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@@randomdude9135 You don't really need to read every single stroke of a Kanji/Hanja/Hanzi. It's like recognizing people's faces. Whenever you see a rough shape of a character, you will immediately know what word it is.
EDIT: As Steel String and Rokknis have pointed out, my comment is not entirely correct! Do read their comments too, I wouldn’t want to mislead anyone ^^ - Hi, I’m Chinese, and I’ve never actually heard of this method before, but it’s definitely really interesting and useful. All Chinese characters have an origin story of their own. The 休 character is supposed to be a man resting under a tree, and 大 is supposed to be a man with outstretched arms, meaning big or wide. At some point we got tired of making new characters all the time, or certain concepts were just too difficult to express with characters. Hence we re-used pre-existing characters with the same sound, and added a “primitive” to it. For example, 想(to think) is 相 on top of 心(heart). 相 and 想 share similar pronunciations, and the 心 tells us that it’s related to feelings in some way, hence it represents thinking. This is the primary method that I and many others use to learn new Chinese characters, because once you get to a certain level of proficiency, you can pretty easily figure out the meanings of words based on the character’s phonetic part along with the “primitive” (or semantic part). For beginners who may not know all of these yet, the method you showed definitely works a lot better. They’re far easier to memorise, and you tend to remember things better if you can relate to them in some way. And the coolest thing is, most of the stories you came up with really aren’t too far off from the characters’ origins! However this is for Chinese only, and even as a beginner to Japanese, I’m aware that the phonetic-semantic method simply does not work. Japanese kanji has borrowed readings from Chinese [音読み onyomi, for example: 新(new) is “xīn” in Chinese and “しん shin” in Japanese]... ...while many other kanji instead retain the Japanese reading for the words [訓読み kunyomi, for example: the kanji for あか(red) is 赤(red), despite the Chinese reading being completely different. あか is the original Japanese word for red, hence it was applied to 赤 regardless of its original Chinese pronunciation]. As someone who’s already familiar with Chinese characters, I realise how privileged I am to be able to read and remember kanji easily, and I also realise how much of a pain in the arse learning kanji must be to non-Chinese speakers. Not only that, Japan has simplified many of its characters after its 1946 script reform. Some 新字体 (shinjitai) characters look nothing like the original 旧字体 (kyūjitai) characters, so the phonetic-semantic method falls apart there. The same issue also happens to simplified Chinese. For your example of 脱, the left side does indeed look like 月(moon), but the original was a slightly different “primitive” ⺼, which in turn came from 肉(meat), hence why 脱 is related to taking off clothes or nudity. Simplification of characters lumped these two different “primitives” into one, hence creating yet another confusing barrier for new learners. However, your method bypasses all of those difficulties - who cares if this story isn’t what the Chinese scribes originally intended thousands of years ago? Unless you’re into evolutionary linguistics, this shouldn’t matter at all. I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this method before because it’s actually really great for learning! Thanks for sharing this to all of us :) And to all of you who are struggling with Japanese and/or Chinese, don’t give up! You can do this, I believe in you :D 💪🏻
Di Escombreria Yeah, I’m born in Singapore and have been taught Simplified Chinese, but I prefer Traditional Chinese anyway. It looks nicer too… but in an exam, I would rather write 关 than 關 haha. I write Simplified in school, and Traditional in my free time
@@polarwolfie9028 As I understand it, the Communists based Simplified characters off of the "cursive form" of the originals. I'm told that, rather than remembering the *appearance* of a character, one remembers the *motion* of making the strokes, and that the "cursive form" encapsulates that stroke-motion. Now, assuming this to be true, "cursive hanzi" kinda requires you to know the non-cursive form to start with. Which is why I think the "Simplified" characters aren't (necessarily) simpler, and are an utterly asinine idea anyhow. In "the West", kids learned the Latin alphabet in *print form* first. *Then* they learn cursive. The idiotic idea behind "simplified" characters is like teaching kids the alphabet in cursive first. But that's just my opinion.
A "mountain's worth of wind". Or, if you've lived near a mountain range and experienced "chinook winds", the "Föhn", or "Santa Anna winds", you know that winds coming from the mountains can be something fierce.
Agree! Its important to learn the radicals, and maybe 300 of the most common kanji. Once its completed we develop a sense of understanding. Over analyzing does not help in the long run, however researching the evolution of the basic ones really helps. But all these tricks can become confusing.
Although I wrote this in one of replies, but I just want to put it here so that more people can read it. In ancient bronze script, the word 肉 (meat/flesh) was written in a form that resembles 月(moon)。So when the character became a "radical" (meaning component) of a word, people mistook it for 月, but is actually 肉 (⺼)。 From what I noticed, when “⺼” appears at the left or bottom part of a word, it is the radical form of 肉 (meat/flesh)。 When the “月” appears on the right side of a word, it would be the radical of the actual 月(moon)。
I think the real origin and structure (meaning+pronunciation) of the characters are more interesting than those made-up stories. Though there's nothing wrong with augmenting the real origin with something more memorable when needed. It's just that I feel the need to know why the characters are shaped like that.
You are the most reasonable guy I have ever seen and heard when talking about language learning and that serves as learning in general, too! Keep up the good work you have been performing Paul!
Whoa it feels so good to be among the first several thousands or so people to watch the latest Langfocus post! As a native speaker of Japanese, on one hand I couldn't but commend all these efforts they make to devise innovative methods to memorise kanjis, which, as you point out, I've just learned by good ol' brute force rote memorisation. On the other hand however, I've frequently seen (at the various places online) learners putting seemingly too much emphasis on parsing and analysing a single kanji in order to grasp its meaning(s). It's certainly true that they work wonders as mnemonics, but more often than not the sum total of the radicals/primitives/whatever-fancy-linguistic-term-I'd-love-to-learn don't straightforwardly point to the modern sense of the kanji as those tiny bits are so obscure and cryptic. I know it's super fun to learn about all them minutiae behind your target language since as a language geek myself I've spent more time looking into PIE or Germanic roots and stuff like that than I care to admit, but I don't strongly believe such reductionist approach is _always_ effective or get you very far in learning to actually speak the target language. Then again, I'm not arguing it's pointless or anything at all; I suppose it's one of the useful methods to help you kick start your learning curve. What I'd like to say is not to rely on it too much. I also noticed in some weebier parts of the internet people go even further and attempt to draw some information relevant to the plot in an anime or manga by deciphering the characters' names written in kanji in a similar fashion where you go like "Okay so the first kanji means to break, the second one means tree or wood, the third one is to offer..." This wouldn't hit the mark 99 times out of 100 unless it's a work from such authors like NisiOisin.
the basic goal of this method is to learn quickly how to recognize kanji for searching purposes since in the beginning you don't know how to read most of them and also to learn quickly how to write each kanji. So when you learn vocabulary , since you already know how to write the kanji , you just learn their reading and the meaning of the word. The stories you make up for each kanji don't need to be very complex and in the long run when you get used to one character you stop recalling it through the story. It personally takes 15-20 minutes for me to learn 10 per day , I've been using mostly this method for 6 months and I'm at 1650 at the moment! :)
@@koukotsdad That sounds pretty impressive ;) The ability to *immediately* recognise kanjis in an instant is vital to reading actual (read: non-manga) Japanese texts so if you can get familiar with them to the point you don't have to perform mental gymnastics that'd be really helpful! Thanks for sharing your point.
I am actually currently using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji method, and it's being a very enjoyable journey. Up to date I have learnt a little above 1200 kanji, and combined with an SRS program like Anki I have no trouble retrieving and drawing them from memory. I really recommend this method! By the way, I am using the Spanish translation of the book, and it is great.
@@mjfreak6539 I've memorized 1700 characters in ~200 hours over 6 months. But I had a 2 months gap, when I didn't study at all, and oh boy, it was difficult to re-memorize characters. So a piece of advice - be consistent and work at least a bit everyday. For me, it's only 400 chars to go, and then - pronunciations.
@@peepingtom9342 This. I stopped at around the 1,980 mark due to my lazy ass and oh boy, it's really hard to get back on track once the reviews pile up. Now I've reset my whole Anki deck because I wanted a fresh start.
A couple of years ago, I managed to learn 1700 characters in about 2-3 months... I dropped it, and now all is blurry inside my head. I guess once you reach the goal, you must keep practicing, otherwise you will lose everything.
I would say for Shinjitai, it's most similar to Simplified Chinese, because it took inspiration from Shinjitai simplifications. Though I have not rigorously researched this.
@@BruceBalden Right, same thing with 謝謝 = thanks rather than apologizing. Look up tegami 手紙 "hand-paper" and it means "letter." The Chinese equivalent (shou zhi) is toilet paper.
@@nathanlaoshi8074 It means both, and probably a lot more, depending on which specific word is written 謝 itself isn't a word. 謝罪 = apology 感謝 = thanks 謝絶 = refusal 謝礼 ＝reward 謝る = apologize
I used Remembering the Kanji back when I started. It's interesting that many learners (perhaps most notably Khatzumoto of AJATT fame) recommend following it up not with learning the readings (pronunciations) of the kanji in a systematic manner, but instead learning words and sentences and thus reinforcing kanji knowledge and beginning to associate them with a specific reading in specific contexts. Indeed some people recommend just doing that from the start and forgoing things like RtK and diving into sentence-mining head on. In retrospect I think that learning words and sentences helped me a lot more in gaining useful knowledge about the kanji than RtK ever did, but what RtK did manage to do is help me get over the psychological barrier of having to learn ~2000 characters for basic literacy. By breaking up the process in logical bite-sized chunks and helping to think of kanji as combinations of a limited set of elements rather than arbitrary squiggles it helped me get over my fear and dive into learning Japanese. Perhaps if I had been a much more motivated learner from the start RtK wouldn't have been necessary for me at all.
