hungryhotei wrote:
Qbe wrote:
. I want to be as literate as possible, and to me that means being able to read extended lengths of text without having to resort to a dictionary several times per sentence.
But just learning the Kanji won't help you do that.
Of course not.
If you learn Kanji as and as part of words your vocabulary would be much, much higher than just connecting Kanji to an English meaning.
Again, to be pedantic, the Heisig method is not about connecting kanji with English meaning. In volume 1 the method is about connecting kanji with word meaning, period. In volume 2 the method connects Japanese readings to the kanji.
You will find that just because you know the meanings of Kanji in a word, doesn't mean that you know the meaning of that word. Face it, when you start reading you are going to resort to using a dictioanry several times a sentance, using heisig or not. Many words aren't even written using Kanji.
Of course.
I disagree with much of what your 'graduate' has to say. You can, should and will read with less than 2000 Kanji. Comparing knowing 1000 Kanji to knowing the alphabet only to T, seems to suggest only that they don't have a clue what they are talking about.
The point is simply that it's better to know more kanji than fewer. The more data (kanji forms, definitions, grammar, vocabulary, whatever) you have in your head, the less you'll need to get from a dictionary. I'd think that that's intuitively obvious.
Making 3000 your goal is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to say. Before you are anywhere close to 3000 you won't care at all how many Kanji you know. And I'm sure you won't care long before you reach 2000 either. 3000 is just another random number, and even less relevant than 2000.
Have you taken a look at Heisig's introductions in the PDF linked above? His method does not work the same way as other methods. The PDF would explain that and show why Heisig people DO care about setting numbers: because the method is constructed to connect 2042 kanji to meanings in volume 1 in a programmed sequence, then connect those 2042 kanji to Japanese readings in volume 2; volume 3 does both those for another 958 kanji. Those who commit to the method commit to learning meanings for 2042 kanji, then readings for those kanji.
What you will care about though, is whether you can or can't read a certain text. And for that vocabulary and grammar not Kanji is important. To take this faulty alphabet example, learning Kanji out of context is like learning spelling and pronounciation rules without learning the words they are used in.
This is moving out of scope. My original intent was simply to correct a few misconceptions about the Heisig method which had been expressed in this thread.