So, I find that example can really help clarify a point in a way that explanation cannot. The explanation, principles and rationale for Lazy Kanji remain the same; these are just elucidating examples. Thanks to MDBG, Heisig and Alia for the kanji definitions and stuff.
Remember: always write out your kanji by hand once per rep. Handwriting is still a real life skill 😉 . See Nutshell for more details.
The format is as follows:
- FRONT: Kanji
- BACK: Keyword(s), supplemental info [example words, mnemonic stories, readings, etc.]
- More back matter
Enough talk! To the examples!
- 日
- day
- sun
- 日 ㄖˋ abbr. for 日本, Japan 日 ㄖˋ sun / day / date, day of the month
- 月
- moon
- month
- 明
- bright
- clear
- あきら あきらか
- ming2
- 人
- person
- Bruce Lee
- pictograph of a person walking
- 大
- big
- 大きい
- 、
- a drop of
- [not a standalone kanji]
- 太
- plump
- 犬
- dog
- hound
- 車
- car
- vehicle
- pictograph of a car
- 軍
- army
- military
- wearing TOPHATS and driving around in silly CARs is a requirement in the ARMY
- 運
- destiny
- luck
- army + movement
- when an ARMY MOVES, DESTINY is in the balance!
- The MOVEMENTS of an ARMY determine the DESTINY of nations!
- ウン
- 暈
- dizzy
- sun + army
- The SUN shining into the ARMY’s eyes makes them DIZZY
- 台
- platform
- 台 ㄊㄞˊ Taiwan (abbr.) / surname Tai 台 ㄊㄞˊ (classical) you (in letters) / variant of 臺｜台
- 怠
- 怠 ㄉㄞˋ idle / lazy / negligent / careless
- 怡
- 怡 ㄧˊ harmony / pleased ／ elated
Note: Observe that the back of the card doesn’t have to conform to any specific format. Some backs contain more info, others less. Some contain stories, others don’t. Some contains readings, others don’t. It’s all in the game. All that matters is that they contain at least one English meaning (i.e. keyword) for the character that is on the front; this keyword does not have to be unique across the board — keyword collision is okay. Any other additional/supplementary info is fine, too, just not necessary.
Observe also that we are learning the kanji in a logical, incremental order that allows you to see, reuse and build on interconnections; that’s the Heisig magic right there. Explicitly learning radicals (character components) first/separately is unnecessary, because that information is implicit in the order in which you learn the characters. Also, many of the traditionally defined 200 odd radicals are themselves actually composites of other characters, so…yeah.
Speaking of mnemonic stories, RevTK/RevTH is a treasure trove of those! KanjiDamage is pretty sweet, too.
いいねえぇ・・・！
If you’re an Anki heretic like myself check out Kendo’s lazy kanji Anki deck ankiweb.net/shared/info/3711455699
The extra meanings and automatic links to stroke order(Denshi Jisho) and alternate stories(RevTK) are really helpful. I don’t think I ended up using many of his default mnemonics but the structure of the cards is amazing.
Speaking of surusu, the site doesn’t seem to be working now. anyone know why?
I’m having trouble too – it keeps randomly switching decks, showing the current deck name incorrectly (i.e. as a different deck) and possibly (not sure about this one as I might have just made mistakes) adding cards to the wrong decks.
Was looking forward to doing my reps today but every time I click on do reps it just opens a blank page (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
> Speaking of mnemonic stories, RevTK/RevTH is a treasure trove of those! KanjiDamage is pretty sweet, too.
Personally, I don’t recommend taking other people’s stories. Maybe it’s just that I only ever found the bad ones, but I rarely came across one as memorable as the ones I came up with myself. Sure it was more time consuming, but it was time enjoyably spent (I still laugh every time I get a rep for 創, as it makes me think of somalian pirates performing a raid and only getting genesis CDs :P). Besides, you’ll eventually need to do it when you inevitably come across a kanji not covered in RTK (e.g. 臍).
I like one other fact, and that is whether or not the kanji is commonly used in names so that while I learn the meaning, I understand that this is more common for it’s use in sirnames then for the meaning
So Khatz; I’ve been working with this method for a few days now, but now I realized that with all those Kanji-Methods I’d never actually learn how to say the things I’ll then be able to read.
So I get what the Kanji’ mean, but then I have no idea how to actually say them without looking up the romaji version of the word.
What I basically mean by that that I have no way of connecting spoken japanese (like in a podcast/radio) and written japanese (books, websites). Only thing I could imagine is getting subtitles to everything watched, but there aren’t many Anime transcripted to japanese (as seen in your list of correctly subbed Anime) or podcasts like that.
Did I miss something important on the way here?
Thanks!
Here you go /faqs-frequently-asked-questions
Many Thanks!