@@peepingtom9342 there's a good argument to be made that you don't really need to know that in this day and age, unless you're specifically aiming to learn to write by hand. Otherwise the only benefits it brings is a clearer eye for differences between similar-looking characters and slightly better ability to make out hand-written kanji (though those may still require reading practice either way).
I was talking to my mother in Japanese in Lima Perú and someone started to talk to us in Quechua Surprisingly exactly the same sound of Japanese sentence had another meaning in Quechua sentence Please try to do a chapter about languages in pre colonial South American/Peruvian language Quechua Aymara etc Keep with the good job 👍
花 means "Flower" It contains "Grass", "Person" and "Spoon" “The person digs up a hole under the grass with a spoon in order to plant a flower" I still don't get why it has "spoon", but at least the mnemonic makes sense.
The bottom is for transformation/change - changing grass - flower edit: the top is actually more general in usage, for "plant" meaning - "changing plant" is a good description of flowers.
I dont know anything about Japanese. But for the Chinses. 花 actually should be consider as "Phono-semantic compound characters". 化 n 花 are speaking very alike. Cantonese "化 Faa3" "花 Faa1", Manderin "化 hua4" "花 hua1"
@@locacharliewong I don't know much Japanese, just looking up. For Chinese it looks like the 化 is phonetic part and the "草" is semantic part of of 花, so only the grass/plant carries meaning? I don't know Chinese either
@@sebimoe The radical of the hanzi gives a clue to the meaning, so you're spot-on with the grass/plant notion. The other part gives a clue to the pronunciation. It's great fun studying if you have a couple of decades to kill.
Basically Japanese students remember kanjis like Paul does. But about that complicated 鬱 (depression, melancholy), we remember it like this: 木 (tree), 缶 (tin), tree again, ワ ("wa"), a box contains 必 ("necessary") on the left side, ヒ ("hi") below of that, ノ ("no") three times on the right side. ...Makes no sense but 鬱 is indeed depressing me especially when I have to write it.
As someone whose life was completely changed by Heisig's books, I really enjoyed the video. Beautifully done. I especially liked your comment @ 4:14 about not allowing people to read your stories without your permission. So true. Now that you’ve given a nice introduction to what the method IS, it would be interesting for you to talk about your own experience using it. Obviously you liked it, but were you able to (remember and) not forget 2000 kanji in 3 months like Heisig suggests you can? If not, why not? In my experience, the stories can certainly help with remembering the kanji in the short-term, but when there are dozens of kanji with similar components - especially if I was trying to rush through them and didn’t spend enough time making stories - I got confused. Even so, I felt this was much more systematic - and therefore better and more reliable - than a lot of other kanji memorization systems that use images or mnemonics which make a new name/image/story for the same component in various kanji that it appears in. Again, very nice video.
Japanese/Chinese: Memorize over 10,000 characters English-speakers: Don't know the difference between "Your" and "You're" much less There, Their, and They're.
Yup, 嵐 (arashi, originally meaning "strong winds blowing downhill, foehn wind") actually can be perceived as a wasei-kanji (Japanese-manufactured kanji) like "辻" (tsuji, "crossroads") or "畑" (hatake, "dry farming fields, in contrast with flooded paddies"). Due to its widespread use in modern Chinese as names most wouldn't even realize the character's modern sense is rather exotic in nature.
@@izazamojska And to be precise, "脫" ("肉" flesh + "兌") originally means "to skin" in oracle script, in relation to the hanzi "銳" ("金" metal + "兌"), "sharpness", and "蛻" ("虫" snakes/worms/bugs + "兌"), "to molt".
Andy W. The problem is there is already a kanji for tree, and it’s used as an element all the time, so heisig gave the left part the meaning of wheat. The story still works though, in the autumn the wheat turns red, and you know it’s finally time to harvest it
@@tcoren1 Well, the wheat don't really turns red though. And there is no fire in the story. But if it works, ok. Mine is: After the harvest of the wheat, the peasants make a sacrifice to the gods asking for fertile soil next spring. To answer their prayers, they send a firestorm and incinerate the fields, so the old give room for the new and wheat can grow strong again out of the ashes.
While studying Japanese with a friend, we came to a fun one for minami (south). Keep in mind we speak Argentinian Spanish. We splitted minami into mi nami. In Argentinian slang (lunfardo) some words were made up, and some just had their syllables inverted. 'Nami' had both. It's the inversion of 'mina' (as in gold mine), and 'mina' was the way pimps referred to their women (becaused they made them earn money). We also took the part of the kanji that looks like the yen symbol (¥) as yen and the meaning of the kanji (south). The idea was "I gave some yen to 'mi nami' to go south on me"
Really? If I'd did it your way I would be completely confused by the mnemonic. Does minami mean whore or money? If you'd be following directions with that word, by the time you'd remember what minami meant using your mnemonic, you'd already be at your destination or far due north.
Whoa, I never thought of that, guess I'll use that technique then... We use "mina" too which is Spanish of Mining whatever elements found deep inside of earth and we're in the Philippines.
@@OM19_MO79 it's not intended to follow directions. It worked for me because I'm familiar with the "lunfardo" (Argentinian slang). Mi = my Nami = mina = woman. Mina is actually a mine, as a gold mine, but pimps used that word to refer to their women, because they got their money from them. Now it refers to women in general, not only prostitutes
@@shibonotenshi It's just to much to remember just to get the meaning. Minami=south, that's it. But with your method is, Minami=my woman=something related to it=something related to the last thing=something else I kinda relate to the meaning=south.
this book was amazing, i've learned 500 kanjis with this combined with anki library (and than i gave up but had my own reasons to do so, if will come back to japanese i will again use this technique)
As a native user, I think this is a really creative way to remember them! It's really common that people start to forget some of the more specific characters after leaving school. Sometimes get stucked at the moment trying to write them, only knowing the sound of it, but vague image of that character. I think this method can not only help learners that use alphabets natively, but also the native users to strengthen their memory toward unfamiliar characters.
Thanks Paul for making this video. I used Heisig's method in Remembering Simplified Hanzi, and found it extremely helpful. I also changed some of the primitive meanings, since I found some of them were outdated or otherwise unrelatable.
Yeah RTK and Anki is an incredible combination for memorising Kanji. I found using a specific (and familiar) location for each story made them much easier to visualise and recall.
Japanese was the first foreign language I ever started learning, I did it on and off for about two years. I can't help but think that this method might have helped me immensely when I was feeling overwhelmed with learning new vocabulary and Kanji...
Yeah I used Heisig's book for Japanese Kanji in 2005, loved it! And I memorized the Kanji after 2006, though I still can't speak Japanese, but i can use it for Video Games. Banzai!
Some origin forms of Hanja(Kanji) are brutal but Meaningful. Like '忍'. It means 'Endurance' or 'Patience', which originated from 'Knife(刀)' and 'heart(心)'.
How about evade 避, Some believe that 尸 here means buttock, combine with a hole 口 and you get butt-hole. Butt-hole and needle 辛 means anal penetration or more generally punishment ( 辟 ). Punishment and road means evade. The fact that this mnemonic is so memorable makes me a little bit ashamed.
刃 is sharp knife. The dot indicates it is sharp, it's not a drop of blood. 勿 in contrast is originally a knife shedding blood. Later by extension also scythe reaping grain.
RTK was very useful and helped me move along quick. I did have a little previous experience with Chinese where I used rote memorization and concentrated on radicals, but years later I forgot pretty much everything. Building the RTK stories helped, but my imagination was not as good as yours, apparently. And honestly, Heisig taught me a lot of new/obscure/useless English words.
also, for 兑，in Chinese, it means to talk, or when paired up with 换 to create 兑换， it means to change (currency). For 岚， it means the fog of the mountains and the forests。
I use a website called Wanikani that does exactly that. Besides teaching the "primitives" (radicals in their language) the kanjis have mnemonics for meaning and reading. They also have a SRS system that conveniently shows you how much you have to review each day and each correct response levels up the things you learn. They also teach vocabulary from the previous kanji you mastered. I think it's very thorough. There are 60 levels. You learn about 2000 kanji and 6000 words. I find it more practical because of the review system. You do your reviews and you are done for the day. If you forget the meaning of something it will level down and you will be asked more frequently for that. You really get a sense of memorizing everything.
Great video Paul, those were some really funny but effective stories :) Now answering the question: Before learning japanese i tried Heisig's RTK book. I think after remembering 300 of them i gave up and said "fuck it i'll just learn to recognize them". Then a couple of years later, now with a good knowledge of japanese i felt like i wanted to be able to write kanji by hand (i can probably recognize more than 2000 of them now) so i started the book again. This time it was so much easier, since i already knew how those kanji were used. I had a great time with the book and now i can write some very difficult ones thanks to the stories. For the people who are using RTK i would recommend them kanji koohi webpage, whenever you can't make a story or you think your story is really lame just look on that page and choose one from the bunch, there are people constantly uploading their own kanji stories.
My experience with Heisig's book was mixed. Sometimes my mnemonics stuck but other times they didn't or I couldn't come up with something I found satisfying. I already knew ~500 kanji and with Heisig I managed to learn another 7-800 or so, but still a long way short of 2000.
I learned a mnemonic from a song actually. It goes: "Why does the character for happiness (幸せ) include money (¥) ? Was it on purpose that if you remove a stroke it becomes pain (辛さ)?"
This is a great method of memorizing the MEANING of the kanji and it's also one of the ways I used to memorize them. However, the meaning itself isn't enough. One needs to be able to actually read them as well, this is where this type of memorization technique becomes difficult.
