I hope this ranks #1 in google for “Heisig douche bag” (Updated)
During my quest to give you ever more informative yet mildly entertaining posts about Japanese, I’ve noticed that the most carefully thought-out posts toiled over for many days and nights often have the least comments. It’s OK. I’m assuming it’s a sign that the post is SO GOOD that nobody has found anything objectionable to comment about. On the other hand, inflammatory posts like calling James Heisig a douche bag, attracts comments like flies to a pile of turd. And because I enjoy comments like a grab bag of Christmas presents, here I am with another flame post.
Actually, I didn’t really call Heisig a douche bag. In fact, though I’ve never met him, I’m sure he’s a very smart and great guy. Furthermore, many people commented that they couldn’t even begin memorizing how to write kanji without the help of his book. That’s great, and I’m glad that the book helped them find a method that works for them. After all, our brains are complex so it’s natural that certain techniques work better for certain people. Even so, after over 50 comments, nobody has stepped forth and met my challenge by saying, “Yes, I can write whole words and sentences like a native using his methods.” So I remain a skeptic about the long-term durability of the method and still don’t give a damn whether or not you can write all the 常用漢字 from memory. Here’s the real test – see if you can write words for a ２級 Kanji test by studying with Heisig’s methods, even just the answers that only use 常用漢字. If so, I’ll buy the books myself and start studying because I could hardly answer most of those questions.
If that’s not enough to incite you into commenting, here some more fodder.
I think it’s better to teach casual Japanese before polite Japanese. It sounds crazy I know, but first of all, it’s how all native speakers started out as kids so it can’t be that bad. Second, it’s much more useful grammatically and socially if you’re in high school or college. Finally, I worked at one of the largest, oldest, and most traditional Japanese companies in Tokyo and “business Japanese” was just putting “desu” and “masu” at the end of every sentence. The rest is knowing phrases like 「いつもお世話になっております」, honorific/humble, and vocabulary that’s too difficult for beginners anyway.
Discuss.
[Update]
I’d like to clarify that I have no issues with Heisig’s book itself but rather how it promises to enable you to gain native proficiency in writing kanji. I mentioned this in the comments as well but I find the following claims a bit far-fetched.
“…the goal of the book is still to attain native proficiency in writing the Japanese characters…”
“Virtually all teachers of Japanese, native and foreign, would agree with me that learning to write the kanji with native proficiency is the greatest single obstacle to the foreign adult approaching Japanese-indeed so great as to be presumed insurmountable. [lines skipped] In fact, as this books seeks to demonstrate, nothing could be further from the truth.”
“…they are not likely ever to have considered reorganizing their pedagogy to take advantage of the older student’s facility with generalized principles. So great is this neglect that I would have to say that I have never met a Japanese teacher who can claim to have taught a foreign adult to write basic general-use kanji that all high-school graduates in Japan know.”
(I infer from this that the book can teach a foreign adult to write like all high school graduates.)
Now, somebody posted a comment saying that Heisig probably meant that you will be able to write individual kanji like a native; namely being able to write all 2000 or so characters. However, if that was what he meant, then what he is saying doesn’t even really make any sense. Native speakers don’t think about each kanji individually, they learn to write them in words. For example, if you were to ask any native speaker who doesn’t speak English, “What is 「接」?” they will say, “Oh, that’s 「接」 from 「接続」 or 「直接」” because 「接」 by itself doesn’t mean anything. Or if there’s a 訓読み for the kanji such as 「動」, they might say, “Oh, that means 「動く」”. So even if you could write all ~2000 characters with the keywords, you still won’t be writing kanji with native proficiency. That means his claims are either misleading or just inaccurate.
Why couldn’t he just write something a bit more modest like this?
By being able to write each individual character, you can use them as building blocks to help you remember how to write words that use those characters as you progress in your studies.
Sure, it doesn’t sound as revolutionary as, “You can write kanji with native proficiency, something I’ve not once seen a Japanese teacher teach successfully” but it sure is more accurate. Oh I don’t know, maybe I should just change the introduction to my grammar guide to say, “The goal of this guide is to gain native proficiency in Japanese grammar. Most people think such a goal is insurmountable but nothing could be further from the truth.”
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December 1st, 2007 at 9:48 am
Well, this post is kind of sad. You have a great blog and you don’t need to go trolling for comments. I guess I shouldn’t reply but it’s hard not to feed the troll.
When I first read your original Heisig post I didn’t know what the method was. I commented on my initial impression that wasn’t good.
