I'm conducting my kanji studies from a list of kanji and definitions from a set derived from a book called
Read The Kanji (RTK) by someone named Heisig. I've never really liked the way RTK works, though, because it uses one-word definitions for each kanji. To be fair, RTK is tailored for beginners and it does this, I believe, to make them easier to remember, to not complicate things. As I study, I generally check the definitions of the new kanji that I came across in Koujien (広辞苑), 大辞泉 at Yahoo!, or WWWJDIC, which usually clears this up pretty well.
For some kanji, the single-word-definition approach pretty much works fine, but for others, it's severely lacking. The one that I just came across, and that inspired this post that I really shouldn't be taking the time to write, is 裁 = tailor. Well, yeah, it does have that meaning too, but I feel pretty confident that it's more often used (or at least used about as often) with the meaning of
judging, such as at a trial (e.g., 裁く, 裁定). (See
大辞泉) In a case like this, I believe that
both meanings should be made clear to the learner.
This, again, is why I like to try to use tools intended for Japanese people, using English tools as auxiliary too. They don't skimp on the definitions at all and you don't rely—or at least rely less—on translations.
Note: I am not referring to the great website
Read The Kanji, which I wholeheartedly recommend. It's a totally separate tool for sharpening your kanji skills and I'm not using it nearly enough. (Shoot ... I logged in and just barely got the first one, 騒音, right. The meaning was obvious but the reading almost—
almost—escaped me.)
Update: I've noticed that the words that Read the Kanji use might be the same as the first term in WWWJDIC's kanji dictionary. That's odd. Now I'm not sure if this means that WWWJDIC's dictionary is partly inspired by RTK, or if perhaps this list is not from RTK. Whatever the case, the one-word approach remains insufficient.Labels: english
