I learn kanji by RTK and sometimes keywords are very confusing. For example kanji 旦 in RTK has “Nightbreak” keyword, but in other sources it’s “Daybreak”. I use Kanji Koohii in my laptop, but when I use smartphone app, there’re different keywords. Any tips how to manage this?
6 comments
No meaning matters except for words themselves
Everything else is a mnemonic for helping to memorize, recognize, or differentiate words
Kanji are not always a sum of their components
Words are not always a sum of their kanji
You are learning kanji by a list copied from RTK.
If, on the other hand you read the actual book Remembering the Kanji by Heisig, this is explained pretty thoroughly.
旦那, 元旦
I’m also using the crowd-sourced mnemonics from koohii kanji
there’s no great way to fix this, users write stories using whatever radical “keyword” they want, and some of them even make up their own keyword and start writing stories with that
I found just pick one and use stories using that one is the easiest thing
I’d say stick with the mnemonic from the system you use the most. If you’re able to edit them, you could append the keywords to the main system. For example in RTK make it “nightbreak, daybreak”.
In the longer term you won’t need them, because you won’t be seeing kanji in terms of a vague meaning the symbol might carry, but rather as parts of actual words. I’ve only been studying for about 5 months and already I know a bunch of kanji that I can’t even remember the mnemonics for.
I would describe that as a character with a sun radical (ひへん). Characters with the same radical often have a related concept so it can be helpful to know (and can help with reading as well as they may have the same reading!)
On a bit of a tangent, 部首 can be helpful if learned in Japanese.
We use radicals to describe characters to other people if we’ve forgotten how to write a kanji e.g. for the word 答え – 「くさかんむり」に合格の合と書いて答
You can use whatever you like as long as you are consistent. Some names he chose for the radicals are the traditional names/meanings (possibly even the original Chinese ones) some are his own invention because he hit problems with too similar meanings or duplicates with traditional ones. In the end the system he presents is hopefully consistent and complete. If you deviate from his then make some sort of cheatsheet and migrate over to that so you know which you have chosen.
btw if you look at Traditional Chinese (as used in Taiwan) you’ll be surprised at how many non Japanese characters you know from his system.