2,000 required Kanji... More needed?

[Emoni]

Just a quick question for those more advanced speakers out there. Is 2,000 kanji really about the number that is needed for fluency, or is that just a start? I believe it was about that number that I heard of being required for grade schools in Japan, but I am wondering for college level and beyond if more are required and used often than just those 2,000 or so.

Thanks

 

[Mike Cash]

Again: "fluency" has nothing to do with reading and writing. You're thinking of "literacy".

Grade school teaches something like 886. I forget the exact number and don't care to hunt up the info right now. Suffice it to say the 教育漢字 are about half of the 当用漢字. The latter number 1945, I believe. Those will get you through life just fine-n-dandy.

 

[Glenn]

I thought that the 当用漢字 were 1850, and the 常用漢字 were 1945.

 

[Emoni]

Don't know the numbers myself to exact. Mainly, I'm just wondering if that number of Kanji known will truly get you by in all aspects of modern Japanese life. I'm assuming (as I really don't have a clue on this) that in modern use, more Kanji is used.

 

[Mike Cash]

Here's what you do: Start working on them, without worrying where the end point will be. At some point, you will find that you will have learned either all you need, or all you care to....at which point you can/will stop.

 

[RockLee]

As stated before, there are a lot of Kanji wich are specifically used in certain areas as IT for instance, if you don't work in that area or are not interested, I think it's no good to study those don't you think ? ;-)

 

[Mike Cash]

At some point, one of two things will happen:

1. A Japanese learner will lose interest in learning Japanese and give it up, so kanji study will also stop.

2. A Japanese learner will realize that they have learned a "critical mass" of kanji which serves them very well for all necessary purposes, and the law of diminishing returns comes in (you study just as much, but the usefulness of the kanji or the added benefit derived from them is less than stuff in the earlier studies). At which point, the learner may decide to stop.

 

[digicross]

They set the limit around 2.000 because...

... so that you wouldn't have to learn around 50.000 . LOL!


Anyway. Considering the amount of kanji characters, even most Japanese don't know on how to pronounce many kanji characters.

That's why you often see hiragana characters besides kanji characters, these are known as furiganas.



As some already said, around 1.000 is teached during elementary school (in six years), the rest 1.000 is teached in middle schools (in six years).

 

[PaulTB]

That's why you often see hiragana characters besides kanji characters, these are known as furiganas.

Almost, but not quite.


* P.S. Wool isn't taken from sheeps either.

 

[kdynamic]

My Japanese friends tell me, when I've asked them this question, that they think they use far less than 2000 characters. But I know about 1500 or so and I passed the JLPT2, and I still can't read ANYTHING (or, that's how it feels when I pick up a newspaper at least), so I suspect that they know more than 2000 but it just doesnt feel that way to them. It always makes me feel better when I see them having to look up a kanji though, because then I don't feel so completely illiterate. But the government says you've gotta know 1945 to get by.

Also keep in mind that to actually function in Japan you'll need to also know kanji for lots of places/roads/people that aren't in the 1945 jouyou kanji.

 

[Mike Cash]

If you've passed JLPT2, then the average newspaper article or book shouldn't be out of your range, I would think.

 

[PaulTB]

If you've passed JLPT2, then the average newspaper article or book shouldn't be out of your range, I would think.

Maybe it's just me but I'd say that the average newspaper article wouldn't be a problem (provided it was concerning an area which which you are somewhat familiar) but the average book would be trickier. Simply because you need a fair bit of stamina to get through an entire book

(My 'books read' total isn't impressive and I got JLPT 2 a fair while back*)

*e.g. I can't remember which year and I can't be bothered to check.

 

[Mike Cash]

But it is just a matter of stamina, and not a matter of needing a greater knowledge of Japanese. One can build stamina for reading Japanese books by reading Japanese books.

I took JLPT2 in 1997. Hadn't studied for years before that, and haven't studied since then either.

 

[nhk9]

Well, I guess if you are really interested in learning Kanji, and that you want to have reached a particular goal before you can say "I've done it! I've mastered Kanji", then I advice you to maybe set the goal of attaining one of the higher levels of the Kanji Proficiency Test. The highest level is level 1, with mastery of about 6000 Kanji. What's more, is that there would be tons of "ateji"s (special readings of Kanji) for you to tackle with. I suspect that reaching this level of literacy would probably take more than a decade of hard studying...

