Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainThunder
* Nyororin, although you are significantly more skilled in all things Japanese than I am, I feel that I must counteract your assertion that RtK provides no benefits. I'll be honest, it doesn't teach you much; it helps you look up kanji faster and break them down into primitives. It also removes the psychological barrier to studying kanji that is seen in many learners. Whether or not these benefits are worth the time spent on the book is up to the individual.
I'm not sure what you mean by "false etymology". The book selects a list of primitives, and assigns mnemonic devices to them; yes, these are arbitrary, but they are consistent, and they assist you greatly in identifying kanji. Isn't that all that matters? If you have a copy of the book handy, could you point out some specific examples you take issue with?
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The primitives the book uses are NOT the primitives any other book uses. Some overlap, but many do not. This makes it harder in the end to look up things in a regular dictionary. I see no benefit in learning to split a kanji up in a way that is pretty much useless in any other context. It`s like... Instead of learning to spell words in English, you split them into little chunks without learning the spelling that normally would be used. Sure, it might help you at some point, but it`s going to be a weird crutch later on and make things harder
in the long run.
As for the false etymology... It drives me crazy when someone who has leafed through that book comes up with "Oh, that kanji was formed from this and this and used to mean such-and-such (quoting a story from the book)" when the actual etymology is incredibly different.
Maybe that`s just a linguist thing though that normal people don`t care about.
I don`t have the book handy, would have to spend an hour tracking it down in the closet, so will have to put specific examples at a later date...
As for people finishing/not finishing it - I`m sure there are people out there who have. I just haven`t personally met any.