October 14, 2008

Creating a Story Primitive

As I said before, I want to create a primitive together with you, the reader. What? No readers? Well I'll push on anyways. So, as far as I've looked, Heiseg never assigned a primitive mnemonic keyword for 品 over 木, as in the following kanji I generated thanks to the previously blogged super tool that is JEDict:

髞 譟 躁 藻 燥 操 噪 懆 澡
髞 (高) ソウ, N: たかし hurry, high
譟 (言) ソウ, さわ.ぐ shout, be noisy
躁 (足) ソウ, さわ.ぐ noisy
藻 (艾) ソウ, も seaweed, duckweed
燥 (火) ソウ, はしゃ.ぐ parch, dry up
操 (才) ソウ, サン, みさお, あやつ.る, N: さお, みさ maneuver, manipulate, operate, steer, chastity, virginity, fidelity
噪 (口) ソウ, さわ.ぐ be noisy
懆 (心) ソウ unease
澡 (水) ソウ, あら.う wash

So as you can see, this "product over tree" primitive always provides an on'yomi of ソウ. This has tempted me thus far to try to call it "SOme things", so I could get the reading in there too. But I also noticed while looking at the list that loudness may be a good meaning to get in there somehow. So, if you can rise to the challenge, please leave your idea in the comments: what can we call this primitive? Wild images are good too; I've been thinking about a loud tree with many mouths (product=three mouths), but what would we call it?.

11 comments:

  1. I still think the Heisig-method takes too much mental processing power considering the small yeild returns.

    What I find myself doing naturally is just saying, "そんな熟語にでるやつ" to myself, and recalling the reading from it. I associate the meanings of individual kanji this way, without studying them individually, but instead from the compounds they exist. It's "live Japanese", if you will.

    Actually, you might find that a lot of Japanese do this, not as the result of years of schooling, but just naturally - They'll say, for example, "The kanji for my name are B that appears in AB and X that appears in XY." They don't describe the 部首 of kanji as often.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I asked for ideas on a primitive, not a critique of the method.
    Alex, a few things strike me as odd/missing the intent in what you said:
    1) this is not a post about whether or not the method is useful; your comment would have been better in a previous post where I mentioned my feelings on this
    2) The method is not perfect, nor do I not see its weaknesses (also mentioned before)
    3) It is not the only way to study kanji; I mentioned other things I use in a previous, recent post

    4) Everyone should use what works for them
    5) This is not vocabulary acquisition per say, more like getting a basic building block squared away, much like learning an alphabet
    6)The method helps with kanji differentiation skills. I don't know your needs, but I need to practice this
    7) One hope is that one would be able to also write kanji by hand. A goal of mine. It helps me, and is fun.
    8) Believe it or not, it helps me with readings too. I associate certain sounds with certain radicals, and Heisig's method helps all that.

    Please don't consider this too pedantic a response, but really, you are being a bit out of place and I would like to make my feelings clear on this stuff and its place in my studies, to avoid debates in the wrong places.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, and I totally invite you to play along with the idea of making a primitive for this post anyways :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. SO far the boxes haven't fallen out of the tree. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. ああ~失敗した。I forgot about the loudness, which was the point. Would it be stretching it too far to imagine the falling boxes making a loud noise? なんてことだ、何一つまともにできないんだな。

    ReplyDelete
  6. Depending on what is a stickler for you, I think the loudness is secondary to an image that sticks. Boxes balanced in a tree may work...

    Since yesterday, I've imagined a singing tree, like in some Arabic tales, and it is singing merely the note "so" very loudly...

    ReplyDelete
  7. 喿(ソウ or ショウ)[Unicode 55BF] means 'noisy'.
    Three mouths(=birds) chirping on a tree.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh cool. That wasn't in WWWJDIC proper, but the kanji dic section says "the chirping of birds"

    ReplyDelete
  9. My apologies. I was just offering another option; I wasn't aware I was posting out of line or against pre-set conditions.

    ReplyDelete
  10. opinion welcome old bean, but more effective in the right post

    ReplyDelete
  11. hah, I might be quite late to this discussion, 5 years to be exact, but still I would like to share my own mnemonic, maybe it's of help to someone: GOODS on a TREE... I was thinking of "some precious fruits hanging on a tree, and they taste SO good". this really fell in place by itself together with creating a story for 燥 (火) ソウ, はしゃ.ぐ parch, dry up - because with the help of a FIRE, those fruits can be desiccated to conserve them.

    ReplyDelete

All comments are moderated in a speedy fashion.