 

[Scrivener]

Just a quick question for those more advanced speakers out there. Is 2,000 kanji really about the number that is needed for fluency, or is that just a start? I believe it was about that number that I heard of being required for grade schools in Japan, but I am wondering for college level and beyond if more are required and used often than just those 2,000 or so.

Thanks

The short answer is that 2000 is not enough if you want to read a book without a dictionary, but it's enough that you can read plenty of stuff if you do have a dictionary, and if you have a good understanding of grammar.

In the end, when it comes to reading fluency, grammar is more important than kanji, because it's harder to "look up" grammar in a reference book. The JLPT focuses heavily on grammatical "forms", and I really recommend paying plenty of attention to them. Japanese has millions of set grammatical forms that you just "plug in" the subject and object into. Once you have internalized the grammar, you can start reading manga or magazines with a kanji dictionary, and things will go much faster.

 

[Mike Cash]

The short answer is that 2000 is not enough if you want to read a book without a dictionary

Guess I'd better either quit reading or start using a dictionary then.

 

[Scrivener]

If you can pick up any normal Japanese book and read it through without needing a dictionary, I would suspect you already know more than 2000 kanji.

 

[Mike Cash]

You suspect incorrectly.

 

[PaulTB]

You suspect incorrectly.

Did you ever take this test
Kanji Level Check | MLC Japanese Language School in Tokyo
?

Going by that I'd guess around 1800 - 1900 is enough for most books.

P.S. Guess who had a post deleted yesterday from the Abortion Pro / Con thread? I suppose it might have been for calling both sides self-righteous and suggesting the thread should have been titled "Anti-choice or Pro-death ?"

 

[Scrivener]

You suspect incorrectly.

Jolly good.

 

[Mike Cash]

Did you ever take this test
Kanji Level Check | MLC Japanese Language School in Tokyo
?

Going by that I'd guess around 1800 - 1900 is enough for most books.

The only test taking I've done was the JLPT2 in '95 or '96, I forget which.

I'd guess that that figure is more than sufficient, since I am reasonably positive I have been getting by with probably only about 2/3 that amount.

P.S. Guess who had a post deleted yesterday from the Abortion Pro / Con thread? I suppose it might have been for calling both sides self-righteous and suggesting the thread should have been titled "Anti-choice or Pro-death ?"

I gave serious thought to pointing out that apples-n-oranges sort of mixing myself, but since I have no desire to wander through the muck of a discussion on abortion I decided against it.

(edit)
Okay, Paul, I took the test. It estimates 1600-1700.

 

[Scrivener]

I get 1800-1900 but that's with a few that I know the meaning but I've forgotten the pronounciation (or at least not sure of it). On the other hand, I think I'd know the meaning of some of the missed ones in context... And I probably have a few more from my Chinese studies... :? Sounding defensive yet???

They should give you a "check all" option to save time!!

Anyway I work as a translator but I find I still need a dictionary often.

 

[Mike Cash]

I decided to lowball it and not check the one's I know the meaning of but am not quite sure of the exact reading.

If I were doing translation work, I would rely on a dictionary as well. There's a certain level of responsibility present when doing translations that isn't there when reading for one's own enjoyment.

 

[PaulTB]

(edit)
Okay, Paul, I took the test. It estimates 1600-1700.

I'd have thought you'd have done a bit better than that but that happens to be exactly the score I got when I first (and last) tried it.

Of course it all depends on how you count 'know'. If it was writing kanji mine would have dropped off the bottom of the graph while I suspect you have to your share of note scribbling so wouldn't fair as badly.

 

[Mike Cash]

I'm sure I would have bumped up a notch if I had done as Scrivener and I discussed and checked the boxes of ones for which I know the meaning but am iffy on the exact reading. There were probably about 6-10 boxes I left unchecked because of that.

The only time I've ever been reasonably sure of a number was about 11 years ago when I was laid up in the hospital for 5 weeks with a work-related knee injury. As you can imagine, how to spend the time becomes a big problem. I sent home for my Nelson's and wnet through the thing cover to cover one night counting the kanji I "knew", based on very loose criteria. If I knew either a reading or a meaning, I counted it. I forget the exact number, but it was somewhere between 1200 and 1300.

That surprised me because I hadn't attempted to study kanji for at least 5 years before that, and when I left off studying the number was only around 800. I picked up the others through daily living and working in Japan. So I suppose that in the last 11 years it is possible that I picked up a few hundred more in a similar fashion. Damned slow way to do it, but not much aggravation to it.