ’til the end (i’m on my second go) without trying to remember anything, so you know what kind of changes you can make on the stories to help you remember those evil kanji because some stories are linked together.
Another drawback is that you have to learn those kanji in the order it appears on the book. You can’t skip a caracter you don’t like, because it may be helpful to remember another one later.
And some (but really few) simple and more usefull kanji appear only at the end of the book.
But at the time you reach the end of the book, and remember those kanji well, you won’t need it anymore, or maybe just few times.
Anyway nothing as worse than flashcards.
And even if it happens that i could only rememeber half the kanji of that book then it would be far more than with other methods.
And if you really want to LEARN kanji you can (have to) add some works on it. I’m on my second go on that book because the first time I wasn’t pleased with some stories and few old/not-so-obvious meanings used by that books. So i’m making my own stories when i have to (sometimes just subtle changes is OK), and completing each kanji with all their meanings.
As for the readings and compound kanji i’m using a nintendo DS tools
“Shikakui atama maruku suru”, I think it is the best for learning kanji’s readings and everyday-life compound kanji in one go. But it is just awfull to learn writing, i think it is not meant for (other NDS program are more well suited). Anyway it is the perfect combo with Remembering the Kanji.
Finally, i would say that even though the book has some flaws, the concept is good.
It makes me remember when i was learning the word とうもろこし. I made my friend repeat it many times but still couldn’t remember it well. Then one day that friend told me a story with a corn involved in it, and since that day i remember the word…but not the story
I’m like a few others in that I’m using Heisig pretty much at the start of my Japanese learning. Now, I did take a Japanese class in 1996 (using JFBP, ugh), so in my opinion my knowledge was just at aware. I began learning again this January, starting with Rosetta (didn’t get past the first unit) when I happened across Heisig via KanjiClinic.
So how do I see it? Living in Japan I find it outstanding right out of the box. You walk around and everyday more and more of the signs open up to you. Now, I slowed down after about 600 because I did not have stories (lousy at making up myself) and I was using flashcards. Like others, going to kanji.koohii.com reinvigorated doing and finishing it. You see many stories and can use, adapt or make up your own plus it tracks how you’re doing.
Now that I’m going into my reading phase, practice sentences get memorized almost the first time. I’m actually replacing the english keyword with the Japanese kun and maybe on reading instinctively. Sure, they’re just 150 sentences from Pimsleur I, but soon I’ll be adding in sentences from your site, the JLPT study site, JFE and Genki in addition to a modified version of Rosetta that I put together using the Anki program. Plus I get 6 to 7 months a year for the time being in Japan (I’m in the Navy, so the other months are not in Japan).
Still, the proof will be in the pudding. In six months I’ll definitely post updates on my results. Hopefully I qualify as someone that started out with Heisig in your eyes to satisfy your challenge. Not to mention, I get to do while keeping a full time job (where knowing Japanese is not mandatory).
OK, for those of you that dismiss the book how many of you can WRITE from memory the entire joyo kanji? The point of the book is not to teach Japanese but to teach you how to write the entire set of joyo kanji. I did it in 5 months after years of trying other methods.
I started out doing Heisig for a while. I’ve only gotten through around 450 kanji, practicing on and off. When I first started learning Japanese, it was really cool to recognize all those characters. After a while, it got de-motivating, because I still knew nothing of Japanese.
I still think it is useful when used with other methods. Do not deride the “silly English stories.” This is a proven mnemonic method, and I think it is only another way of providing context. One of the problems with Heisig’s method are that the stories are of varying quality, and are many times not inspiring. If you can think up a good story, then that’s like a whole other universe to describe one single character. As you learn more about Japanese, that universe can grow. Reading things in text can accomplish this same end, so maybe the silly English stories aren’t too necessary. Silly Japanese stories could work just as well.
The other plus to using the Heisig method, that is also a tragic flaw, is the way the kanji are arranged. They allow you to take blocks of meaning and build more complex kanji, to greatly simplify their memorization and writing. But, some of the most common and important ones come in at over 1500. Before that, you could be wading through tons of useless stuff. I mean, I guess it’s all supposed to be important, but I don’t want to read 1793 other kanji before I learn the one for “boku.” (Though I dig the reference to Mr. T.)
So with all of this said, I still have no idea where the method should stand in a study. The Remembering the Kana book is extremely useful, and anyone who hasn’t already memorized them should use it. I learned the hiragana by rote, and used this for the katakana in around an eighth of the time. But after that, I think it’d be better to read actual sentences, look up kanji, copy them down, and relate them to the sentences you find them in. I tried reading rock lyrics earlier, so I got my story and I got my instant gratification. Also, your grammar guide has been exceedingly helpful so far, Mr. Tae Kim. Without it, I probably still wouldn’t know a word of Japanese, but now I feel like I’m learning it. I just need to cram vocabulary.
Jamie, I doubt that many Japanese people could write all joyo kanji from memory but they seem to get by just fine.
I’m a self-taught intermediate student of Japanese (taking 2kyuu this year) and I find kanji to be the hardest part of learning Japanese. I’m lucky to have a pretty good memory and know how to read about 1000 kanji, but as I have no real purpose nor motivation to learn to write them, I honestly couldn’t write my way out of a paper bag at the moment. I would also rather be spending my time learning to communicate better in Japanese than spending it learning to write kanji when I’m just not going to use them.
However, I am finding learning to read new, more complicated kanji, or memorizing different kanji that look alike, to be really difficult and frustrating. Mostly because, as I whinge time-after-time to my long-suffering friends (who just nod sympathetically ^_^) “it doesn’t mean anything to me! It’s just contextless squiggles!”
Obviously the most important part of learning Japanese is the ability to communicate, and in the end of the day no matter how many kanji you memorize it means very little without the vocabulary and grammar necessary to actually speak Japanese. However, for students who already speak a reasonable amount of Japanese, a system that brings etymological meaning to those “contextless squiggles” and helps us both memorize and gain understanding, is an invaluable tool. Let’s face it, kanji are an absolute necessity in order to become proficient in Japanese, and (despite driving me up the wall sometimes) are also one of the most fascinating aspects of the language. But our limited exposure in daily life to kanji, coupled with our limited grasp of Japanese itself, means that the techniques used to learn kanji should be more specific to our needs than the techniques used to teach Japanese children.
From people I’ve spoken to who have learnt Japanese in a classroom, it seems that the standard approach to teaching kanji is simply to give students a list of kanji to memorize, and blank boxes to write them over and over again. Not only is this somewhat mind-numbing, but it’s a whole lot of contextless information which will be easily forgotten, and not an efficient way to learn to read the 1,945 joyo kanji. (As far as writing them, as Tae Kim reminds us, not many native speakers can write them all from memory; this isn’t an ambition of mine either!) Heisig’s method, while it certainly should not be aimed at beginners, really does attract my interest and I intend to have a look at it. With any luck, this could save me countless hours of frustration and save my friends from listening to me whinge!