I am currently doing Heisig in Anki, already learned 500 kanji. My first goal is 1006 elementary school kanji, plus few extra kanji needed for building story, and few extra kanji that I consider common
In Chinese phonology theory, complex Chinese characters usually have two components: 形旁 on the left-side of the character and 聲旁 on the right-side of the word, you can tell there are some similarities in pronunciation if you look at Chinese characters with the same 聲旁, while the 形旁 on the left kind of give the hint on what this word means (for example, 艮 with 根 痕 狠 恨 垠 銀 限 眼 𡯣 鞎 䫀 珢). However, since there is kunyomi pronunciation in Japanese, memorizing kanji seems to be more difficult for people learning Japanese... ps: a false friend, 謝 means thanks in Chinese.
plus, Chinese people may know how to write kanji, but they still have to memorize the pronunciation, including onyomi and kunyomi which is still a very stressful process.
Michael Huang With hanzi memorize both the pronunciation and tone which is tough but kanji onyomi and kunyomi is just on a totally other level. Feels like the japanese purposefully screwed up the characters
Matthew Bitter and also the reason to it there were other Chinese dialects that came in contact with the Japanese. This is why there are many ways to say a single character in Japanese for the On yomi.
1) hanzi are rhyming, and finals, NOT initials like Latin. 2) you chose a character series with a LOT of language drift. I would have used 龙 to illustrate, very little drift and lots of useful words. Also, phonetic visual and semantic elements are meant to be mutually reinforcing. Phonetic clues are only clues. Semantic is more important than pictorial is more important than phonetic.
Hi, Paul! I have to express my appreciation for your videos. Being an amateur lover of languages, I constantly watch your videos both for learning and intelectual stimulation. Thank you for your work! That said, even though I'm still learning japanese, I have the need to share with you some remarks. First, although chinese characters (or sinographs) are often called ideographs, it should be observed that actually the whole of them make up a logographic system: some of them are pictographs, others are strictly ideographs, and then you find the somewhat more complex phonetic loans, semantic-phonetic characters, etc. So, to refer to the chinese characters with a general, descriptive term, logograph is more appropriate. Then, there is an observation I think is important about Heisig's so-called primitives. Even though Heisig's system is quite useful for memorizing sinographs, one should be cautious about the real meaning of his so-called primitives: I have found that he takes some liberties to explaining their meanings and origins. One example: you mentioned that for the character meaning "undress" the left part or the character stands for moon. In the case of this particular character, this is quite wrong: that part stands for flesh. Due to the stylization process carried out on the chinese characters up to the modern (Han) script, there are cases of different original characters converging into one same shape. Thus are the cases for meat (flesh) 肉 and moon 月. So, in the case of the character meaning "undress", "flesh" as a primitive fits more naturally into its meaning. A group of characters that illustrate quite evidently this situation are those referring to the body parts, such as 腕、臓、腹、胸、脳、… Another common example of shape convergence are the four dots that appear at the bottom of some sinographs. Usually, they are a stylization of fire (火), such as in 熱 and 煎. In some other cases, they represent feet or legs, such as in 馬 and 鳥. And even, I think there are characters in which those four dots are an ultra-stylization of heart (心). (Sorry, I'm trying to get an example, but I just don't remember any for the moment.) Summarizing, Heisig provides a nice and useful strategy to learn kanji -- a strategy that is even more effective if you make it your own -- and this is something I quite agree with you. However, he also takes some liberties to build up his interpretations, obscuring the original or essential meaning of the constituting shapes (or primitives). So, I think one should be aware that Heisig's interpretations should not be taken as an authority about the actual etymological meaning (historical evolution) of the chinese characters.
Being a Hongkie using Trad Chinese characters, I can never imagine how hard it would be for foreigners to learn Kanji. I appreciate all your endurance and endeavour!
Telly is a slang for TV Brolly is a slang for umbrella Brekkie is a slang for breakfast Choccy is a slang for chocolate Similarly, Hongkie is a slang for HKer
Before I started learning Mandarin, I spent a few months just studying and writing characters using Heisig's first book, and I believe it was time well spent! Remembering 1500 stories perfectly is a bit tedious on its own, and I only made my way through about 2/3 of the book before I even learned how to speak or use a word of Mandarin in a sentence. So when I did begin learning the language, writing felt natural. I knew stroke order, I felt like I had made friends with the most common shapes and radicals, given them personalities even, and I had an eye for breaking down complex characters into more digestible bits. I know there is some criticism of his method for being silly and for not teaching you how to properly break down each character into its phonetic and semantic elements. But to that end, I would still rather train myself to view 方 as "compass" first than to just simply try and remember it usually means a word is pronounced "fang". Recognizing phonetic patterns and proper usage of characters comes with time, but I feel his method provides an excellent foundation for learning a language that has zero in common with your own. It has helped me more naturally to find ways to learn words in other languages. I have a question for Japanese speakers/learners. While you can quite often in Chinese languages one can break down hanzi into semantic and phnoetic elements, can the same be done in Japanese? Or are too many of those clues too far removed from modern Japanese.
Many ones kept their meaning from chinese but in some cases changed a lot. I don't know chinese to tell which ones. There are plenty memorizing methods for kids as well. About pronounciation it's a complete different story. In chinese or maybe old chinese the word play readings from its radicals would have sense, but japanese took from here and there. Like 車 then back in China sounded like sha, but in Japan had kuruma word. Someone said "why not can we read 車 as kuruma?" B "Oh, that's a great idea" C "車 is クルマ but 自転車 is ジテンシャ" D (maybe a jk) "くるま and じてんしゃ" Nowadays otaku "... but why the heck?" Replies lol Just like 生 nama, iki, ike-, syou, and so on. 日 nichi, -ka, jitsu, hi, -bi, -tachi in 一日 tuitachi, 日本 nihon or nippon.
Methods of this sort can work for memorizing vocab of any language. Don't let the initial time expenditure intimidate you -- in the end, it's much more efficient than the rote method. Memories last longer when they are vivid. Example: la gestion in French means management. Imagining your manager having indigestion can work, if you're the type of person who might enjoy thinking about a supervisor's discomfort...so most of us.
Mnemonics have never worked for me, I've always found them both dumb and convoluted and, for me, it leads to more confusion and less memorization of the target object as you end up memorizing the mnemonic instead. The techniques I've used are these: I learned the meanings and readings of the radicals and other easy kanji first, that way, whenever I find a new kanji, I could know how to pronounce it right away (at least one reading) and what is related to what it could mean, for an instance, most kanji that have the shin radical (心) will either have the pronunciation shin or jin or have to do with something related to the heart or mind, that way I can easily relate (感) with the meaning, which is to feel or the kanji for thought (思想) which part of it is pronounced "shin", as expected, and has to do something with the mind, again, as expected. I also use song or videogame titles I like to learn them easily, for an instance, Iori Yagami's theme, "Arashi no Sakisofon", is written like this 嵐のサキソフォン. So, with the name of the song in romaji, I learned that this 嵐, is pronounced arashi, and since it has the "wind" radical, I know it has to do with the weather, so now it's easy for me to remember that it means storm which has strong winds, in the case of the song, it features a "storm" from a saxophone, so now the title makes sense and so does the kanji. The other technique I use is to practice the writing as I repeat the meaning and its pronunciations according to some compounds, kinda like kids do in a Japanese school. For me, is better to learn by relating the kanji with its radicals, stroke order, pronunciation, meaning, compounds, phrases and quotes from a video game, movie or song in Japanese, instead of relating it to a string of silly words in English or other languages.
@@FernandaSomenauer You don't have to make a whole novel or use complicated examples like "Arnold Schwaawhatever" Man resting under tree is more than enought to remember that 休 means rest. Its specially important to have them for the readings.
Also's gotta be an interesting way of teaching his kid how to read Kanji. Both brute forcing the pronunciation of what each Kanji means when combined and by itself, and introducing media to get numònix in his brain to make it easier to understand how difficult Kanji gets when already learning Kata and Hira
I use a mixture of Heisig's RTK book and kanji.koohii.com and it has worked great. I start with the book to view the character and description, then view it on Koohii to add my own story in, and it also has a built-in spaced repetition system which is really handy.
As someone who knows a Hanzi (aka Chinese characters) I find kanji very curious, as in I can understand the meaning behind some Japanese text however I have no idea how to pronounce them.
So interesting! Someone can read/write & understand Chinese or Japanese without being able to speak them. This is totally mind blowing for speakers of other languages.
Nan Yuzheng it is, I live in Singapore so pretty comfortable with my Chinese (I am definitely not Chinese lol, so it’s not perfect) when I went to japan I use translate but I could partially read the translated words. I travelled almost all over the world and basically this concept is limited to logographic languages which is basically limited to Asia. (Other logographic language like maya and Egyptian is already dead)
This is exactly the method I used while going through the community-created Jouyou Kanji course on Memrise. Memrise is great for assisting with this because of its "Mem" system, where you can browse through other people's "Mems", or clever associations or stories to help memorize a word, or create your own. There were even some people who posted some of Heisig's stories as Mems too. Using these stories and associations with English words was vital to helping me remember the characters. Coincidentally, I just happened to finish that course today, the same day this video was uploaded, after spending over 2 years going through it!
I contacted James Heisig once, and asked if there were ever a possibility of creating "Remembering the Hanja"? Realistically, there isn't a big enough market for it. At least with Japanese and Chinese all learners could go delve into it for modern use, but for Korean, the Hanja are for those interested in ancient and old literature. It is like a niche market three times. Niche 1) Language Learning, Niche 2) Learning Korean and Niche 3) Old Korean Literature. All the people I know including students at a University that learn and want to learn Korean, not one has any interest in Ancient Korean Literature.
I've been using WaniKani to study kanji. It works for me. I don't like RtK because you dont learn how to read the kanji right away. The meaning isnt the hard part for me, the vocab is.