Now I have just started learning using it a few days ago. And I have changed my mind. I find it so easy to learn to write characters with it that I wonder why I didn’t do that earlier.
Off course, there is a lot it doesn’t teach. So your challenge is unfair. But it makes the task of remembering how to write the characters much easier. And that means more time to study what the method doesn’t teach.
I’m really happy I tried it and I have you to thank for that.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:34 am
Why do you think it’s sad? I thought it was a fun post. Maybe it’s just me but if somebody wrote a similar post about me and my methods, I would be highly amused and interested. Especially, if there were some valid points.
I thought it was a fair challenge from reading these lines from the beginning of the book:
“…the goal of the book is still to attain native proficiency in writing the Japanese characters…”
“Virtually all teachers of Japanese, native and foreign, would agree with me that learning to write the kanji with native proficiency is the greatest single obstacle to the foreign adult approaching Japanese-indeed so great as to be presumed insurmountable. [lines skipped] In fact, as this books seeks to demonstrate, nothing could be further from the truth.”
“…they are not likely ever to have considered reorganizing their pedagogy to take advantage of the older student’s facility with generalized principles. So great is this neglect that I would have to say that I have never met a Japanese teacher who can claim to have taught a foreign adult to write basic general-use kanji that all high-school graduates in Japan know.”
(I infer from this that his method could accomplish this.)
If “learning to write kanji like a native” means being able to answer at least some ２級 kanji questions, I think the challenge is fair, don’t you think?
December 1st, 2007 at 10:40 am
Doesn’t the Heisig method actually hinder your Japanese composition speed? I mean, it’s great to know how to write a kanji, but having to recite a story in your head for each character is going to take some time. And even then, you haven’t learned the 宿
Why not just read, and read, and read, and read, and write, and read some more, and write, and write, and read some internet forums, and write some comments, and write a letter to a Japanese friend, and read the response, and continue to do this until kanji are invading your dreams and you’ll do anything to get away from them, and then rest for 5 minutes, and then come back to them again?
Reading in English increases your vocabulary, and should theoretically improve your spelling. Reading in Japanese is the same, only with kanji instead of an alphabet.
December 1st, 2007 at 10:46 am
Haha, I was distracted mid post and didn’t finish editing my first paragraph. “…you haven’t learned the 宿” じゃなくて、「熟語」って書きたかったよね…
December 1st, 2007 at 10:48 am
The method is supposed to be a building block until you don’t need the crutch of a story (just to prove that I do know about how the method is supposed to work).
I agree with you Alex, but that method doesn’t seem to work for some so they need a stepping stone like Heisig. I think if you are skilled at finding patterns and basic components of kanji such as noticing that 剣、険、検、験 all have share the same component/reading, you can naturally pick up on what Heisig spells out for you step by step in his book. Again, I think it depends on how you process information.
I understand and appreciate the value of that, my only issue is the bold and unrealizable claims that he makes in the beginning of the book. Hence the challenge.
December 1st, 2007 at 11:02 am
I can’t comment on Heisig, since I don’t use his book to learn kanji (I use a Nintendo DS), but I thought you would be happy to know that you rank #1 in Google search for “Heisig douche bag”!
December 1st, 2007 at 11:18 am
Ok, ok, your post is indeed kind of funny in a troll/comment whoring way ;)
Well, there are many ways to define writing like a native. One could argue that if you know all 26 roman letters, you can write like an english native.
That’s kind of what the Heisig method is. You know the 2000+ letters. That doesn’t mean you can write all the words.
But knowing the letters is the part that people are afraid of. To the average beginner, a page full of kanji text seems utterly alien. When learning new vocabulary, if I don’t already know the kanji, I don’t bother trying to learn them at the same time, that’s just too difficult.
But if they are familiar, at least I can learn how the word is written at the same time and maybe learn how that kanji can be pronounced too. That’s how I’m going to eventually learn to write the words in that test.
And I agree that’s very important and I test myself in my ability to do that using the Nintendo DS software 200万人の漢検. I’m only doing grade 1 and 2 kanji that I have learned without Heisig, but not only do I have to remember the kanji, but I also have to understand the japanese sentence written in hiragana, and if I don’t really know the word they want me to write in kanji, I have to guess.
So there is no way that Heisig is going to magically allow me to do that. But thanks to it, that 2000 kanji number that used to scare me doesn’t seem as huge as it did before.
December 1st, 2007 at 11:19 am
Alex: Doesn’t the Heisig method actually hinder your Japanese composition speed? I mean, it’s great to know how to write a kanji, but having to recite a story in your head for each character is going to take some time.
