How many Kanji do you know?

[BamaFan2989]

What is the hardest Kanji to you guys???

 

[countess_d]

I should know 300+ But can only read around 200, if I'm lucky I can write like... 100, if I'm feeling very bright that day...

 

[sl0815]

What is the hardest Kanji to you guys???

一 (one). Can't write it properly and it has a dozen readings!


Jan

 

[MtoM]

It is impossible for me to say exactly how many kanji I memorize since every week I memorize about a dozen or half a dozen of kanji. then I forget a number of them and study other kanji then re-studying what I forgot...there are kanji I studied more than 10 times an still forgeting them, in the other hand there are kanjis that I studied them once and learned them by heart(although that happens rarely).
I memorize over 600 knji from the six grades kanjis and some more dozens from the other jouyou kanji and jinmei lists. Quite impressive, isn't it?

 

[ベ-ネ]

ohh i can only read about 20kanzi (

 

[Fantt]

I know the "meanings" of about 150 kanji, but I can't read any (pronounce) at all. When I saw the word '外人' on my Homer Simpson samurai shirt (it says '馬鹿外人' ) I figured that it meant foreigner because the first kanji means outside and the second kanji means person. I asked the Japanese girl in my aikido class and she said I was correct and then she told me the baka part. I guess knowing the kanji meaning is like being half-literate or something...

 

[senseiman]

I voted 1500-2000, but that is just the number I can read, if you asked me to write them down off the top of my head I would only get about half of them right.

For my purposes though writing them isn't at all important. My Japanese is never going to be good enough for me to become a English-Japanese translator (though I have some professional Japanese-English experience) and I'm not going to be composing anything important myself in Japanese so there really isn't much point. Knowing how to read (or at least knowing the meaning of) about 2000 kanji is enough to be able to enjoy novels and magazines with only occasional reference to the old Kanji dictionary and its also enough for you to be able to translate documents at a speed fast enough to make it worth your while. So I'm quite happy with not being able to write half the Kanji I know.

 

[MtoM]

For kanji study I HIGHLY recommend The Kanji Learners Dictionary.

 

[飛火龍]

Well, I can recognize something like 350 kanji I think,
but when it comes to writing and knowing all the readings, only about 150.

Plus I've already forgotten (again) the ON readings of most of the kanji I learned last week. (*sniff*)

 

[MtoM]

To make my point clear, I would say it's a real pain in the nick to master kanjis without "The Kanji Learners Dictionary". People who really wants to study kanji must buy it at any cost, you sure will be amazed it's almost flawless...
漢字を習うについて、本気なら早くこの字典を買えよ！！きっとこうかいしないと、誓うんだよ！

 

[TZed9]

一 (one). Can't write it properly and it has a dozen readings!


Jan

Oh god, what have I bitten off here?!

For me first objective is the Kana, second is conversational vocabulary.

I have read children in JP learn 200 kanji a year for six years at school, then have to finish off themselves to bring to the requisite 2200-ish. Can anyone confirm this for me? I have also heard of a book from about 200 years ago with 60,000 different kanji, thank god for the standardisation initiative if that is true!

☝ ☝ ☝

 

[Fantt]

I agree 100% with MtoM - that dictionary is awesome and well worth the price. I have two copies of it, actually.

TZed9, I've seen pictures of a kanji dictionary which comes in multiple volumes (big thick books too) that covers 50,000+ kanji.

 

[Jin X]

-.-

I know like 5 kanji

 

[senseiman]

I agree with MtoM and Fantt about the Kodansha Kanji learner's dictionary, it is definitely worth the price (I paid 4900 yen for mine 5 years ago or so when it first came out but I think it is cheaper now). It has a much MUCH easier to use look up system than most other dictionaries that are based on the radical system. Its main weakness though is that it isn't very comprehensive so if you want to read a novel or something about 20% of the tougher kanji you'll come across won't be in there. This is a major drawback, as even the kanji for some common words like buddo (grape) and hotondo (almost) aren't in it. But for the basics it is good and I beleive that all of the kanji likely to occur on level 1 of the JLPT are included in it.

 

[Fantt]

What's the next step up from the Kodansha Kanji learner's dictionary? i.e. What would I need for that next tier of kanji? Not that I'm at that point yet, of course.

 

[senseiman]

There are a few comprehensive dictionaries out there. I've heard that the Nelson one is the best, though I don't own a copy. It has about 7,000 or so listings. The one I've got has about 6,000 kanji listing in it and is published by Cheng and lee. I do not recommend it. Kenkyusha also publishes a dictionary with about 5,000 characters, but it isn't as comprehensive as the others and costs just as much.

I wish Kodansha would make a comprehensive dictionary based on the same system it used in making the learner's dictionary. That would be the best.

 

[ToMach]

About dictionaries, Japanese character dictionnaries (kanwa jiten 漢和辞典) are the best : more characters, more words, more details and explanations. English dictionaries become insufficient when you reach a high level in Japanese. But of course, since they are in Japanese, you can't use them before reaching a high level. So my advise would be : if you plan to study Japanese for a long time, don't buy too expensive English dictionnaries, because you may not use it anymore after some years.

About the subject of the poll, "How many kanji do you know?", nobody has raised the problem of what "know" does mean. To each kanji is associated a form, a reading, and a meaning, but it happens often that you forget/don't know one of them. Even Japanese people don't know how to write some kanji, or some readings. Personally, I can read far more kanji than I can write, and I can understand the meaning of many kanji while I forgot their reading. And there are some characters I can guess the reading, but I don't know the meaning.
So I can't say how many kanji I know.

 

[mad pierrot]

I've got a short question for all the hard-core kanji people here: Do you use an electronic dictionary? I've found that whenever I'm reading it's much more efficient to an electronic one, as looking everything up in a regular dictionary takes so much time. Of course, everything I'm reading has furigana, so I understand without it might be impractical. Btw, have you seen the Sharp G50? It shows the friggin stroke order. What an awesome pocket dictionary!

 

[PaulTB]

About the subject of the poll, "How many kanji do you know?", nobody has raised the problem of what "know" does mean.

Have you been reading the same thread?

"Well, I can recognize something like 350 kanji I think,
but when it comes to writing and knowing all the readings, only about 150.

Plus I've already forgotten (again) the ON readings of most of the kanji I learned last week."

"I voted 1500-2000, but that is just the number I can read, if you asked me to write them down off the top of my head I would only get about half of them right."

"But can only read around 200, if I'm lucky I can write like... 100"

"Plus, if we're talking about writing, I probably remember less than half that amount, so... heh."

"200-300 I can write myself. But I'm sure I could recognize at least a hundered more."

 

[ToMach]

Have you been reading the same thread?

Ok, I read a bit too quickly... sorry.
But the problem still remains : what means "to know a kanji"?

 

[Elizabeth]

What's the next step up from the Kodansha Kanji learner's dictionary? i.e. What would I need for that next tier of kanji? Not that I'm at that point yet, of course.

I rely for the most part on Tuttle's Kanji Dictionary with around 47,000 main entries plus 30-40 much more fascinating apendices (ed. : Mark Spahn & Wolfgang Hadamitzky) for which there's also a very good scaled down Learner edition probably comparable to Kodansha.

 

[PaulTB]

what means "to know a kanji"?

Whatever gets you the highest score.

 

[cheapshot]

had to put the lowest :'( as i only just started to learn (only been about a month now) but im sure it will get better as i go on

 

[tha_rippa1be]

i know the meaning for about 10 kanji but how you prenounce it i know 1 or so

 

[miu]

I know soemthing like 85+ kanjis but I've been studying Japanese only for about three months, so maybe that's understandable ^^;