嵐 Storm: A mountain 山 of wind (風). 大 Large: A large man T-posing to assert dominance 臭 Smelly: A big (大) smell (自 nose). The 大 part is actually supposed to be 犬, so you could say: "It's so smelly (臭) that even my dog (犬) can smell (自) it". 謝 Apologize: To apologize (謝) is to shoot (射) words (言) at people to get out of trouble.
Shak Pherze I’m a native Chinese speaker lol my Chinese teacher used to teach me that “自大一點：臭” (to be a little more arrogant) and it makes you smelly (literally not well liked).
When I see basic Chinese Characters, I draw them into their common meanings, but also make the drawing look like the Chinese Character. For more complex ones, I use the basic hanzi to help me make a story.
For 2 years I used the infamous combo Heisig + Anki deck and got about 400 kanji, studying only ~10 minutes everyday, which can seem low but considering the low time investment it was worthwhile. Though you don't start with the most used kanjis, you do remember them well and maaking up stories was very nice creatively. I used Anki on my iPhone every morning whilst commuting and also tried drawing them on the app when I was presented with their keyword. The hardest part was when trying to remember multiple pronounciation and which were the most common.
Am I the only one who uses Kenneth G. Henshall book "Guide to remembering Japanese characters"? This book gives etymology information on all everyday use kanji. Some kanji (壁、色、安) have stories so juicy or even disturbing behind them that you won't forget'em even if you try. With other kanji you have still to change the real story to make it more memorable.
Maybe I haven't tried hard enough, but in my experience Heisig hasn't been that revolutionary I use it sometimes if I get a specific Kanji wrong constantly, but to do it on EVERY character would get tiresome very quickly for me.
if you have chinese basic, its a piece of kue cucur (so easy) to remember kanji. if you Traditional Chinese learner, its more ez to write and remember kanji
While learning Hanzi this came naturally to many of us students. A friend of mine had a nice book with most if not all the Hanzi for HSK level 6 with illustrations and short stories. It was good, but when you learn the radicals with their meanings and on top of that the phonetical rule that some Hanzi follow, then it's basically the same system. Also, reading Chinese everyday helps a lot. We used to read everything we landed our eyes on, specially while navigating the city (Shanghai in this case). Now, to remember how to write them is a totally different challenge, way harder but also rewarding. The story system helps a lot into remembering the order of the different radicals but even Chinese people fail sometimes and need aid (say a cellphone) to remember how to write some characters. As a personal experience, within one year I managed to memorize around 3000 Hanzi, but it's noteworthy to make clear that I forced myself into constant language exposure. I read absolutely everything, even the same signs on the streets, many times a day. Kanji, on the other hand, are way more idiomatic, arbitrary, and don't follow necessarily a clear phonetic rule, so I regard them as harder to learn. They also have double reading and multiplicity of meanings that are also context sensitive. Most of the time it seems to me that Kanji must be memorized word by word (specially a number of common ones). Thanks Paul. I enjoy your channel very much. I want to share with you my latest nerdy book: Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics by Sarah Thomason and Terrence Kaufman. It is an intellectual pleasure to read it and gives you a profound understanding on the topic. It's also populated with many examples, some of which I learned thanks to you!
I can read Japanese Hriagana, Katakana adn understand many Kanji characters. Because I can read Mandarin chinese and Cantonese chinese. 脱 has two parts 月(moon) but it also mean BODY PART as a radical component. So body+ devil =devil's body= undress😀
I had a different book for studying Chinese characters but the idea was the same. But there is the added complication of tones in Chinese so there were recurring characters (giant, fairy, teddy bear and dwarf) to represent the four tones. I kind of liked it but I ultimately didn't keep going with it. Now my level is much higher than it was all those years ago and maybe I could try this again.
I know with Chineasy, [although I think she only uses Simplified] she helps you learn hanzi by drawing pictures that help you associate the shape of the characters with images, and building on radicals that way. Kind of the same system but in picture-book format. I haven't used it myself, though I did learn a couple through her TEDtalk.
Paul, just yesterday I had an argument with a lady who says "you just need to memorize them" and I was like "no, I bet there is an easier way!" You know me man. ありがとう
I very much enjoy using the Heisig method for remembering the kanji. It works well for me . By the way, I use three people for my person primitive: James Stewart, Audrey Hepburn, and MacGyver, because they are versatile.
I've relieved to hear you Europeans are also struggling on memorizing kanjies and make crazy stories to help memorize them. We Japanese also memorize English words in similar way: with puns.
i just really found this method really useful. I used to learn chinese during my childhood but my teacher never taught that, instead we wrote pages of at least 10 hanzi characters each day and how we managed to put them into sentences
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Nothing "insane" nor "ridiculous" about the Kanji.
🤠🤠 👋👋 😎😎 👍👍
Here's one I made:
憂鬱 -- means depression
because it's depressing to write that many strokes
My eyes are weak. I can't even see the fine lines
@@randomdude9135 You don't really need to read every single stroke of a Kanji/Hanja/Hanzi. It's like recognizing people's faces. Whenever you see a rough shape of a character, you will immediately know what word it is.
Tommy That’s still too hard. When you do only that, eventually you’re gonna start confusing similar looking characters
@@matthewbitter532 Practice makes perfect :)
@@matthewbitter532 Chinese is my mother tongue and I actually find English words with similar spelling confusing too. :)
EDIT: As Steel String and Rokknis have pointed out, my comment is not entirely correct! Do read their comments too, I wouldn’t want to mislead anyone ^^
-
Hi, I’m Chinese, and I’ve never actually heard of this method before, but it’s definitely really interesting and useful.
All Chinese characters have an origin story of their own. The 休 character is supposed to be a man resting under a tree, and 大 is supposed to be a man with outstretched arms, meaning big or wide.
At some point we got tired of making new characters all the time, or certain concepts were just too difficult to express with characters. Hence we re-used pre-existing characters with the same sound, and added a “primitive” to it.
For example, 想(to think) is 相 on top of 心(heart). 相 and 想 share similar pronunciations, and the 心 tells us that it’s related to feelings in some way, hence it represents thinking.
This is the primary method that I and many others use to learn new Chinese characters, because once you get to a certain level of proficiency, you can pretty easily figure out the meanings of words based on the character’s phonetic part along with the “primitive” (or semantic part).
For beginners who may not know all of these yet, the method you showed definitely works a lot better. They’re far easier to memorise, and you tend to remember things better if you can relate to them in some way.
And the coolest thing is, most of the stories you came up with really aren’t too far off from the characters’ origins!
However this is for Chinese only, and even as a beginner to Japanese, I’m aware that the phonetic-semantic method simply does not work.
Japanese kanji has borrowed readings from Chinese [音読み onyomi, for example: 新(new) is “xīn” in Chinese and “しん shin” in Japanese]...
...while many other kanji instead retain the Japanese reading for the words [訓読み kunyomi, for example: the kanji for あか(red) is 赤(red), despite the Chinese reading being completely different. あか is the original Japanese word for red, hence it was applied to 赤 regardless of its original Chinese pronunciation].
As someone who’s already familiar with Chinese characters, I realise how privileged I am to be able to read and remember kanji easily, and I also realise how much of a pain in the arse learning kanji must be to non-Chinese speakers.
Not only that, Japan has simplified many of its characters after its 1946 script reform. Some 新字体 (shinjitai) characters look nothing like the original 旧字体 (kyūjitai) characters, so the phonetic-semantic method falls apart there. The same issue also happens to simplified Chinese.
For your example of 脱, the left side does indeed look like 月(moon), but the original was a slightly different “primitive” ⺼, which in turn came from 肉(meat), hence why 脱 is related to taking off clothes or nudity. Simplification of characters lumped these two different “primitives” into one, hence creating yet another confusing barrier for new learners.
However, your method bypasses all of those difficulties - who cares if this story isn’t what the Chinese scribes originally intended thousands of years ago? Unless you’re into evolutionary linguistics, this shouldn’t matter at all.
I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this method before because it’s actually really great for learning! Thanks for sharing this to all of us :)
And to all of you who are struggling with Japanese and/or Chinese, don’t give up! You can do this, I believe in you :D 💪🏻
Thank you, xie xie, arigatou gozaimasu
The Wolf of Remorse niCe
Great content !
Di Escombreria
Yeah, I’m born in Singapore and have been taught Simplified Chinese, but I prefer Traditional Chinese anyway. It looks nicer too… but in an exam, I would rather write 关 than 關 haha. I write Simplified in school, and Traditional in my free time
@@polarwolfie9028 As I understand it, the Communists based Simplified characters off of the "cursive form" of the originals. I'm told that, rather than remembering the *appearance* of a character, one remembers the *motion* of making the strokes, and that the "cursive form" encapsulates that stroke-motion.
Now, assuming this to be true, "cursive hanzi" kinda requires you to know the non-cursive form to start with. Which is why I think the "Simplified" characters aren't (necessarily) simpler, and are an utterly asinine idea anyhow.
In "the West", kids learned the Latin alphabet in *print form* first. *Then* they learn cursive. The idiotic idea behind "simplified" characters is like teaching kids the alphabet in cursive first.
But that's just my opinion.
Storm ripping the montain? It is a wind kanji wearing a crown! The lord of the winds must be a storm!
but the upper kanji is oficially "mountain"
@@christopherpoblete8562 What a better crown than a whole mountain!
@@christopherpoblete8562 yeah but it looks like a crown. It make sense
嵐 means mist or clound among mountains, not storm.
A "mountain's worth of wind".
Or, if you've lived near a mountain range and experienced "chinook winds", the "Föhn", or "Santa Anna winds", you know that winds coming from the mountains can be something fierce.
"How to Express Hate for Teenagers through Kanji"
Aren't you glad you were never a teenager?
「幹」means the F word in chinese, while it has different usage in Kanji
@@MusicalRaichu what is a teenager?
@@danielturko2201 Don't know anymore ...
just change *TEENAGER for MILLENIAL* and there you go!
