/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

I'm thinking about learning Japanese, just for something to do with some of my spare time. I know a lot of you guys hate Heisig, but is it not worth at least trying?

[Anonymous of Bangkok No.]

Anything will help you if you have the will.

[Anonymous No.]

I love Heisig

[Anonymous No.]

>>2633877
I would have thought so, but generally as soon as the word Heisig appears in a thread people start overflowing with rage.

[Anonymous No.]

Heisig is brilliant. I learned to write every common kanji in around 2 months, going at 30 per day. I was really surprised at how easy his method was to device, and I now have a near 100% retention rate.
The objection to his method is of course that it does not teach readings and compounds, but once you are able to recognize the kanji this is not a problem, you will learn them quickly as you read new texts.

[Anonymous No.]

You should read The Man in the High Castle. Good shit.

[Anonymous No.]

It is worth trying. But in my case it only works on about every 10th kanji at best, since the rest is too confusing.

"This kanji usually means Purgatory, and is constructed by combining the magic stick from fishing, the gun from cowboy riding a donkey and the special form of red pandas digging a tunnel."

No, I prefer decent stories like "combine young and woman, and get girl".

[Anonymous No.]

I learned Japanese from playing eroge, and pretty much any method is better than that, but I've passed JLPT 2 and could probably pass JLPT 1 so go ahead with Heisig.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2634027
Porn a is surprisingly good motivator, its not as bad a method as you may think.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2634016
hehe, yeah i guess different methods work for different people.

[Anonymous No.]

Grammar is harder for me. But that's only for me since I am, without doubt, a 50 iq idiot.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2634037

The vocabulary is unfortunately relatively limited.

[Anonymous No.]

I completed Heisig book 1. It was definitely worth the effort, because memorizing vocab is now very easy. The only possible better method is Kanjidicks, but I'm not convinced learning the on'yomi as part of the mnemonics is a good idea, because I've already forgotten most of the Heisig mnemonics.

[Anonymous No.]

OP here. Am I correct in thinking of Heisig as a kind of preparation for learning the language? I can see how recognising the characters before I try putting them together would help.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2634069
Yes. You wouldn't try learning English words before learning the letters would you? You'll never remember Japanese words if the kanji are just arbitrary lines.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2634069
Just go ahead and learn vocab and grammar while you work your way through Heisig. I got through Heisig and Genki 1 at around the same time back in the days. :p Once you can recognize the kanji texts will be far less intimidating, and as someone else said it generally makes it way easier to pick up new vocab etc.
The problem is that we don't have several years to learn these 2k kanji like Japanese schoolchildren do, so it would not be efficient to learn every reading and compound for each kanji before you start reading, but rather learn to recognize every kanji and learn readings and compounds in context, when reading new texts.

[Anonymous No.]

>>2634069

Honestly, take a week to learn kana.

Then learn kanji based on usage statistics.

That isn't how I am doing it; because I am quite insane, I do kokugo homework and am attempting to learn in the order taught in Japanese schools. My interest is less about the language itself, and more about the philosophy of teaching literacy acquisition in regards to Japanese educational practices.

I would not recommend this for 99.9% of JFL students.