Anyway…
Khatz, can you recommend any Japanese books on programming? I’m trying to nipponize my personal library, but I just don’t know what to look for. I suppose I could go for translated versions of the books I already have, but even then, I don’t know their Japanese titles. orz

It’s me once more. (Sorry)
I was wondering, how did you learn the tones? Were they hard for you? I cannot find an effective way to learn or remember them.

Thanks (again) in advance.

I was told that it is best if I learn everything other than the characters and save those for last. Is it true? I find that I pick up characters and new words and phrases at the same time just by watching Disney movies, as you did. I believe that I have answered my own question, but would still appreciate your input. Thanks again. C:

1. Have fun.
2. Always do stuff in [target language] that agrees with principle 1.
3. Follow principles 1 and 2 all day every day.

The more geeky version goes:

1. A human may not bore herself or allow herself to become bored.
2. A human must read/hear/listen to/speak stuff in her target language, and it may not violate the First Law.
3. The First and Second Laws must both be obeyed, all day, every day. Allowances are made only for situations that would impair your ability to obey the Second Law.

I am beginning with Chinese and was wondering if I should follow the same method that you recommend for Japanese. I am not studying Japanese but was directed to the site as a reference to how I should go about learning Chinese. What do you recommend? I apologize if this question is out of place. Thank you for your time.

>doing the extra 1000 in RTK 3 before going onto sentences
You could if you want. Most people who are done with RTK1 are often raring to go with sentences, but if you want to get those extra kanji now, it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. Go for it!

>the amount of katakana
It will. コンピュータ、インターネット、インストール、ドライバ・・・

Can I ask how long it took you to learn the 4280 characters you started with? My measly 1800 have seemed to take an eternity.

It depends on the context, but it’s basically something along the lines of “the man looked around nervously”…Do you have the rest of the context?

ちょっと聞きたいことがあります。以下の文章の意味は何でしょうか？

（男は周りをはばかるように見回した）

困難なのは　「憚る」という語。色々調べたがどうやらピントがこない。

意味を知っている方がいらっしゃたら是非是非教えてください。

よろしくね

At any rate, any form of the Heisig method is decidedly better than how we native 漢字-users learn new characters at school – by copying rows of characters dozens of times. We take about 10 years of education to master all the common characters, very inefficient compared to the Heisig method.

Seeing as you, a foreigner who hasn’t had any prior exposure to 漢字 before trying out Heisig’s method, have memorized the shapes and meanings of around 4000 characters with the no-reading method, your opinion is definitely worth more weight for the foreign learner of Chinese/Japanese than mine.

So, this is me speaking as just one guy, who went from seeming to have 0 chance at Chinese literacy (I failed miserably at my first Chinese class at university because I was fixated on looking for a way to memorize the characters long-term, and not just for the upcoming test), to using a variation of the Heisig method and becoming a kanji nerd, able to understand, write and read characters of arbitrary number and complexity. If Heisig’s method can be said to be a divide-and-conquer approach, then his was the division that worked best for me: one adult with no strong phonetic associations with Chinese or Japanese at the time.

However, like you said, it may well be not be that much of a stretch to learn reading and meaning together, and I would join you in recommending that any curious person give it a try: they may be pleasantly surprised. Some people have also suggested learning a single kun-yomi reading while learning characters in the Heisig way for Japanese…

Just my 2yen but honestly speaking, as a native speaker of Mandarin, I think that learning the reading of a Chinese character at the same time as its meaning is not that much of a stretch if you are familiar with the four tones, because Chinese characters on the whole have only 1 reading; those with 2 are usually those with a more archaic reading which is somewhat closer to Middle Chinese, which you probably won’t use in most situtations. e.g. 給与/给予 is ji3yu3 instead of ge3yu2. These words are rather rare though, we don’t have the 呉音・漢音・唐音・訓読み difference in Chinese. This of course, applies but to Chinese, if you’re learning Japanese, I’d say follow the classic Heisig method.

So whats your opinion about the new hanzi books Commander Heisig is publishing?

(…you once mentioned that you mentally picture James Heisig as being black. For some reason, I always picture him as being Gendo Ikari. That’s why I address him as Commander Heisig.)

Bye bye!

They’re UV light pens that write ink only visible under the light. There’s probably different brands out there you can find and ones that work better than others.