Thinking about it now, I find it strange that I’ve never written about James W. Heisig and his landmark work, Remembering the Kanji
It was in 1997 while I was studying in Japan that I came across the book. I was still in this “I must write every new character a million times every day” frame of mind until I came upon this system, and after discovering it I abandoned the traditional approach forever. The book ignited my imagination and unleashed its energy on Chinese characters. Heisig’s system ensnared me immediately, but surprisingly, the more I studied the method, the more I found myself dissatisfied with Heisig’s mnemonics and devising my own. I bought a copy and wrote all over it, “correcting” it for myself. Personalizing it, you might say. Heisig would have approved.
I didn’t stay with the system forever. I never learned a mnemonic for every last character. There just came a point when everything sort of “clicked,” and memorizing characters wasn’t difficult anymore. Sure, I would forget characters (and I still do), but every time I’d forget one and have to look it up, those old mnemonics returned to me and helped lock that character back in my memory. The important thing is that I never had to write characters over and over again. I’ve passed various written Chinese tests without ever having to do that. I have been able to make better use of my time and of my mind.
Occasionally I would come upon a character that resolutely defied my memory. If the character mattered to me, it would get “special attention.” That meant setting aside some time to deconstruct the character, research the etymology (sometimes, but not always, a helpful practice), and apply some imagination. It might take as long as 20-30 minutes for just that one character, but eventually I would come up with a memorable story mnemonic involving the character components, tailor-made for me. And then I would not forget the character again.
In short, Heisig’s book totally changed the way I approach characters. It’s a triumph of imagination over rote learning. I am very grateful to him for that. If you’re trying to learn Japanese or Chinese, I strongly recommend you get Remembering the Kanji
See also: Adventures in Kanji-Land: James W. Heisig and the Birth of Remembering the Kanji
You’d be surprised at the number of people who think that Heisig’s method is totally unnecessary and detrimental.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:15 amHeisig’s Remembering Simplified/Traditional Hanzi will apparently be released soon.
“Learning Chinese Characters” but IMHO looks even better than Heisig’s Hanzi books. Heisig for some reason decided not to include the pronunciation of the character, but Learning Chinese Characters includes mnemonics for the pronunciation and the tone. Available now , but only for the first 800 characters in volume 1. Can’t wait for Vol 2.
Seems to have taken a very long time for “Heisig method” books to be published for Chinese, I wonder why.
PS Keep up the good work at Chinesepod.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:04 pmSimon, the link to “remembering the hanzi” is not working, just letting you know. And thanks for the second amazon link, looks pretty good. Considering ordering it.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:30 pm@Eric: That’s strange, it works for me. Here is the url.
http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/Remembering%20Hanzi%201.htm
June 30th, 2008 at 2:38 pmOh, weird, now both are working for me. I’m sure it’s some dumb mistake I was making. Either way, thanks for the referrals!
June 30th, 2008 at 4:58 pmI would second the Learning Chinese Characters book by Matthews & Matthews … using that alongside Wenlin is forcing characters into my head faster than every before.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:02 pmI couldn’t stand Heisig when I was learning kanji. I used Henshall, and basically just made flashcards for all 1945 jōyō kanji. This approach worked great for me, but I’ve found that I have a stronger stomach than most for rote memorization.
June 30th, 2008 at 10:32 pmHappily awaiting “Remembering the Hanzi” here in Sichuan….
July 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am…also, reading the introduction to the books (available in the free pdf previews) will show why phonetics aren’t introduced until later. It really makes a lot more sense in the long run.
John, you accomplished what Heisig really wants all of us to do, and it’s to “make the characters our own” so to speak.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:27 amThank Heavens, I was starting to think I’m completely mad, making up memorization patterns and sometimes linking characters and components to fictional explanations. I am Italian, and though I have passed that stage, from time to time I still see in 方 soccer player Montella doing the airplane after he scores.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:02 pmI loved that book!!!! I also found some books which helped me in China; Chinese characters in Pictures and What´s in a Chinese Character
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:32 amIn Japan, naturally this kind of books neither sells nor exists, perhaps. Instead, there are a lot of hilarious “how to remember English words” books. I myself have never read any of them, simply because I feel that memorizing “mnemonics” is much more cumbersome, or unmemorable, for me than directly memorizing words. I have a poor memory, so I can’t afford to memorize both mnemonics and words.
Japanese children generally memorize Kanji mechanically, without caring much about the meaning of radicals and stroke orders. It is a typical rote learning. Consequently, most Japanese people don’t even know the names of radicals, much less etymologies of Kanji. I think the best way to memorize English words or deduce their meanings would be to learn their prefixes and suffixes originated in Latin and Greek.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:32 amFinally, haha, nice to read this post. Yes, it does have a scientific knowledge in the character system, but I doubt if it’s smart to learn in that way. Repeating the characters is always the stupidest shortcut, works for everyone.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:21 pmHeisig is EXACTLY how I learned my Kanji…and it’s stuck for over 3 years now!
By far the best method I’ve ever tried IMHO :)
July 5th, 2008 at 3:47 pmHi John,
I speak chinese, and just started japanese, and I was thinking of no focusing too much on kanji, that it would come along, just needed to read books with furigana for examples. But now i am thinking of maybe using Heisig’s method.
Would you recommend this book for a beginner in Japanese who already know Chinese?
July 8th, 2008 at 7:23 amIf the Heisig approach is such great learning technique, why not integrate this into ChinesePod??
July 13th, 2008 at 7:00 amyangbin, I found it easier to, as you said, not focus on kanji and let it come along naturally. It was much easier to learn kanji for spoken vocabulary I already knew.
July 13th, 2008 at 1:56 pm