Becoming A Master

I realised I hadn’t really posted about my Masters yet, which might be a good thing to do as time progresses. Things so far have been a lot busier than I expected, although I don’t really know why- I shouldn’t be surprised that becoming a Master involves lots of work. I’m taking three courses- Japanese Modernity- essentially modern Japanese history- International Politics of East Asia, which does what it says, and Intermediate Japanese Two, the language module between Intermediate Japanese One and Advanced Japanese.

The Modernity module has been rather stress-high so far, with bulky readings every week and a rather intense, “every man for himself” atmosphere in the seminar. Politics is more relaxed- less required reading, more reading around the topics that interest you, and a positive discussion for the seminar. The language module is probably the best so far- only 5 of us in the seminar, so plenty of time to speak, and I already feel like I’ve learnt a hell of a lot.

This weekend I’ll be reading about Tokugawa Society in c.18th Japan, conceptions of Asia, Asian regionalism, imperialism and nationalism, and translating a Japanese paragraph. Eventually though I’ll be able to hone in on stuff that really interests me- Meiji Imperialism, Taisho and Showa fun, contemporary expressions of Japanese nationalism and maybe some stuff on China. I’ll post more as time progresses, but this weekend I plan to read until my eyes bleed…no fun for Steve methinks…

Hanshin Girls

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

Remembering Those Damn Kanji

For the past few weeks my daily battle with the Japanese language has continued apace- I’m now up to 1050 kanji, or Chinese characters, out of the 2000 odd I need for basic comprehension. Using the “Remembering The Kanji” website, along with some Spaced Repitition Software (see previous post), I’ve made steady progress towards completing my first goal- finishing the Heisig method of studying Kanji. As a quick review…

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Heisig is a method of studying kanji whereby you learn just the English “keyword” and the character itself. Afterwards you can theoretically fill in the…

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