しあわせ

I never learn, so “once more unto the breach..”

I am interested in how people learn and the problems of kanji and language in particular.
The topic rises again and again on forums so I’ve been thinking a bit more about it. Instead of a long post into threads that have strayed and grown too long I thought I’d make it into a post here.
It has stayed in draft form for a long time but between a comment about Heisig on this blog recently and trying to catch up with half finished posts, I’ve revisited it. Hopefully this will put Heisig to rest for me, it becomes a little frustrating to have my kanji studies defined in reaction to a method developed 33 years ago by someone who self-admittedly knew nothing about Kanji or Japanese when he first developed it.

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Having embarked on another kanji learning phase I looked again at Heisig to see if it could help me. Unfortunately not, I’m a traditionalist at heart. A traditionalist who doesn’t have the type of imagination and patience needed to invent mnemonic stories.

However there are some things I’ve learnt about Heisig that I feel are worth pointing out for anyone embarking on that method.
You have to do it on Heisig’s terms. That means you follow his order, use his keywords and do not attempt to integrate Japanese. He has the reasonable insistence that you should do one thing at a time. In RTK1 this is putting English to the symbols in such a way that it becomes easy to remember how to write them. You come back later to integrate that into Japanese readings. Also it’s all or nothing. For it to be truly useful you have to complete the course. At the end you are in a similar position of a Chinese person, able to recognise, write and put a meaning to kanji but not knowing the language. Heisig himself admitted that while he could write kanji from memory after developing his system he could neither write nor read ねこ　for the character　猫; he could only relate it to the English “cat”.

All my reservations about the Heisig method still stand, but if you have the ability and 6 months it could be worth the attempt.

…in which I stray from the path

Heisig isn’t really working for me straight from the book. So I’ve decided on my own Shiawase system. It takes longer. So it’s not the speed system that Heisig mk1 might be.

What I’ve decided to do is incorporate it into more standard learning. I go beyond the keyword and kanji and I look up Jack Halperns keyword in the Kanji Learners Dictionary, because I don’t trust Heisig sometimes, and I believe Halpern is more accurate. I look up the onyomi and kunyomi. Most importantly I look up example words. Preferably words I already know, and preferably compounds.
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…in which I persevere.

But I wonder if it’s truly worth it.
I find the kanji character can be memorised fairly quickly, and I can produce them when prompted by keyword. But what I’ve learnt is of no immediate use. Even when I look up the kanji a lot are fairly obscure.
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Remembering the Kanji 1 James W. Heisig. pub: University of Hawaii Press

Heisig is the Marmite (or Natto) of Kanji learning. It’s mostly a love it or hate it affair. It also seems to have cultish tones with talk of unbelievers and converts amongst its fans. 溜め息

But because it has so much written about it I decided to give it a try.
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…in which I begin to have doubts.

Already.

I’m coming up against the 2 huge faults the detractors of Heisig come out with.
The “stories” are long-winded nonsense.
The “meanings” given to components are often very forced and sometimes just aren’t true.
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