My experience: I have noticed that, for me, it does not hinder my composition speed at all. True, I would still have to figure out a kanji’s story/image the first 3 or 4 times I write the kanji for review purposes, but the story does become more and more vague over time, and soon enough my hand flows over the kanji without even needing to think about the story. This has worked for even very complicated kanji.
Also, the usage of images and stories has allowed me to retain a lot of kanji per day — I think without Heisig’s method I would have forgotten many characters already, even with constant review.
(Also, Heisig’s book teaches pattern and component recognition. That is one of the good things about it. I would never have thought about learning kanji by breaking it up, otherwise.)
December 1st, 2007 at 11:35 am
Codexus,
Ok, we’re perfectly in agreement but doesn’t the book sound just a tad misleading?
December 1st, 2007 at 11:50 am
I don’t think his intention is to be misleading but I guess it’s easy to get the impression that the method is supposed grant you the power to read and write japanese like a native which, off course, it won’t.
But it can help you on your way there, though.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:44 am
Tae, I don’t know if you already know this, but lately I’ve been wondering if Koreans learn casual or polite first. I’m going to ask one of my friends before I leave Korea.
I can’t judge right now since one of my friends spoke to me with casual right off, and I am better than her at Japanese. On the contrary, I know a girl who is almost JLPT1 certified after 2 years of study but used polite forms with me for about a week then explicitly announced that we’ve become friends and that it’s good to use casual.
I kind of thought that was very strange because she’s also a few years older than me but okay.
I’ll get back to you unless you or someone else gives me an answer first.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:40 am
Congratulations on ranking number 1. Hey, I hope I qualify as being a complete beginner. Unfortunately, others will hear my situation and say “Oh, well, Heisig didn’t help you. You live in Japan, that’s why you learned it” or “Well, you took a Japanese Class 11 years.” or some other excuse that downplays the impact Heisig had on my learning.
I see it like this: I can write the proper stroke order of 2000 kanji, and I have at least a basic comprehension on what that kanji means in my native language . That’s all that book promised and it was what I got. Yeah, I learned kanji that won’t be used but so what, that’s 5 minutes average per kanji. Now that I’ll be learning Japanese in context, the frequency will work itself out when it comes to pronunciation and compounds. Oh, and since I used a visual story, I’m able to tranfer comprehension to Japanese as I’m going along fairly smoothly.
I think the main problem is this: Heisig offers a pretty simple method that demands a not so simple dedication (5 minutes a kanji for 2000 kanji). The method is so simple that people wonder why do you need a book (fair enough). The keywords used are not always the best (fair enough). His primitive keywords are kind of out there at times (once again, fair enough complaint). Here’s my take: sooner or later a group will profer a better keyword selection. With computers, it can be set up where you only need to learn 1000 most common Kanji (on the condition you learn rarer kanji if used as primitives). Basicly, I think his method is sound. It was how he applied that method that gets everyone in a tizzy.
For the plain form. Yes, I found out about the dictionary form (thanks to your website). I’m really miffed at all the polite forms that proliferate any teaching method for Japanese. You’d think that these academics would hold college students to a higher regard. Apparently they think I’m incapable of turning Taberu into Tabemasu (excuse the Romaji) if the situation calls for politeness. Therefore, I must be taught as if every situation is a polite situation.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:51 pm
it seems some people would enjoy the DS game kakitori kun. Or the one where one circles the hard part of kanji (I own it but embarassingly forget the name; I’ve put it aside while studying for the JLPT).
But I can see Heisign mnemonics as useful for JLPT-type “which kanji is it” questions.
December 4th, 2007 at 5:55 am
QKlilx,
I’m also curious to know how they teach Japanese in Korea. I wish I could say from personal experience but I learned Japanese in the US, so I have no idea.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Just a couple of thoughts:
I would agree that Heisig does not teach you how to write words and thoughts, so in that respect “writing like a native” does seem to be a misnomer. However, the methodology in the books is a solid way of learning one of the critical parts to writing , both natively and non-natively. Learning how to write the kanji with a high recall and learning rate removes one of the largest stumbling blocks towards literary proficiency, and as such seems pretty in tune with most long-term learners goals.
Though not in fully in line with what you ask, you might be interested to know that I used Heisig as a base when I started and passed 2級 of the 漢検 last year.
December 12th, 2007 at 5:43 am
What good is Heisig method?
