As far as I’m aware you are suppose to import the Kanji and Radicals into separate decks.

I have 3 decks that I use with Kanji:

TF Radicals
TF Kanji
TF Vocab

And I believe Koichisama does get you to separate them this way. I’m not sure which season you are on, but maybe there was a typo/mistake where he got you to import a radical deck into your Kanji deck, or you read it wrong?

Generally speaking as far as distinguishing when a specific Kanji is pronounced a certain way, it will depend on what it is grouped with: if it has multiple Kanji together, or it’s by itself, you know it’s the ON reading, if it is grouped with hiragana you know it’s the KUN reading. Koichi has said this of course in the text, but you might forget that, don’t know how advanced you are. If it’s unclear whether they want the meaning or reading, just come up with both, so you know that you know it.

I think the deck thing is probably the main source of your confusion though.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 5 months ago by  Aikibujin.

I think there’s a typo in TF somewhere, though I’ve now seen this mentioned somewhere else before:

“if it has multiple Kanji together, or it’s by itself, you know it’s the ON reading”

That was from Koichi, but it’s actually the KUN reading most of the time when they are by themselves, except for numbers and a few other exceptions.

This is still the best explanation on the on’yomi and kun’yomi readings I’ve come across.

Credit goes to Tsetycoon:

The official rule is that if there is JUKUGO, or compound-kanji (at least 2 kanji NEXT to each other), both kanji use the ON’YOMI.

You use the KUN’YOMI when the kanji is BY ITSELF. You also use the KUN’YOMI when hiragana FOLLOWS the kanji to generate the meaning of the word.

HOWEVER, EXCEPTIONS are ALL OVER THE PLACE. A kanji by itself may favor the on’yomi, and two kanji in jukugo may favor the kun’yomi. A jukugo may even have on’yomi for one kanji and kun’yomi for the other!

I usually try to just know the actually word in the first place, and then understand how the reading of the kanji works. I’d say that despite these rules, at least 45% of all words have these reading exceptions. 

Writing as in 書く? That’s a brush radical plus a sun radical. But I’m reasonably sure we’re talking about characters where the whole character is the radical, like 糸 or 巨. I was, in any case. =)

That’s the literary radical.

… Has Koichi been inventing things wholesale again? Frankly, if Koichi’s mnemonics are confusing you, your best bet is to dump it and come up with your own. I’ve actually noticed a number of places where I’ve learnt a radical differently to how he’s teaching it, so I just ignore his version.

@ Joel

What’s the difference, I’ve only been doing this since June?

Well, that and I’ve also been a bit slack at keeping up with TextFugu lately. =P

Basically, the 文 radical and the 文 kanji are one and the same. Memorising them using different mnemonics is, in my opinion, a bit weird. It’d be a different matter if kanji with the 文 radical tended to have doll-related meanings, but they’re almost invariably literacy-related, or at least can be construed as such. He’s also ignored the etymology behind a few other radicals by giving them completely different names – for example, the four dots at the bottom of 黒, which Koichi calls “fish tail”, are actually the fire kanji 火 in bottom-radical form.

But yeah, don’t listen to me too much – if it works for you, stick with it. =)