As a Japanese person who has already memorized kanji, thinking of parts of kanji, instead of thinking kanji as a whole, mess up my brain...
am chinese, can relate
yeah same here
それなw
"Tigger and piglet having a duel with light sabers" was wild but Shakespear like in some way xD
Agree! Its important to learn the radicals, and maybe 300 of the most common kanji. Once its completed we develop a sense of understanding. Over analyzing does not help in the long run, however researching the evolution of the basic ones really helps. But all these tricks can become confusing.
Over thinking just mess up as hell!
Piglet: You killed my father.
Tigger: I am your father.
Piglet: NOOOOOO! Wait, how?
Evolution
Kanji: *is difficult for new learners*
Weebs: That sign won't stop me because I can't read!
I mean weebs really don't know how to read
Or literate speakers of any Chinese language. (Except they can read)
@@arpitdas4263 bruh
Although I wrote this in one of replies, but I just want to put it here so that more people can read it.
In ancient bronze script, the word 肉 (meat/flesh) was written in a form that resembles 月(moon)。So when the character became a "radical" (meaning component) of a word, people mistook it for 月, but is actually 肉 (⺼)。
From what I noticed, when “⺼” appears at the left or bottom part of a word, it is the radical form of 肉 (meat/flesh)。
When the “月” appears on the right side of a word, it would be the radical of the actual 月(moon)。
This is gonna be very helpful as someone starting to learn kanji! Thank you very much!
Simon Low voilà
Yes, and the 兑 has nothing to do with the character’s meaning, it indicates pronunciation.
I think the real origin and structure (meaning+pronunciation) of the characters are more interesting than those made-up stories. Though there's nothing wrong with augmenting the real origin with something more memorable when needed. It's just that I feel the need to know why the characters are shaped like that.
marcusaureliusf totally agree, that’s how I study them.
You are the most reasonable guy I have ever seen and heard when talking about language learning and that serves as learning in general, too! Keep up the good work you have been performing Paul!
Thanks, man!
Whoa it feels so good to be among the first several thousands or so people to watch the latest Langfocus post!
As a native speaker of Japanese, on one hand I couldn't but commend all these efforts they make to devise innovative methods to memorise kanjis, which, as you point out, I've just learned by good ol' brute force rote memorisation.
On the other hand however, I've frequently seen (at the various places online) learners putting seemingly too much emphasis on parsing and analysing a single kanji in order to grasp its meaning(s). It's certainly true that they work wonders as mnemonics, but more often than not the sum total of the radicals/primitives/whatever-fancy-linguistic-term-I'd-love-to-learn don't straightforwardly point to the modern sense of the kanji as those tiny bits are so obscure and cryptic. I know it's super fun to learn about all them minutiae behind your target language since as a language geek myself I've spent more time looking into PIE or Germanic roots and stuff like that than I care to admit, but I don't strongly believe such reductionist approach is _always_ effective or get you very far in learning to actually speak the target language. Then again, I'm not arguing it's pointless or anything at all; I suppose it's one of the useful methods to help you kick start your learning curve. What I'd like to say is not to rely on it too much.
I also noticed in some weebier parts of the internet people go even further and attempt to draw some information relevant to the plot in an anime or manga by deciphering the characters' names written in kanji in a similar fashion where you go like "Okay so the first kanji means to break, the second one means tree or wood, the third one is to offer..." This wouldn't hit the mark 99 times out of 100 unless it's a work from such authors like NisiOisin.
cough Monogatari cough
the basic goal of this method is to learn quickly how to recognize kanji for searching purposes since in the beginning you don't know how to read most of them and also to learn quickly how to write each kanji. So when you learn vocabulary , since you already know how to write the kanji , you just learn their reading and the meaning of the word. The stories you make up for each kanji don't need to be very complex and in the long run when you get used to one character you stop recalling it through the story. It personally takes 15-20 minutes for me to learn 10 per day , I've been using mostly this method for 6 months and I'm at 1650 at the moment! :)
@@koukotsdad That sounds pretty impressive ;) The ability to *immediately* recognise kanjis in an instant is vital to reading actual (read: non-manga) Japanese texts so if you can get familiar with them to the point you don't have to perform mental gymnastics that'd be really helpful! Thanks for sharing your point.
@@nomadicmonkey3186 Thank you! and of course, not having to perform mental gymnastics is the end objective!
I am actually currently using Heisig's Remembering the Kanji method, and it's being a very enjoyable journey. Up to date I have learnt a little above 1200 kanji, and combined with an SRS program like Anki I have no trouble retrieving and drawing them from memory. I really recommend this method!
By the way, I am using the Spanish translation of the book, and it is great.
How long have you been learning?
@@mjfreak6539 I've memorized 1700 characters in ~200 hours over 6 months. But I had a 2 months gap, when I didn't study at all, and oh boy, it was difficult to re-memorize characters. So a piece of advice - be consistent and work at least a bit everyday.
For me, it's only 400 chars to go, and then - pronunciations.
@@peepingtom9342 This. I stopped at around the 1,980 mark due to my lazy ass and oh boy, it's really hard to get back on track once the reviews pile up. Now I've reset my whole Anki deck because I wanted a fresh start.
@@peepingtom9342 Sounds horrible. Too much work.
A couple of years ago, I managed to learn 1700 characters in about 2-3 months... I dropped it, and now all is blurry inside my head. I guess once you reach the goal, you must keep practicing, otherwise you will lose everything.
Using Winnie the Pooh to remember Chinese-originated characters. That’s tricky.
They are an entire year behind the rest of the world
LOL omg, that's hilarious and aweso- IN VIOLATION OF THE ANCIENT COMMUNIST VALUES.
-15 citizen points.
[Sent from Huawei]
But isn’t Winnie the Pooh China’s president lol
Also using the lightsaber when Tigger, Piglet, and Star Wars are all owned by Disney.
Not in Taiwan ROC where they don't have such fragile leaders
Most Japanese Kanji-s are exactly the same with Chinese ones(traditional Chinese), and only a few of them are japan-original
Wah'uc Doulike same with simplified characters. Like学国, etc
I would say for Shinjitai, it's most similar to Simplified Chinese, because it took inspiration from Shinjitai simplifications. Though I have not rigorously researched this.
The character 謿 has a different meaning in Mandarin
@@BruceBalden Right, same thing with 謝謝 = thanks rather than apologizing. Look up tegami 手紙 "hand-paper" and it means "letter." The Chinese equivalent (shou zhi) is toilet paper.
@@nathanlaoshi8074
It means both, and probably a lot more, depending on which specific word is written 謝 itself isn't a word.
謝罪 = apology
感謝 = thanks
謝絶 = refusal
謝礼 ＝reward
謝る = apologize
I used Remembering the Kanji back when I started. It's interesting that many learners (perhaps most notably Khatzumoto of AJATT fame) recommend following it up not with learning the readings (pronunciations) of the kanji in a systematic manner, but instead learning words and sentences and thus reinforcing kanji knowledge and beginning to associate them with a specific reading in specific contexts. Indeed some people recommend just doing that from the start and forgoing things like RtK and diving into sentence-mining head on.
In retrospect I think that learning words and sentences helped me a lot more in gaining useful knowledge about the kanji than RtK ever did, but what RtK did manage to do is help me get over the psychological barrier of having to learn ~2000 characters for basic literacy. By breaking up the process in logical bite-sized chunks and helping to think of kanji as combinations of a limited set of elements rather than arbitrary squiggles it helped me get over my fear and dive into learning Japanese. Perhaps if I had been a much more motivated learner from the start RtK wouldn't have been necessary for me at all.
Yes, but what about writing and using correct keystroke order? You can't learn it just by reading.
@@peepingtom9342 there's a good argument to be made that you don't really need to know that in this day and age, unless you're specifically aiming to learn to write by hand. Otherwise the only benefits it brings is a clearer eye for differences between similar-looking characters and slightly better ability to make out hand-written kanji (though those may still require reading practice either way).
I was talking to my mother in Japanese in Lima Perú and someone started to talk to us in Quechua
Surprisingly exactly the same sound of Japanese sentence had another meaning in Quechua sentence
Please try to do a chapter about languages in pre colonial South American/Peruvian language
Quechua Aymara etc
Keep with the good job 👍
That's cool. I love Quechua, heard it when I was staying in a village in rural Peru.
花 means "Flower"
It contains "Grass", "Person" and "Spoon"
“The person digs up a hole under the grass with a spoon in order to plant a flower"
I still don't get why it has "spoon", but at least the mnemonic makes sense.
The bottom is for transformation/change - changing grass - flower
edit: the top is actually more general in usage, for "plant" meaning - "changing plant" is a good description of flowers.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8C%96 says that 𠤎 is considered a phonetic element of 化 - no origin story there, but someone may try to come up with one :)
I dont know anything about Japanese. But for the Chinses. 花 actually should be consider as "Phono-semantic compound characters". 化 n 花 are speaking very alike. Cantonese "化 Faa3" "花 Faa1", Manderin "化 hua4" "花 hua1"
@@locacharliewong I don't know much Japanese, just looking up. For Chinese it looks like the 化 is phonetic part and the "草" is semantic part of of 花, so only the grass/plant carries meaning? I don't know Chinese either
@@sebimoe The radical of the hanzi gives a clue to the meaning, so you're spot-on with the grass/plant notion. The other part gives a clue to the pronunciation. It's great fun studying if you have a couple of decades to kill.
Basically Japanese students remember kanjis like Paul does. But about that complicated 鬱 (depression, melancholy), we remember it like this: 木 (tree), 缶 (tin), tree again, ワ ("wa"), a box contains 必 ("necessary") on the left side, ヒ ("hi") below of that, ノ ("no") three times on the right side. ...Makes no sense but 鬱 is indeed depressing me especially when I have to write it.
