Going On An Odyssey

I’ve discovered a new set of material that seems ideal to cover

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

Learning Languages One

I’ve been slowly plodding forward in my Japanese the last couple of months, toward the goal of taking the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 2 in December 2009. Unfortunately I still have hundreds and hundreds of kanji (Chinese characters) and thousands and thousands of vocab to learn.

At the same time I feel I should at least make a token effort to learn Korean, for a few reasons.

These posts will document the best advice I can give for learning languages, based on my own experiences so far. It certainly won’t turn into one of those geeky obsessive study sites of which there are so so many on the internet.

Today’s Tip Of…The Day (1) – Use An SRS Programme

SRS is Spaced-Repetition Software, and is basically a programme for reviewing materials on or offline. Its similar to using flashcards, except its all electronic and “spaces” the cards depending on how easy or difficult it is remembering them. This is by far the best thing I’ve ever used for learning Japanese, and I’m aiming to learn 300 phrases in Korean in just over two weeks- using only free time I have at school (the odd hour).  I’m very confident it’ll work too, such is the inate power of an SRS Programme when combined with a sharp and agile mind such as mine.

The best programme I can recommend is Anki (google it), and there’s another one I know called Mnemosyne. You can create your own “decks” of cards or use pre-programmed ones; the latter is fine for begnner study (aka my Korean) but for intermediate and advanced stuff you need to create your own. I’ve learnt around 250 Japanese phrases since arriving in Korea, which isn’t fast enough really (actually its very slow, but these are complex phrases and I don’t actually wanna spend that much time studying).

Anyway that’s it for today- use an SRS Programme! Check back in a week or two to see if my 300 Korean phrases challenge was successful, and for another tip!