> For memory aids for Chinese characters, I much prefer Grammata Serica Recensa by Bernhard Karlgren, a less popular but much more accurate reference book.
I'd never heard about Grammata Serica Recensa until just now (and only looked it up on Wikipedia), but unless I'm misunderstanding its contents/purpose, I'm pretty sure it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. GSR looks like a reference book, which is _not_ what Remembering the Kanji is. RtK is a guide for teaching oneself the writing and meaning (in English) ONLY of the 2200 (in RtK 1) most useful characters (according to Heisig) in written Japanese.
I have a unique perspective on this issue, as I'm someone who has studied Japanese for a few years in college and is now using RtK. The courses I took focused heavily on spoken Japanese, using the Japanese: The Spoken Language series, which is also from Yale University Press and uses a very similar approach to the Chinese series by DeFrancis you mentioned (and also has the deficiency of being out-of-date). Although it gave me a much stronger handle on grammar and pronunciation than other courses would have, their teaching of the written language left much to be desired, to put things lightly.
While the courses did teach the stylistic aspects of written Japanese well, they didn't teach kanji fast enough, and that turned out to be an enormous problem in Japan. So I started using RtK (in concert with the OSS SRS software Anki) about a month ago and have gotten through 600 kanji so far, and I have to say, it is nothing short of magical.
I don't know anything about linguistics or language pedagogy, but I do know that RtK has produced the results I'm looking for. With an investment of approximately 45 minutes/day, I'm learning 20 kanji/day, and remembering them long term. Now, when I see a word I already knew the meaning of, but didn't know the kanji for until now, I find it much easier to remember - and, of course, I can write it by hand perfectly, something I have seen many native Japanese struggle with with my own two eyes far too often. I struggled with it too before starting to use RtK.
> in Heisig's own words, cautions about using his texts as a comprehensive approach for learning literacy in Japanese.
You're absolutely right. Learning the kanji is only the first step in achieving literacy. After that, you need to learn the readings of the kanji, the meanings and readings of the words they form when used in combination, and of course the stylistic aspects that are peculiar to written (vis-à-vis spoken) Japanese, and none of those things is a cake walk by any stretch of the imagination.
However, as Confucius said, 學而不思則罔 思而不學則殆, so if you approach kanji with the rote memorization method used by the vast majority of foreign learners (often because they, like MikeMacMan below, hold the misguided belief that it is a sine qua non of language learning), you will miss out on a lot and unnecessarily waste time and effort.
I'd never heard about Grammata Serica Recensa until just now (and only looked it up on Wikipedia), but unless I'm misunderstanding its contents/purpose, I'm pretty sure it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. GSR looks like a reference book, which is _not_ what Remembering the Kanji is. RtK is a guide for teaching oneself the writing and meaning (in English) ONLY of the 2200 (in RtK 1) most useful characters (according to Heisig) in written Japanese.
I have a unique perspective on this issue, as I'm someone who has studied Japanese for a few years in college and is now using RtK. The courses I took focused heavily on spoken Japanese, using the Japanese: The Spoken Language series, which is also from Yale University Press and uses a very similar approach to the Chinese series by DeFrancis you mentioned (and also has the deficiency of being out-of-date). Although it gave me a much stronger handle on grammar and pronunciation than other courses would have, their teaching of the written language left much to be desired, to put things lightly.
While the courses did teach the stylistic aspects of written Japanese well, they didn't teach kanji fast enough, and that turned out to be an enormous problem in Japan. So I started using RtK (in concert with the OSS SRS software Anki) about a month ago and have gotten through 600 kanji so far, and I have to say, it is nothing short of magical.
I don't know anything about linguistics or language pedagogy, but I do know that RtK has produced the results I'm looking for. With an investment of approximately 45 minutes/day, I'm learning 20 kanji/day, and remembering them long term. Now, when I see a word I already knew the meaning of, but didn't know the kanji for until now, I find it much easier to remember - and, of course, I can write it by hand perfectly, something I have seen many native Japanese struggle with with my own two eyes far too often. I struggled with it too before starting to use RtK.
> in Heisig's own words, cautions about using his texts as a comprehensive approach for learning literacy in Japanese.
You're absolutely right. Learning the kanji is only the first step in achieving literacy. After that, you need to learn the readings of the kanji, the meanings and readings of the words they form when used in combination, and of course the stylistic aspects that are peculiar to written (vis-à-vis spoken) Japanese, and none of those things is a cake walk by any stretch of the imagination.
However, as Confucius said, 學而不思則罔 思而不學則殆, so if you approach kanji with the rote memorization method used by the vast majority of foreign learners (often because they, like MikeMacMan below, hold the misguided belief that it is a sine qua non of language learning), you will miss out on a lot and unnecessarily waste time and effort.