The Best Way to Learn Kanji

[richvh]

Heisig's book is designed specifically to improve your ability to write kanji from memory. I'm sure his method can be adapted to other languages, you'd just have to change the keywords and stories to something appropriate.

The issue many (including myself) have with it is that people want to use it for learning how to read Japanese, and it isn't designed for that, or (in my opinion) really useful to spend 1-2 years just memorizing kanji shapes without a basis in vocabulary and grammar to put them to use, especially as the keywords sometimes have little relationship to the meanings of the words containing the associated kanji.

[MeitanteiJesus]

I think Heisig's method is great, but his stories and primitives not so much. Learn and use the framework of his system.

I'm currently just reading things I like, such as manga and light novels (in the raw JP form), and generating new stories for each new Kanji I go through and use a dictionary search on. For example: 洋

洋 in Heisig's book is "Ocean" but is mainly used in words like Youfuku (洋服 Western clothing), and Youshu (洋酒 Western Liquor). The left primitive means water and the right primitive means sheep.

So my story is that the westerners that came across the water/ocean to trade their clothing and liquor looked like sheep with their puffy beards. By knowing two words at least, Youshuu and Youfuku, you will also memorize the reading of "You". So this is probably better remembered with the keyword "western" or just the reading of "you", and not ocean.

This was a simple example, but sometimes primitives like 糸 which means thread and has that meaning as a primitive in Heisig's books, is a lot easier to remember as Spiderman and is more easily retained in your memory when used in stories as a primitive.

[richvh]

"Ocean" isn't that bad a keyword for 洋, consider インド洋, 太平洋, 大西洋, 大洋. Instances where it means "western" are by association with the people who came from across the ocean.

[hirata]

The issue many (including myself) have with it is that people want to use it for learning how to read Japanese, and it isn't designed for that, or (in my opinion) really useful to spend 1-2 years just memorizing kanji shapes without a basis in vocabulary and grammar to put them to use, especially as the keywords sometimes have little relationship to the meanings of the words containing the associated kanji.

Most people (at least on RevTK) spend about 1-3 months doing RtK1. If a new learner can complete the book quickly, then it's worth the investment as it makes acquiring vocabulary and grammar afterwards much easier.

[Shiroisan]

it makes acquiring vocabulary and grammar afterwards much easier.

So does actually learning it