Hmm interesting question. First of all, I assume most of the Heisig users are from a Western, non-kanji background. Their conception of writing, therefore, is fundamentally different from those of Japanese or Chinese. Mr. Heisig is trying to, in my humble opinion, fit the Japanese system into English. The Japanese vocabulary (I am not talking about 外来語 here.) can be appromixmately broken down into two groups: 大和言葉 and 漢語. Mr. Heisig’s method works only with yamatokotoba but not with kango, since usually it is the former that has single-kanji words. Kango, on the other hand, are full of compound words. The meanings of these compounds, like what Tae Kim has said, are impossible to figure out by merely looking at individual kanji. Historical and idiomatic reasons have much to do with that. For example, a word like 矛盾, literally “spear-Shield”, actually means contradiction. It derives from an ancient tale in China. There is no way Heisig’s method can let that student know what that word means because the kanji don’t reflect the word’s true meaning.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Hi. Not sure if this is the right place to write this. Just wanna say I really enjoy your posts, it’s very informative and answers a lot of questions I can’t get from a text book. I have a request actually, can you do a lesson on てきとう I hear people say it a lot but no-one can explain to me what it means.
December 31st, 2007 at 11:21 am
It strikes me that most Japanese learning resources are not made for serious students. They rarely go beyond mid-intermediate, either because they didn’t sell enough or te writer loses interest.
I think most students pick up the language like a clothing trend, because they intend to take a trip to Japan or have a interest in watching cartoons with subtitles. They study awhile, and then they drop it and move on to something else.
When it comes to learning Japanese, I think the best method is the one used by the vast bulk of native speakers, the Japanese themselves. And that is not Heisig’s. If you are going to remember a whole little story for a symbol, wouldn’t it be easier to just remember its meaning? I think Heisig’ method really relies on recognition of the symbol, and not being able to write it. I know it hurts, but I still think writing it out and practicing with sentances and the like is the best known way.
I saw this episode of American Scientific Frontiers the other day, and they said each part of the brain has its own memory for sounds, tastes, smells, etc. Now if this is true, you want to stimulate as many senses as you can when studying. So try to have a VISUAL memory of seeing the symbol and its meaning, a AUDIO memory of hearing or speaking the sound, and a memory of writing the symbol out by hand. The more memories you make, the more likely you will retain something.
Heisig creates far too many false memories, and I think it appeals to those starting out who see it as a simple method. But as far as I am concerned, Heisig teaches you to ride a tricycle when you’ve got a mountain to climb.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Hi! I’m chinese (not native) and I use Heisig’s method to learn kanjis :) I haven’t read the preface of the book, I just gave it a try and found that method was good and without a doubt the most effective method to remember individual kanjis.
But true, it would be a bit optimistic (and arrogant, and a big lie) to say that this book will teach you kanjis so you’ll know them like a native since it doesn’t teach you readings and compounds (and is there really a method to learn compounds besides reading texts? I don’t think so).
But if you’re speaking about individual kanjis, the basics, then your knowledge will be rock solid.
Anyway, Heisig could be a whore, his method is not (even if sometimes he’s writing non-sense in his book), and beside that I don’t care about anything else.
It sounds great to say “hey you should learn kanjis like a native” but in practical this is just non-sense.
You just don’t live in japan, you don’t read, write kanjis in your everyday life.
So i think foreigners should learn kanjis with other methods.
Maybe they should learn them indivdually first!
That may be non-sense for a native, but hey! wait a sec…i’m not japanese! woohoo
(btw how do college students learn kanjis at school? don’t they have kanjis tables to learn each year before starting reading shinbun?)
Some have say that learning individual kanji is useless, that’s true when you start to learn their readings (what the book does not do), since reading depends on compounds and context.
But at the time you start reading japanese texts full of kanjis, your brain will thank you for knowing how to recognize and write them and to have some clues about their meanings.
This is just a great relief when you start learning readings and compounds so you can focus more on it instead of having to try to write, read, make compounds, learn meanings and remember them all at the same time.
That is just an anarchic method and there are way too much informations to remember.
In reply to Tae Kim:
sure it’s easy to deduct pattern from 剣、険、検、験, but how many years do you have to spend reading japanese stuffs, writing mails before bumping on all of these kanjis? This is just randomness.
Do you really have all that time to read japanese stuffs?
I don’t. I’m not even taking japanese class.
Plus Heisig’s book do it for you.
That’s the case when taking a “learning kanji in a silly way”’s book and start eating those kanjis like a dumbass sounds good.
At the end, it is worthwhile.
