How many Kanji do you know?
- Thread starter BamaFan2989
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- kanji
- 30 Apr 2007
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I know a few 
epigene
相変わらず不束者です
- 10 Nov 2004
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- 3 Jan 2012
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Not sure how many engraved to my head but I could recognize about 600, though the amount that I studied already exceed 800.
FinancialWar
Sempai
- 19 May 2006
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Just finished studing all the 2136 joyo kanji
haibuihoang
A curious learner
- 22 Apr 2012
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I know the meaning of 100+ Kanji but cannot speak or use them sadly.
Wardie1993
長い英国と日本の友情はラ Cブ！
- 23 Jun 2012
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Very few, if any, because im focusing on speaking Japanese rather than writing it ATM, i think i can recognise a few but thats it, im effectively illiterate by Japanese standards because i cant write or read Kanji because i havent learnt them yet, when I need Kanji (e.g. in me user title thingy) I use google translate
- 2 Oct 2012
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Can recognise a couple hundred, handwriting from scratch? I'd be lucky if I can get to 20 because I seem to always type Japanese not write it...
- 10 Oct 2012
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I can write several hundred and read much more than that. I always find it so much harder to read and write then I do to speak. Probably because I spent all my time in Japan speaking with others rather than writing them letters and emails.
I don't know any kanji. Well, maybe one or two by accident. But hey, I only started learning them a week ago.
I know the meaning of about 760 Kanji and how to write them (let's say with maybe 90 percent accuracy, so let's say 600 to be safe)
Reading this thread it seems like you guys really need to get acquainted with Heisig. If you're insane about it, you could get vague meanings and how to write the Joyo Kanji memorized in about a week and a half. If you're semi-insane like me, you'll be done in 20 days to a month. A normal 1 hour a day person will take somewhere from 3-6 months.
After I'm done I'll still need the readings, concrete meanings, and compounds, but actually knowing the characters the way I know European letters is gonna help me a huge lot and make it all much easier.
I know the meaning of about 760 Kanji and how to write them (let's say with maybe 90 percent accuracy, so let's say 600 to be safe)
Reading this thread it seems like you guys really need to get acquainted with Heisig. If you're insane about it, you could get vague meanings and how to write the Joyo Kanji memorized in about a week and a half. If you're semi-insane like me, you'll be done in 20 days to a month. A normal 1 hour a day person will take somewhere from 3-6 months.
After I'm done I'll still need the readings, concrete meanings, and compounds, but actually knowing the characters the way I know European letters is gonna help me a huge lot and make it all much easier.
I find that impossible to believe, for any reasonable interpretation of "memorised". Well ... maybe for somebody with really freakish memory abilities ... but for ordinary mortals, no way.
I don't have freakish memory. In fact, I'm a giant scatterbrain. If my story seems far fetched and hard to believe, try it out yourself, the first part of the book is free and includes the first 276 Kanji. These are ordered in Heisig's system, by the way, which is meant to teach all the Joyo Kanji.
What this means is you will get some strange Kanji in the early lessons because they're easier to write, while some of the important general-use Kanji will show up in the final chapters. It is assumed that you need to know them all in any case if you want to be able to read.
Edit: Forgot to post the link to that part: http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/pdf/RK4/RK 1_sample.pdf
Edit edit: This website somehow eats the link. Just go to google and search for "remembering the kanji trial pdf" without the quotation marks and it'll be the first link.
It took me about a year, I think, to learn to recognise all Joyo kanji and their main meanings. That was at a pretty leisurely pace, and not using any mnemonic method. If I had worked on it full time using a mnemonic method no doubt it would have been much quicker, but based on my experience, I can say without any doubt that it would be utterly impossible for me do what you say in a week and a half.
That was probably a number I pulled out of nowhere because I'm all excited about this new thing I'm doing, but I figured it was possible for one of those people who never sleep and do world records. I mean, if I can do 100 or more a day while still going to school, eating, and sleeping, then there's probably people out there who could do a lot more. (I had a 200 Kanji day, but the Anki reviews for that almost murdered me...)
I think you'd be surprised at how quickly you can indeed memorize a Kanji's stroke order and one keyword meaning, though. Takes only about 1-2 minutes a Kanji.
Any individual kanji can be memorised for short-term recall in a minute or two. However, as the numbers build up into the hundreds and then thousands, it takes an increasingly large amount of time to consolidate existing learning. This means that those "minute or two"s do not multiply up linearly, but become more like a kind of exponential thing. At least, that was my experience...
To me this is exactly what's so cool about the Heisig method. Things don't get jumbled and even extremely similar looking Kanji are very distinct. I'm never gonna mistake arrow for quiver, warrior, fiesta, march, and parade. (Defined by Heisig. Their "meanings" are probably not exactly this, but they all use this thing, which Heisig calls arrow, and then add more strokes to it: 弋)
Edit: And here I can tell this is true by experience, as I am using an SRS to review what I know, so I will not be forgetting them. I am also reviewing from keyword to kanji, so I know for sure I can still write them. (I write them in the air with a finger, so it doesn't take forever)
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