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How many Kanji do you know?

How many Kanji do you know?

  • 0-99

    Votes: 134 43.4%
  • 100-199

    Votes: 37 12.0%
  • 200-299

    Votes: 18 5.8%
  • 300-399

    Votes: 16 5.2%
  • 400-499

    Votes: 9 2.9%
  • 500-1000

    Votes: 44 14.2%
  • 1000-1500

    Votes: 15 4.9%
  • 1500-2000

    Votes: 18 5.8%
  • Over 2000

    Votes: 19 6.1%

  • Total voters
    309
Or perhaps just close the poll. Open-ended polls are annoying. This thing is from 2004, for crying out loud. Come to think of that...
 
I have seen and can kind of recognize around 30-40
of those I have about 15-20 memorized. I am still learning though.
 
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
 
It must have been said by somebody before, but I think this question is almost meaningless without some definition of "know".
 
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...
 
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.
 
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.
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 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.
 
If my story seems far fetched and hard to believe, try it out yourself ...
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.
 
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.
 
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...
 
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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Well, good luck, but I'm still certain I could not possibly do it in a week and a half, however brilliant the mnemonic system. How many have you learnt so far by the way?
 
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