Anyway that thread is useless ;)
Write something more usefull like …all the meanings and use of the verb つける. :p
In reply to Alex:
Reading english and kanjis is not the same.
When you know Western alphabet, you can mostly read anything, even if you don’t understand a thing.
Japanese alphabet is hiragana and katakana, not kanji.
You can’t guess about their reading. If you don’t know them, you just don’t know them. :)
So it’s really difficult to learn something new by reading text full of kanjis :)
January 8th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I just came across this post and your earlier one today. I wish that I had found it sooner. It seems that no one accepted your challenge. That is too bad. I know you don’t like that he says “…the goal of the book is still to attain native proficiency in writing the Japanese characters…”, but I am curious to know why you don’t also take note of the fact he says, very clearly before that, “There are, of course, many things that the pages of this book will not do for you. You will read nothing about how kanji combine to form compounds. Nor is anything said about the various ways to pronounce the characters. Further-more, all questions of grammatical usage have been omitted. These are all matters that need specialized treatment in their own right.”
That seems pretty clear to me. He also says, just before the text you have quoted, “Finally, it seems worthwhile to give some brief thought to any ambitions one might have about mastering the Japanese writing system. The idea arises from, or at least is supported by, a certain bias about learning that comes from overexposure to schooling: the notion that language is a cluster of skills that can be rationally divided, systematically learned, and certified by testing. The kanji, together with the wider structure of Japanese–and indeed of any language for that matter–resolutely refuse to be mastered in this fashion. The rational order brought to the kanji in this book is only intended as an aid to get you close enough to the characters to befriend them, let them surprise you, inspire you, enlighten you, resist you, and seduce you. But they cannot be mastered without a full understanding of their long and complex history and an insight into the secret of their unpredictable vitality–all of which is far too much for a single mind to bring to the tip of a single pen.” and after “If the logical systematization and the playful irreverence contained in the pages that follow can help spare even a few of those who pick the book up the grave error of deciding to pursue their study of the Japanese language without aspiring to such proficiency, the efforts that went into it will have more than received their reward.”
Please excuse the bulk of my quotes, but I really feel that you took his words out of context and that their real context should be seen. You are very inspirational to a lot of Japanese learners (myself included) and as such I think many people will not even follow the link to the book intro, they will just trust you when you say the book is probably not worth the time. I don’t think he claims his book is the only step to be “as good as a native”, just a good first step, or even a decent back step. He also seeks to allay fears that “foreigners can’t attain native proficiency in kanji” an attitude that I know you must have encountered.
I finished the book and I have friends who have finished the book, and I know many people who have finished the book. No I am not native yet but I am much closer than I was. I know others who have taken themselves much closer to “native” than I am starting with this book. In fact one of them recommended it to me. I took level 2 JLPT in December. I finished the book in May of that same year. The #1 thing I took away was not “how to write the characters”(i can do it but so what) but “a very effective method to tackle any new characters I may encounter”. The reason I think you find very few people touting the second and third books is because people just don’t like them. Book two is pretty dull and boring, book three is hard to find. You may be interested to know that the third book does in fact give example compounds for readings at the same time. The idea being that the work load should be manageable by this time. I did half of book two and what it did for me was put me to sleep but to be fair I can accurately “sound out” new words for about 1000 characters. Yes you can do that naturally but the ordered list allowed me to do it quickly(May to November for 1000 characters with very few errors but they do crop up from time to time). After half the book I decided that I just cant deal with boring word lists so I should just go read. That is where I am now. So, no I can’t pass your challenge. I am fully confident there is at least one person I know of who did finish the book who could, but he probably never would be bothered to try. I would like to know, however, can you find me one person (who isn’t a lying flamer) that has finished the book and gone on to study, only to decide that the book was a waste of time?
At the end of the day studying language is a bit like a religion, we all have our own beliefs and to make someone “see it your way” is usually not easy.
Why run the risk of turning someone off to a book they liked and that was working for them just because they trust you and then have them turn to a method that they don’t like that leads them to quit? I never thought of you as a “rain on your parade” kind of person.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
>Even so, after over 50 comments, nobody has stepped forth and met my challenge by saying, “Yes, I can write whole words and sentences like a native using his methods.”
I wasn’t aware that that was your challenge. I can’t claim to write like a native but I can claim to write with respectable proficiency I think. Especially when it comes to remembering how to write the kanji in words, thanks to my efforts with Heisig.
>Here’s the real test – see if you can write words for a ２級 Kanji test by studying with Heisig’s methods, even just the answers that only use 常用漢字.