As someone whose life was completely changed by Heisig's books, I really enjoyed the video. Beautifully done. I especially liked your comment @ 4:14 about not allowing people to read your stories without your permission. So true. Now that you’ve given a nice introduction to what the method IS, it would be interesting for you to talk about your own experience using it. Obviously you liked it, but were you able to (remember and) not forget 2000 kanji in 3 months like Heisig suggests you can? If not, why not? In my experience, the stories can certainly help with remembering the kanji in the short-term, but when there are dozens of kanji with similar components - especially if I was trying to rush through them and didn’t spend enough time making stories - I got confused. Even so, I felt this was much more systematic - and therefore better and more reliable - than a lot of other kanji memorization systems that use images or mnemonics which make a new name/image/story for the same component in various kanji that it appears in. Again, very nice video.
Japanese/Chinese: Memorize over 10,000 characters
English-speakers: Don't know the difference between "Your" and "You're" much less There, Their, and They're.
2000 to 3000 max. and everyone makes stupid mistakes in their language language. also in japanese and chinese.
@@LodiJP Chinese - over 10,000 for sure.
@@1158supersiri sorry to correct you, but you're not even close. In Japan it's 2136 characters and in China it's around 3500.
ASHERUISE Or where, were, we’re, wear ?
@@dialmightyspartangod6717 Or to, too, two! ...Even I get too and to wrong sometimes. 😄
岚 means "mist in the moutains" in chinese ,it is hardly used in daily life.
means storm in japanese
Yup, 嵐 (arashi, originally meaning "strong winds blowing downhill, foehn wind") actually can be perceived as a wasei-kanji (Japanese-manufactured kanji) like "辻" (tsuji, "crossroads") or "畑" (hatake, "dry farming fields, in contrast with flooded paddies"). Due to its widespread use in modern Chinese as names most wouldn't even realize the character's modern sense is rather exotic in nature.
I think I must tell you when a“月”is in a Hanzi or Kanji, it not only means "moon", but usually is thought as a"肉"，which means "meat" or "body".
Yes, exactly my thought. the 月 element of kanji is most often a simplified 肉 meat, flesh, body. By undresing we show the body.
like in the character 脫
Meaty moon
Amogus
@@izazamojska And to be precise, "脫" ("肉" flesh + "兌") originally means "to skin" in oracle script, in relation to the hanzi "銳" ("金" metal + "兌"), "sharpness", and "蛻" ("虫" snakes/worms/bugs + "兌"), "to molt".
This video is hilarious on so many levels♥️♥️
Bhai hamare Indian languages is Chinese or Japanese se far adhunik hai.
This is one of the best videos from you, instantly made me grab a sheet of paper to write down kanji
秋 - it means autum, and is composed of a tree and fire. So, when the TREES beging to get red like FIRE, you know it's AUTUM.
秋 is 禾 wheat and 火 fire. In autumn wheat is harvested then the fields are burned to kill locusts.
Andy W. The problem is there is already a kanji for tree, and it’s used as an element all the time, so heisig gave the left part the meaning of wheat. The story still works though, in the autumn the wheat turns red, and you know it’s finally time to harvest it
@@tcoren1 Well, the wheat don't really turns red though. And there is no fire in the story. But if it works, ok.
Mine is: After the harvest of the wheat, the peasants make a sacrifice to the gods asking for fertile soil next spring. To answer their prayers, they send a firestorm and incinerate the fields, so the old give room for the new and wheat can grow strong again out of the ashes.
Snyder
Or in the case of California, the trees are literally on fire. R I P
I think you should make video about Ryukyuan Languages
Hai!
and Ainu too!
Raymart Lipat レイマート・リパット はいさい！我ねルーカスやいびん。沖縄口分かいみせーみ？
@Raymart Lipat レイマート・リパット is this Ryukyuan language?
@Raymart Lipat レイマート・リパット does Ryukyuans still speak it?
Kanji makes me want to *hire a samurai*
Got you a whole army!
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍侍
Makes me want to seppuku
Maybe someday I'll get the joke
Shinkenred! Shiba Takeru! Going forth!
@@БутерБрод-ы8ш I loved finding out seppuku is writen as cut stomach 切腹
While studying Japanese with a friend, we came to a fun one for minami (south).
Keep in mind we speak Argentinian Spanish.
We splitted minami into mi nami. In Argentinian slang (lunfardo) some words were made up, and some just had their syllables inverted. 'Nami' had both. It's the inversion of 'mina' (as in gold mine), and 'mina' was the way pimps referred to their women (becaused they made them earn money).
We also took the part of the kanji that looks like the yen symbol (¥) as yen and the meaning of the kanji (south).
The idea was "I gave some yen to 'mi nami' to go south on me"
Really? If I'd did it your way I would be completely confused by the mnemonic. Does minami mean whore or money? If you'd be following directions with that word, by the time you'd remember what minami meant using your mnemonic, you'd already be at your destination or far due north.
Whoa, I never thought of that, guess I'll use that technique then...
We use "mina" too which is Spanish of Mining whatever elements found deep inside of earth and we're in the Philippines.
@@OM19_MO79 it's not intended to follow directions. It worked for me because I'm familiar with the "lunfardo" (Argentinian slang).
Mi = my
Nami = mina = woman.
Mina is actually a mine, as a gold mine, but pimps used that word to refer to their women, because they got their money from them. Now it refers to women in general, not only prostitutes
@@shibonotenshi It's just to much to remember just to get the meaning. Minami=south, that's it. But with your method is, Minami=my woman=something related to it=something related to the last thing=something else I kinda relate to the meaning=south.
@@OM19_MO79 Dude, just make your own mnemonics. Don't have to use his....
1:00
Me : *flashback when my chinese teacher gave homework*
哈哈哈
好丑啊哈哈哈
😂😂
This was darker than I expected lol
this book was amazing, i've learned 500 kanjis with this combined with anki library (and than i gave up but had my own reasons to do so, if will come back to japanese i will again use this technique)
You had me, appreciated learning the English language. that explains that, my Chinese and Japanese classmates found it easy to write English language.
6:44 I have never noticed before that making more complex stories would actually make it easier to remember
7:45 Imagine 30-50 feral sows entering your backyard in 3-5 minutes and you have to pursue them with an automatic rifle to protect your kids.
As a teenager causally standing in front of 7-11, I thoroughly enjoyed this video👌😂
The ”月“ in “脱” is a variation of "肉“
This is SO GOOD!!! It's AMAZING! Thank you for these tips and help!! I ordered this book and now I know how to use it.
As a native user, I think this is a really creative way to remember them! It's really common that people start to forget some of the more specific characters after leaving school. Sometimes get stucked at the moment trying to write them, only knowing the sound of it, but vague image of that character. I think this method can not only help learners that use alphabets natively, but also the native users to strengthen their memory toward unfamiliar characters.
Thanks Paul for making this video. I used Heisig's method in Remembering Simplified Hanzi, and found it extremely helpful. I also changed some of the primitive meanings, since I found some of them were outdated or otherwise unrelatable.
Came for the linguistics. Stayed for Godzilla.
Yeah RTK and Anki is an incredible combination for memorising Kanji. I found using a specific (and familiar) location for each story made them much easier to visualise and recall.
Japanese was the first foreign language I ever started learning, I did it on and off for about two years. I can't help but think that this method might have helped me immensely when I was feeling overwhelmed with learning new vocabulary and Kanji...
Yeah I used Heisig's book for Japanese Kanji in 2005, loved it! And I memorized the Kanji after 2006, though I still can't speak Japanese, but i can use it for Video Games.
Banzai!
That's somewhat sad. 15 years ago and you cant speak it...if it was never a goal of yours that's fine I suppose.
“Why are these teenagers standing in front of 7-11?!”
Don’t worry man, we’re just jazz kids, Adam Neely told us to do it
This is brilliant! You're doing so much more than just memorizing Kanji and coming up with stories with this method.
Some origin forms of Hanja(Kanji) are brutal but Meaningful. Like '忍'.
It means 'Endurance' or 'Patience', which originated from 'Knife(刀)' and 'heart(心)'.
How about abandon 棄? It has a baby or infant on top and it supposedly originally meant abandoning your baby in a basket.
How about evade 避, Some believe that 尸 here means buttock, combine with a hole 口 and you get butt-hole. Butt-hole and needle 辛 means anal penetration or more generally punishment ( 辟 ). Punishment and road means evade. The fact that this mnemonic is so memorable makes me a little bit ashamed.
Asadal Kim waduhhh
The word for needle looks very similar to the word for happiness 幸せ (shiawase)
刃 is sharp knife. The dot indicates it is sharp, it's not a drop of blood.
勿 in contrast is originally a knife shedding blood. Later by extension also scythe reaping grain.
As a Chinese, it's interesting to see you guys put so much efforts to remember Kanji.
By the way, AWESOME video
Remembering the Kanji reminds me of Abroad in Japan
RTK was very useful and helped me move along quick. I did have a little previous experience with Chinese where I used rote memorization and concentrated on radicals, but years later I forgot pretty much everything. Building the RTK stories helped, but my imagination was not as good as yours, apparently. And honestly, Heisig taught me a lot of new/obscure/useless English words.
also, for 兑，in Chinese, it means to talk, or when paired up with 换 to create 兑换， it means to change (currency). For 岚， it means the fog of the mountains and the forests。
I use a website called Wanikani that does exactly that. Besides teaching the "primitives" (radicals in their language) the kanjis have mnemonics for meaning and reading. They also have a SRS system that conveniently shows you how much you have to review each day and each correct response levels up the things you learn. They also teach vocabulary from the previous kanji you mastered. I think it's very thorough. There are 60 levels. You learn about 2000 kanji and 6000 words. I find it more practical because of the review system. You do your reviews and you are done for the day. If you forget the meaning of something it will level down and you will be asked more frequently for that. You really get a sense of memorizing everything.
