From: Paul Battley Date: 2004-10-12T08:28:20+09:00 Subject: Re: Bit of the Matz Interview (in Rubyist Magazine) On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 07:24:37 +0900, Questioner wrote: > In my own case, I spent a year with vol 1 of Rerembering the Kanji, > studying for about 30-40 minutes a day, 3 to 4 times a week. > I took longer than average in order to practice drawing > the characters properly. Having never seen Heisig's books, I can't express an opinion on them, but you make a good point here: it's very important to practise writing kanji. Not only is it a very useful memory aid, it's also handy when you have to write something without the aid of a computer! > Another example, almost a freebie, the Katakana for N almost looks > like a written English letter "n" with the leading stroke perhaps a > bit too long. Surely a typo: you are referring to the *hiragana* syllable "n". > Number 7, of course is retained instantly since it looks like an > arabic numeral 7 upside down with a line drawn thru it. ...or even simpler: a European 7 upside down! Regarding trying to remember kanji visually, I think that it is very difficult. Even the characters that were originally pictorial (a fraction) have been stylised over millennia beyond recognition... except for "kushi" (shish kebab), that is: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwjdic?1MKU4e32 Trivia note: you can use that character to indicate a proxy. In Japanese, proxy is "purokushii" which contains the sounds "kushi". Why the character for "mackerel" means "server" is left as an exercise for the assiduous reader... Paul.