Heisig Finished!

I finished Heisig’s Remembering The Kanji!  So in theory I know how to write, and the English core meaning of 2050 odd Chinese characters. Next step in my marathon Japanese study is to make sure I do know them, then move on to some light reading of a few of the books I acquired while back in Japan.

Nothing strenuous though- learning 20-25 odd kanji a day has taken some serious dedication and five months of study. Still, anything worth doing takes its time- I’m just pleased to have finished!

A Blog Update

The blog hasn’t been updated for a while, so I thought I should write something! I was away in Jonju (?) over the weekend, down in the south of Korea and with better weather than expected. Beer, fried chicken and the sun all contributed to a lovely weekend.

In the time since my last post- when we drew with the Softbank Hawks I believe- Hanshin have stuttered and stumbled along. We lost the second game against the Hawks, and went 1-1 with our neighbours the Orix, losing 8-3 on Saturday and then winning 7-3 on Sunday. If I seem more reluctant to post about Hanshin than usual, it’s because I am- we’ve been all over the place really, and while I obviously maintain my support, checking results and watching games when I can, this doesn’t always mean I want to blog about it, especially if we lose. Still, tonight saw victory! After yesterdays game against Bobby’s Marines was called off, tonight saw us squeeze out a 4-3 victory over Chiba Lotte thanks to a 3-run home run from Arai, great batting from Hirano (and Kanoh), and a tight, tight save from Fujikawa. With a 4-3 lead, the Marines had the bases loaded, and the count was 2-3. Thankfully, the Marine hitter flew out (I wasn’t fancying Fujikawa to get a strike!) to end the game and bring us victory. My Chiba Lotte preview will have to wait to the return leg- or tomorrow actually- when we play the game that was rained off yesterday. They are an interesting team, with lots of political upheavel going on due to (what I see as) crusty Japanese owners getting annoyed by the popularity of team coach Bobby Valentine.

Finally I’ve almost finished Remembering The Kanji, James Heisig’s approach to learning Japanese Kanji by relating them to a specific English keyword. Today I passed the 1900 mark, and there are 2044, so I should be finished by the middle of next week. Then its only a month or so of reviews until I can say that I’ve learnt them to a sufficient level. I’m pleased though- its a big achievement, and an important step on my journey to being proficient in Japanese.

Nihongo Update

I’ve also put this post up as a separate page at the top of the site, under “JLPT Advice” or something. If you feel like commenting, comment there.

I’ve been plugging away at the Heisig Kanji method, and am

Learning Languages Two

必勝

ように。。。

My second post on this topic concerns a subject of some controversy in learning Chinese/Japanese- James Heisig’s “Remembering The Kanji” system. Heisig developed a method of attaching  a unique English “keyword” to each character, as a way of rapidly memorising and familiarising oneself with the 2000 general use kanji, or “Chinese characters”, used in the Japanese writing system. This method doesn’t teach you the pronunciation of the characters (Japanese characters have multiple pronunciations), but it does teach you to recognise all of the characters which is a huge building block towards proficiency. It also teaches you to write the characters accurately, although this is less useful in today’s digital world.

There’s more than enough websites out there for and against Heisig’s method, but I’ve decided- eventually, and after some debate- to give it a go. I’m aiming to “learn” 100 kanji a week, using the Heising book and Reviewing The Kanji, a website that supplements this study method.

The main approach in this method involves breaking down each kanji into it’s component parts, and using the imaginative memory to create a memorable story for each kanji. Let’s look at some examples…

火山木

The most basic kanji are almost direct pictographic representations of their meaning. These kanji mean, respectively, fire, mountain and tree. Not much is needed to remember their English meaning.

時

A step up are kanji composed of several “primitives”, as Heisig terms them. This kanji includes “sun/day”, on the left, “earth” at the top, and “stick” at the bottom. “Earth” and “stick” go together to form “temple”, so a story can then be made about the “sun/day” and the “temple”- with the ultimate meaning being “time” (it sounds complicated because it is to the unitiated, and because I’m probably not describing it well).

藤勝綺麗

From there its just a matter of adding more and more “primitives” (known traditionally as radicals, but Heisig’s primitives are subtely different) to form complex kanji. One of the big advantages of Heisig’s method is that it allows you to deconstruct complex characters like these, remembering each component in the story you make to remember the ultimate meaning, then reproduce them accurately.

One thing Heisig fails to teach is any Japanese pronunciation. This might make the whole process of “learning” an artificial keyword look like a waste of time, but even after just 200 characters I’m sure that it’s not- just the fact that you learn to deconstruct and understand the make-up of kanji means that when it comes to learning the various meanings, your in a far better position that when you started.

終了