Great video Paul, those were some really funny but effective stories :) Now answering the question:
Before learning japanese i tried Heisig's RTK book. I think after remembering 300 of them i gave up and said "fuck it i'll just learn to recognize them". Then a couple of years later, now with a good knowledge of japanese i felt like i wanted to be able to write kanji by hand (i can probably recognize more than 2000 of them now) so i started the book again. This time it was so much easier, since i already knew how those kanji were used. I had a great time with the book and now i can write some very difficult ones thanks to the stories.
For the people who are using RTK i would recommend them kanji koohi webpage, whenever you can't make a story or you think your story is really lame just look on that page and choose one from the bunch, there are people constantly uploading their own kanji stories.
My experience with Heisig's book was mixed. Sometimes my mnemonics stuck but other times they didn't or I couldn't come up with something I found satisfying. I already knew ~500 kanji and with Heisig I managed to learn another 7-800 or so, but still a long way short of 2000.
I learned a mnemonic from a song actually.
It goes: "Why does the character for happiness (幸せ) include money (¥) ? Was it on purpose that if you remove a stroke it becomes pain (辛さ)?"
Araborne yup
This is a great method of memorizing the MEANING of the kanji and it's also one of the ways I used to memorize them. However, the meaning itself isn't enough. One needs to be able to actually read them as well, this is where this type of memorization technique becomes difficult.
... use two techniques?
You missed such a good opportunity with 逐...
"Imagine a swarm of 30-50 feral hogs..."
Come on!
I am currently doing Heisig in Anki, already learned 500 kanji. My first goal is 1006 elementary school kanji, plus few extra kanji needed for building story, and few extra kanji that I consider common
In Chinese phonology theory, complex Chinese characters usually have two components: 形旁 on the left-side of the character and 聲旁 on the right-side of the word, you can tell there are some similarities in pronunciation if you look at Chinese characters with the same 聲旁, while the 形旁 on the left kind of give the hint on what this word means (for example, 艮 with 根 痕 狠 恨 垠 銀 限 眼 𡯣 鞎 䫀 珢). However, since there is kunyomi pronunciation in Japanese, memorizing kanji seems to be more difficult for people learning Japanese...
ps: a false friend, 謝 means thanks in Chinese.
plus, Chinese people may know how to write kanji, but they still have to memorize the pronunciation, including onyomi and kunyomi which is still a very stressful process.
Michael Huang With hanzi memorize both the pronunciation and tone which is tough but kanji onyomi and kunyomi is just on a totally other level. Feels like the japanese purposefully screwed up the characters
Matthew Bitter and also the reason to it there were other Chinese dialects that came in contact with the Japanese. This is why there are many ways to say a single character in Japanese for the On yomi.
謝 means thanks in Japanese as well. As in the compound 感謝 meaning thanks or gratitude.
1) hanzi are rhyming, and finals, NOT initials like Latin. 2) you chose a character series with a LOT of language drift.
I would have used 龙 to illustrate, very little drift and lots of useful words.
Also, phonetic visual and semantic elements are meant to be mutually reinforcing. Phonetic clues are only clues.
Semantic is more important than pictorial is more important than phonetic.
Hi, Paul!
I have to express my appreciation for your videos. Being an amateur lover of languages, I constantly watch your videos both for learning and intelectual stimulation. Thank you for your work!
That said, even though I'm still learning japanese, I have the need to share with you some remarks.
First, although chinese characters (or sinographs) are often called ideographs, it should be observed that actually the whole of them make up a logographic system: some of them are pictographs, others are strictly ideographs, and then you find the somewhat more complex phonetic loans, semantic-phonetic characters, etc. So, to refer to the chinese characters with a general, descriptive term, logograph is more appropriate.
Then, there is an observation I think is important about Heisig's so-called primitives. Even though Heisig's system is quite useful for memorizing sinographs, one should be cautious about the real meaning of his so-called primitives: I have found that he takes some liberties to explaining their meanings and origins. One example: you mentioned that for the character meaning "undress" the left part or the character stands for moon. In the case of this particular character, this is quite wrong: that part stands for flesh. Due to the stylization process carried out on the chinese characters up to the modern (Han) script, there are cases of different original characters converging into one same shape. Thus are the cases for meat (flesh) 肉 and moon 月. So, in the case of the character meaning "undress", "flesh" as a primitive fits more naturally into its meaning. A group of characters that illustrate quite evidently this situation are those referring to the body parts, such as 腕、臓、腹、胸、脳、…
Another common example of shape convergence are the four dots that appear at the bottom of some sinographs. Usually, they are a stylization of fire (火), such as in 熱 and 煎. In some other cases, they represent feet or legs, such as in 馬 and 鳥. And even, I think there are characters in which those four dots are an ultra-stylization of heart (心). (Sorry, I'm trying to get an example, but I just don't remember any for the moment.)
Summarizing, Heisig provides a nice and useful strategy to learn kanji -- a strategy that is even more effective if you make it your own -- and this is something I quite agree with you. However, he also takes some liberties to build up his interpretations, obscuring the original or essential meaning of the constituting shapes (or primitives). So, I think one should be aware that Heisig's interpretations should not be taken as an authority about the actual etymological meaning (historical evolution) of the chinese characters.
Being a Hongkie using Trad Chinese characters, I can never imagine how hard it would be for foreigners to learn Kanji. I appreciate all your endurance and endeavour!
*Hongkonger
Telly is a slang for TV
Brolly is a slang for umbrella
Brekkie is a slang for breakfast
Choccy is a slang for chocolate
Similarly, Hongkie is a slang for HKer
月偏には2種類あるそうです。
一つは「時間」とかに関するのもの→月、朝、期。もう一つは肉月偏で「肉」から来ているそうで体に関係あります。→胸、腸、腹
I use the WaniKani website/app to help me learn and remember kanji. It's a lot of work but very rewarding.
Before I started learning Mandarin, I spent a few months just studying and writing characters using Heisig's first book, and I believe it was time well spent! Remembering 1500 stories perfectly is a bit tedious on its own, and I only made my way through about 2/3 of the book before I even learned how to speak or use a word of Mandarin in a sentence. So when I did begin learning the language, writing felt natural. I knew stroke order, I felt like I had made friends with the most common shapes and radicals, given them personalities even, and I had an eye for breaking down complex characters into more digestible bits.
I know there is some criticism of his method for being silly and for not teaching you how to properly break down each character into its phonetic and semantic elements. But to that end, I would still rather train myself to view 方 as "compass" first than to just simply try and remember it usually means a word is pronounced "fang". Recognizing phonetic patterns and proper usage of characters comes with time, but I feel his method provides an excellent foundation for learning a language that has zero in common with your own. It has helped me more naturally to find ways to learn words in other languages.
I have a question for Japanese speakers/learners. While you can quite often in Chinese languages one can break down hanzi into semantic and phnoetic elements, can the same be done in Japanese? Or are too many of those clues too far removed from modern Japanese.
Many ones kept their meaning from chinese but in some cases changed a lot. I don't know chinese to tell which ones. There are plenty memorizing methods for kids as well.
About pronounciation it's a complete different story. In chinese or maybe old chinese the word play readings from its radicals would have sense, but japanese took from here and there. Like 車 then back in China sounded like sha, but in Japan had kuruma word. Someone said "why not can we read 車 as kuruma?"
B "Oh, that's a great idea"
C "車 is クルマ but 自転車 is ジテンシャ"
D (maybe a jk) "くるま and じてんしゃ"
Nowadays otaku "... but why the heck?" Replies lol
Just like 生 nama, iki, ike-, syou, and so on. 日 nichi, -ka, jitsu, hi, -bi, -tachi in 一日 tuitachi, 日本 nihon or nippon.
Methods of this sort can work for memorizing vocab of any language. Don't let the initial time expenditure intimidate you -- in the end, it's much more efficient than the rote method. Memories last longer when they are vivid. Example: la gestion in French means management. Imagining your manager having indigestion can work, if you're the type of person who might enjoy thinking about a supervisor's discomfort...so most of us.
Mnemonics have never worked for me, I've always found them both dumb and convoluted and, for me, it leads to more confusion and less memorization of the target object as you end up memorizing the mnemonic instead.
The techniques I've used are these: I learned the meanings and readings of the radicals and other easy kanji first, that way, whenever I find a new kanji, I could know how to pronounce it right away (at least one reading) and what is related to what it could mean, for an instance, most kanji that have the shin radical (心) will either have the pronunciation shin or jin or have to do with something related to the heart or mind, that way I can easily relate (感) with the meaning, which is to feel or the kanji for thought (思想) which part of it is pronounced "shin", as expected, and has to do something with the mind, again, as expected. I also use song or videogame titles I like to learn them easily, for an instance, Iori Yagami's theme, "Arashi no Sakisofon", is written like this 嵐のサキソフォン. So, with the name of the song in romaji, I learned that this 嵐, is pronounced arashi, and since it has the "wind" radical, I know it has to do with the weather, so now it's easy for me to remember that it means storm which has strong winds, in the case of the song, it features a "storm" from a saxophone, so now the title makes sense and so does the kanji. The other technique I use is to practice the writing as I repeat the meaning and its pronunciations according to some compounds, kinda like kids do in a Japanese school.
For me, is better to learn by relating the kanji with its radicals, stroke order, pronunciation, meaning, compounds, phrases and quotes from a video game, movie or song in Japanese, instead of relating it to a string of silly words in English or other languages.
They worked for me at first, until I realized that many of the radicals are just phonetic components.
yes, as a native Chinese and Japanese learner, this is how I remember Chinese characters or Kanji.
