Series 'Remembering the kanji'
Books in the 'Remembering the kanji' series
Reviews of the 'Remembering the kanji' series
Review by Ben Finney
Heisig's method is sound, if you follow it as he suggests in his introduction and through the lessons (as opposed to how others might summarise his method). If you have a good knowledge of English language already, and can manage abstract concepts -- i.e. if you are an adult with English as a ... read more
Review by Ilya Farber
I'm now at the end of my first year of Japanese, and I've used all four of Heisig's books (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji I & II) as well as many others, so I thought I'd share my impressions of them.
The kana books were wonderful, and I would highly recommend them to anybody interested in ... read more
Review by Charles M Richmond
The one reason that I don't reccommend Heisig's Kanji books is that the student will inevitably learn erroneous derivations, confusing the actual meaning of the radicals with Heisig's mnemonic suggestions. If Heisig had done the extra work to be accurate historically like Henshall did in his book, ... read more
Review by Jeffrey Friedl
The first thing to know about him is that he is not a linguist or a Japanese scholar. He doesn't know nor care about Japanese other than as a tool to do his work (whatever work a philosopher does). Until he met me he'd never heard of Spahn, Hadamitzky, Halpern, or (if you can believe this) even ... read more
Review of Remembering the kanji series by Jeffrey Friedl
The first thing to know about him is that he is not a linguist or a Japanese scholar. He doesn't know nor care about Japanese other than as a tool to do his work (whatever work a philosopher does). Until he met me he'd never heard of Spahn, Hadamitzky, Halpern, or (if you can believe this) even Breen. :-) He'd seen Nelson's dicitonary years ago when he first came here (early 70s, I believe).
From the flames and praises I've seen in this group over the years (the most tame flame being Charles' here), he apparently didn't explain things well in the front matter (I don't know; I've not seen it). Because from talking with him, I realize he had a different intent than most people here seem to have taken.
WRT the Henshall comment, so long as Heisig makes it plainly clear that the mnemonics are just that and not related to the etomology or meaning, I see no problem [if this simple relation can't be kept straight by the student, that signals a problem of the student]. Henshall himself says the same thing on page ix of his book (first page of the PREFACE).
Heisig commented to me about what he intended his books to do. He said that the average Chinese that comes to Japan doesn't know how to speak Japanese, but does know how to write characters and the general meaning they impart. This frees them from *some* of the burden of learning Japanese. A character's reading/meaning/form are virtually unrealted, and it's a huge task to associate them, so people that already have some such association will have a easier time with the rest. "The rest" being how the characters are used in Japanese, as well as Japanese grammar, culture, etc. etc.
I told him about some of the posts in this group -- ones that more or less say "I spent 30 seconds with Heisig's book and now can read a newspaper like a native" and he agreed that such claims were silly. You need a lot of knowlege and use to replace the crutch of the mnemonics with *real* knowledge -- it's just that the crutch makes it easier to remember one part of the various things one needs right away.
He also commented that the true entymologies didn't necessiarly make for a good crutch, which is why he didn't deal with them.
I am neither a fan or critic of Heisig's books (for again, I've never even seen them). However, FWIW, I am a great fan of Henshall's.
☆ See all reviews by Jeffrey Friedl.