A video detailing the etymology of the Chinese character/ Kanji 思.

Looking to work in 3D from now on. Trying to improve all aspects of my videos.

Merry Christmas

-KB

When it comes to Kanji having powerful images is essential to recall, so it is in this area that I would like to focus my first real post about how to learn and become fully functional using the Kanji.

In this post I will assume that you know all about James Heisig and the wonderful book that he wrote, titled Remembering the Kanji. This book is great, but looking back on it now I feel that it can be improved upon in a number of ways. Here’s how. While the book of course draws attention to write memorable stories, or stories that work for you?, I think going into exactly what we should be doing during the initial encounter (story creating phase) would be a good idea. This is actually as much for my own personal study as it is for anyone who might be reading.

How We Memorize

First of all a quick look at how we memorize things might be in order. While we can remember a tune off by heart through listening to it again and again, this is perhaps not the most efficient way of memorizing. Also what it is that we memorize can be confusing as well. Most of us would be quite happy to say, that what we memorize is “information”, but this is not the case. When we recall things we use a link. For example when you try and remember the name of a person that you met just last week, you are trying to get from the person’s face to the name you are in fact trying to remember the link to the persons name.

Vivid Links For Kanji

So, to remember effectively we need powerfully vivid links. When we work through the RTK book, we are linking from the English keyword to the Kanji. The more vivid the link (story in the case of RTK), the easier it is to recall. For those wanting to move on from RTK and into the practical uses for the characters (actually using them in your daily life); linking from the actual Japanese word to the Kanji would be the next natural step.

Here is the tecnique that I currently use for memorizing Kanji. It’s not perfect, I am always looking for ways to improve how I go about things.

Kanji Boy Techniques

So here is a quick example of a Japanese story for that “word to Kanji” link.

「知」　－物事をよく?知?っていると、答えが「口から矢のようにはやく出てくる」でしょう。

This is actually from the true etymology of the character taken from the 楽しい漢字教室 by 石井勲. Highly recommended.

Or… if you prefer you can do it in English, as the main part is actually just the “visualizing” of this in your head, it is practically the same. But I would recommend the Japanese method as it is actually killing two birds with one stone.

矢- 口 arrow and mouth. ＝ “When you truly “know” something, the answer will fly from your mouth as swift as an arrow.”

Remember above all else, not just to remember the story, but to actually create this scene in your head. Really visualize the arrow or words flying out of your or someone else’s mouth when they “know” something. Make the images large, 3D (voluminous), colorful and lastly; detailed.

That’s all I have time for at the moment, but if you have any questions or comments about this post or any other post for that matter site please feel free to leave a comment.

KB.

While I sit here procrastinating about writing a post about procrastination, I often end up thinking about God. God is also a topic that is very important to me, for what exact reason I cannot say. I might suggest that because I find that all things in this life are somehow connected in a way more magical than has ever been explained, the insistence of the existence of God becomes all the more insulting to me. While it might not seem appropriate to discuss this kind of topic on a website that is seemingly related to a particular aspect of Japanese learning, it’s just me writing this stuff, and right now I cannot seem to write out motivational or language based posts.

(Please procrastinate here.)

OK, so let me try for a few seconds to get a grip on myself and type something worth reading… ah. Procrastination when it comes to Japanese language learning or the learning of any other language for that matter is to be expected. This of course goes way beyond the learning of language and into almost any field of work that requires you to work on “long-term” projects. Keeping up motivation is tough. So this post is my attempt to shed light on at least a few of the possible ways for you to keep yourself motivated while learning a new language.

The first thing that comes to me on methods for motivating yourself would have to be that there is no method, at least not for everybody. Everybody is different, everybody sees things slightly differently from one another. So the best answer that I could give you for motivating yourself would be “figure it out yourself!”. Haha, yeah but seriously. Do it yourself. I did.

You will need breaks, try not to feel like taking a break is a bad thing, it is a good thing and very probably (unless you are a robot) a necessary thing. You might need an hour or so, you might need a week. Take the time to reflect, and allow the reflection time to bring you motivation. Definitely breaking things down into bite-size chunks is a good way to manage things. Don’t just “learn a language” that is a bit of bite to say the least.

Maybe a good way to start would be memorizing a few of the phrases that you want to say in the language. This is more a technique for motivation as it is language learning advice btw. You will want to get away from phrase books after the first couple of days I would suggest. Use them for useful phrases and grammatical structure, to get a feel for the language and then move on. The sooner you are able to attack real language the better, but never feel afraid to switch between tough stuff and easy stuff when and whenever you feel like.

Mixing it up is a great idea to be sure, but don’t lose focus, if you have too many mini projects on the go at the same time it might be de-motivational, because you might feel that you are not making progress with any of them. This is something that I have encountered in the past and still fall into the trap of doing from time to time. I would say just try and focus on you want to achieve and build a few (not too many) goals to be working on. And don’t forget to take those well-deserved breaks and enjoy them too.

Just one last thing on motivation, procrastination and the loss of focus on a project such as learning a language; while consistency is the most effective way to achieve your language learning goals in as short a time as possible, worrying about maintaining consistency can be nastily de-motivational, so missing a day should be no big deal, you’ll just pick up and carry on from where you left matter how long of a break you took. It’s fine to do this.

KB.

A video showing the evolution of the Chinese character for woman, as it progressed from a pictorgram to the current form of the character.

Please rate. Any questions, just leave a comment.

Thanks for watching.

KB.