I understand. For me is the same. Can't learn by weird made up stories. Rather prefer understanding the parts before to find the meaning.
get a brain then lmao
@@FernandaSomenauer You don't have to make a whole novel or use complicated examples like "Arnold Schwaawhatever"
Man resting under tree is more than enought to remember that 休 means rest.
Its specially important to have them for the readings.
This is one of the least viewed videos on the langfocus channel, but it’s one of the most helpful and entertaining!
Also's gotta be an interesting way of teaching his kid how to read Kanji. Both brute forcing the pronunciation of what each Kanji means when combined and by itself, and introducing media to get numònix in his brain to make it easier to understand how difficult Kanji gets when already learning Kata and Hira
Hoy I remembered "銀行" (ginkou=bank).
I pictured "kinkong" stealing money from a bank.
(quite simple, pretty effective)
I use a mixture of Heisig's RTK book and kanji.koohii.com and it has worked great. I start with the book to view the character and description, then view it on Koohii to add my own story in, and it also has a built-in spaced repetition system which is really handy.
As someone who knows a Hanzi (aka Chinese characters) I find kanji very curious, as in I can understand the meaning behind some Japanese text however I have no idea how to pronounce them.
So interesting! Someone can read/write & understand Chinese or Japanese without being able to speak them. This is totally mind blowing for speakers of other languages.
Nan Yuzheng it is, I live in Singapore so pretty comfortable with my Chinese (I am definitely not Chinese lol, so it’s not perfect) when I went to japan I use translate but I could partially read the translated words. I travelled almost all over the world and basically this concept is limited to logographic languages which is basically limited to Asia. (Other logographic language like maya and Egyptian is already dead)
This is exactly the method I used while going through the community-created Jouyou Kanji course on Memrise. Memrise is great for assisting with this because of its "Mem" system, where you can browse through other people's "Mems", or clever associations or stories to help memorize a word, or create your own. There were even some people who posted some of Heisig's stories as Mems too. Using these stories and associations with English words was vital to helping me remember the characters. Coincidentally, I just happened to finish that course today, the same day this video was uploaded, after spending over 2 years going through it!
I love your channel Paul! 😘❤👍😉
Thank you!
@@Langfocus For nothing! :) ❤
P.S. I wish you 1 million subs! Greetings from Bulgaria! 😘😉❤🇧🇬👍
I contacted James Heisig once, and asked if there were ever a possibility of creating "Remembering the Hanja"?
Realistically, there isn't a big enough market for it. At least with Japanese and Chinese all learners could go delve into it for modern use, but for Korean, the Hanja are for those interested in ancient and old literature. It is like a niche market three times. Niche 1) Language Learning, Niche 2) Learning Korean and Niche 3) Old Korean Literature.
All the people I know including students at a University that learn and want to learn Korean, not one has any interest in Ancient Korean Literature.
I've been using WaniKani to study kanji. It works for me. I don't like RtK because you dont learn how to read the kanji right away. The meaning isnt the hard part for me, the vocab is.
This video is excellent! I wish you would make one with all 2000 Kanji characters.
嵐 Storm: A mountain 山 of wind (風).
大 Large: A large man T-posing to assert dominance
臭 Smelly: A big (大) smell (自 nose). The 大 part is actually supposed to be 犬, so you could say:
"It's so smelly (臭) that even my dog (犬) can smell (自) it".
謝 Apologize: To apologize (謝) is to shoot (射) words (言) at people to get out of trouble.
Shak Pherze
I’m a native Chinese speaker lol my Chinese teacher used to teach me that “自大一點：臭” (to be a little more arrogant) and it makes you smelly (literally not well liked).
@@YummYakitori Also italian language says snob, arrogant or self-entitled people "have a smell under their nose"
When I see basic Chinese Characters, I draw them into their common meanings, but also make the drawing look like the Chinese Character. For more complex ones, I use the basic hanzi to help me make a story.
am i a monster because i laughed when you said "tigger accidently kills piglet"?
great video, btw
Mmmm ribs…. 😋
For 2 years I used the infamous combo Heisig + Anki deck and got about 400 kanji, studying only ~10 minutes everyday, which can seem low but considering the low time investment it was worthwhile. Though you don't start with the most used kanjis, you do remember them well and maaking up stories was very nice creatively. I used Anki on my iPhone every morning whilst commuting and also tried drawing them on the app when I was presented with their keyword. The hardest part was when trying to remember multiple pronounciation and which were the most common.
THIS is quality content
Am I the only one who uses Kenneth G. Henshall book "Guide to remembering Japanese characters"? This book gives etymology information on all everyday use kanji. Some kanji (壁、色、安) have stories so juicy or even disturbing behind them that you won't forget'em even if you try. With other kanji you have still to change the real story to make it more memorable.
Paul, we have the same calligraphy. You are my bad writing's brother
I basically remembered kanji just by encountering it really often. Sometimes i use parts of kanji as well that really help me understand the meaning.
Maybe I haven't tried hard enough, but in my experience Heisig hasn't been that revolutionary
I use it sometimes if I get a specific Kanji wrong constantly, but to do it on EVERY character would get tiresome very quickly for me.
Yeah, I don't find these mnemonics useful at all. Perhaps it is just my style of learning. This is not to say that it doesn't help other people.
Ok, now i need 200 more identical videos so i can learn all the remaining kanji.
3:00 it's not a moon. It's a different form of 肉, which means "flesh" or "meat".
That is definitely moon
It looks like 月
It means moon, man. Heisig actually gives it the keyword “month” for a reason, and uses “moon” as a primitive meaning, but I left that out.
@@connorsmith3282 月, ⺼ are different. But we usually write it the same way nowadays.
Nah fam, it's totally a moon "tsuki" or in chinese "Yue".
Edit : Nah, I was wrong.
if you have chinese basic, its a piece of kue cucur (so easy) to remember kanji.
if you Traditional Chinese learner, its more ez to write and remember kanji
You should add a warning to this video: "Watch with headphones to prevent co-workers or nearby kids from freaking out" xD
While learning Hanzi this came naturally to many of us students. A friend of mine had a nice book with most if not all the Hanzi for HSK level 6 with illustrations and short stories. It was good, but when you learn the radicals with their meanings and on top of that the phonetical rule that some Hanzi follow, then it's basically the same system.
Also, reading Chinese everyday helps a lot. We used to read everything we landed our eyes on, specially while navigating the city (Shanghai in this case).
Now, to remember how to write them is a totally different challenge, way harder but also rewarding. The story system helps a lot into remembering the order of the different radicals but even Chinese people fail sometimes and need aid (say a cellphone) to remember how to write some characters.
As a personal experience, within one year I managed to memorize around 3000 Hanzi, but it's noteworthy to make clear that I forced myself into constant language exposure. I read absolutely everything, even the same signs on the streets, many times a day.
Kanji, on the other hand, are way more idiomatic, arbitrary, and don't follow necessarily a clear phonetic rule, so I regard them as harder to learn. They also have double reading and multiplicity of meanings that are also context sensitive. Most of the time it seems to me that Kanji must be memorized word by word (specially a number of common ones).
Thanks Paul. I enjoy your channel very much. I want to share with you my latest nerdy book: Language contact, creolization and genetic linguistics by Sarah Thomason and Terrence Kaufman. It is an intellectual pleasure to read it and gives you a profound understanding on the topic. It's also populated with many examples, some of which I learned thanks to you!
I can read Japanese Hriagana, Katakana adn understand many Kanji characters. Because I can read Mandarin chinese and Cantonese chinese.
脱 has two parts 月(moon) but it also mean BODY PART as a radical component. So body+ devil =devil's body= undress😀
I had a different book for studying Chinese characters but the idea was the same. But there is the added complication of tones in Chinese so there were recurring characters (giant, fairy, teddy bear and dwarf) to represent the four tones. I kind of liked it but I ultimately didn't keep going with it. Now my level is much higher than it was all those years ago and maybe I could try this again.
ワンちゃんのツッコミに笑わせてもらいました。
Amazing video as always :)
Thank you!
如果Langfocus来到马来西亚,他会怀疑我们在说泰国话,因为他会发现我们说话的声音和音调完全不一样。
还有,我们每次都喜欢把 R 变成 L,把 Sh,Ch,Zh 变成 S,C和Z,而且很喜欢说两三句就杀出马来语,福建话,广东话,英文,客家话等等语言。
您說得對 我的一位朋友是馬來西亞華人 要是他說 *我祇是吃粥* 聽到的是: ㄨㄛˇ ㄗ ˇㄙˋㄘㄗㄡ (wǒ zǐ sì cī zōu)
@@michimacho73 我们比较喜欢说cì
@@rekoonbolt4158 我已經 noticed 啦！
I know with Chineasy, [although I think she only uses Simplified] she helps you learn hanzi by drawing pictures that help you associate the shape of the characters with images, and building on radicals that way. Kind of the same system but in picture-book format. I haven't used it myself, though I did learn a couple through her TEDtalk.
Paul, just yesterday I had an argument with a lady who says "you just need to memorize them" and I was like "no, I bet there is an easier way!"
You know me man.
ありがとう
Very good explanation. The stories behind the Kanji is really a fun way to start learning Kanji. Thank you.
The Lithuanian Language would be cool
Lithuanian IS cool
Lithuanian language in Kanji would be cooler
What do you expect to learn what you don't know already?
I very much enjoy using the Heisig method for remembering the kanji. It works well for me . By the way, I use three people for my person primitive: James Stewart, Audrey Hepburn, and MacGyver, because they are versatile.
I've relieved to hear you Europeans are also struggling on memorizing kanjies and make crazy stories to help memorize them. We Japanese also memorize English words in similar way: with puns.
Example?
@@SynoPTL
「悪の理事長、罪を認める」 for “acknowledge”
i just really found this method really useful. I used to learn chinese during my childhood but my teacher never taught that, instead we wrote pages of at least 10 hanzi characters each day and how we managed to put them into sentences