There are two amazing textbooks for Remembering Chinese characters in Japanese, can they be added to the list of textbooks on Skritter? What stands out are the mnemonics, which are based on the actual origin of the characters. If it would be available on skritter, it would be amazing. I found using the actual meaning of the characters is much more efficient - and way more interesting - than Heisig style modern mnemonics.
The books I’m referring to are:
"A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters " by Kenneth G. Henshall, which has great explanations, very up to date for the time at which it was published (1988), the order of the Kanji follows the one set by the Japanese ministry of education, which I’m not sure is the best decision.
“The world of Kanji” by Alex Adler, which just came out this year. Apart from the explanations being more up to date, the order is based on keys/compounds, which makes more sense for me.
I hope it’s possible, it would improve the experience with Skritter even further (it’s already great!)
Do you happen to have the textbooks on hand? We credit 2 free months of subscription time for any textbook list that isn’t offered on Skritter yet! If you have a text file or pdf, you can copy and paste up to 200 words into a list section, so it can be pretty quick. Alternatively you could create the list as you work your way through the book (adding a single chapter at a time), and then let us know when it’s finished and we can credit you subscription time.
Hi Jeremy, thanks for your answer! The physical version of the Henshall book is in China, while I’m in Japan right now. I do have it as PDF, but it’s scanned as pictures, not as text, so I guess it doesn’t work. For the other book, I can buy the PDF, let’s see if it is as text.
Can the mnemonics also be copy pasted by batches of 200? And the PDF might contain some non-text characters, like ideograms, pictograms, oracle bone script etc. Is it possible to add them within the mnemonics?
@gregor.troubat just want to mention that we don’t have publisher permission for sharing their mnemonics, images, etc on our site. Word lists have never been a problem, but we cannot use the other things as user-facing information. Having them as custom stuff for yourself should be totally fine as it is for educational purposes, but we won’t be able to display them for others.
Hope you can understand and please let us know if you have any questions.
Hi Jake! Thanks for your reminder, I anticipated and already contacted the author of the second book. He agrees to the vocabs and an abridged version of the mnemonics being added, but regards images being added as a violation of the copyright. So I’ll add the words by batches and manually create mnemonics in one-two sentences for each.
Awesome! And props for reaching out to the author and asking. My general impression of asking authors about textbook lists is that they’re excited to have students finding their stuff useful and are happy to share. We appreciate you taking appropriate steps to give credit where credit is due.
Be sure to email team@skritter.com once things are all uploaded so we can credit you some time and make sure these lists get promoted to the textbook area.