I can do this. In fact, I do it every day with my SRS software.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Thank you for presenting a skewed view of the introduction to RTK Volume 1. One thing you have to bear in mind when you make these comments is that Dr. Heisig wrote that introduction before he ever had any intention of publishing a volume 2, and therefore anything he says in it applies only to the first book.
So there was no need to make this “challenge.” Even a semi-literate person could have concluded that volume 1 does not enable its readers to use kanji just like a native Japanese speaker. In fact, it doesn’t technically teach readers to write a single Japanese word.
Dr. Heisig states very clearly what his book does and does not do, in the second paragraph of the introduction:
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On the other hand, the part you quoted:
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appears in the very last paragraph. At that point, anyone reading it has all the information they need to accurately interpret what he means by that statement.
The introduction is only “misleading” to people who (a) Are under the impression that native Japanese don’t use compounds or grammar, or (b) Decided to skip the beginning of the introduction and start reading it from the middle.
I have no sympathy for either group.
It’s quite obvious Heisig is not claiming to enable people to use kanji like natives simply by finishing his book, and if we take “attain native proficiency in writing the Japanese characters” to mean “be able to write, from memory, the same set and quantity of characters that a native Japanese can,” then the book accomplishes that objective just fine.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:39 am
It seems that this blog interpreted text I put inside angle brackets as HTML tags. Here are the two quotations I was trying to post:
There are, of course, many things that the pages of this book will not do for you. You will read nothing about how kanji combine to form compounds. Nor is anything said about the various ways to pronounce the characters. Furthermore, all questions of grammatical usage have been omitted.
and
the goal of this book is still to attain native proficiency in writing the Japanese characters and associating their meanings with their forms.
February 5th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Perhaps, but if I remember correctly, he explains what his book won’t do in the one sentence you quoted while the rest of the introduction slams the traditional methods of teaching kanji while presenting his method as a miracle cure.
Like you said, let’s assume he means that you’ll “be able to write, from memory, the same set and quantity of characters that a native Japanese can.” You can only say that statement is true by hiding the fact that while a native Japanese’s memory consists of real words, the memory Heisig is referring to is a bunch of English keywords.
In the real world, when you are writing, you have to recall the correct combination of kanji in the correct order and the correct amount of okurigana if any. Heisig only requires you to remember one keyword. I think it’s a fairly big stretch to compare the memory of a little less than 2,000 keywords to over tens of thousands of kanji words and compounds that a native Japanese memorized in order to actually be able to write real Japanese and not just single characters.
To be accurate, Heisig should have said what his book really does: allow you to write the kanji based on each English key word.
The memory that a native Japanese has is completely different and so much larger than what the book teaches you that having any sort of comparison where the two are equal is just misleading no matter how you phrase it. It’s like comparing one apple to a bushel of oranges and saying they are equal.
People just starting out don’t necessary know how kanji compounds work or the difference between on-yomi vs kun-yomi so just having one sentence saying it doesn’t cover that without actually explaining what it’s not covering doesn’t really help, in my opinion. The book doesn’t even explain what to do after you finish the book so that you can actually attain real mastery. I find that sorely lacking for a book that’s “designed for self-learning”.
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Too bad you conveniently skipped this.
“Finally, it seems worthwhile to give some brief thought to any ambitions
one might have about “mastering” the Japanese writing system. The idea arises
from, or at least is supported by, a certain bias about learning that comes from
overexposure to schooling: the notion that language is a cluster of skills that
can be rationally divided, systematically learned, and certi³ed by testing. The
kanji, together with the wider structure of Japanese—and indeed of any language
for that matter—resolutely refuse to be mastered in this fashion. The
rational order brought to the kanji in this book is only intended as an aid to
get you close enough to the characters to befriend them, let them surprise you,
inspire you, enlighten you, resist you, and seduce you. But they cannot be mastered
without a full understanding of their long and complex history and an
insight into the secret of their unpredictable vitality—all of which is far too
much for a single mind to bring to the tip of a single pen.”
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:11 am
Hi, I’ve done RTK from june to august. It took exactly 90days.
After finishing it, I could not pass JLPT 4k. I already knew some japanese, but could not read anything.
That is RTK does little for your japanese. By itself it is just like learning a very expensive and boring trick.
But after that, I’ve spent 2-3 hours/day studying japanese from real sources (not crappy textbooks). 15 days ago, after 1 month of study, I scored 40% in a past 2k test.
Give me 2 more months and I’ll get a 80%. Give me 1 more year and I’ll get a 80% in the 1kyu.