Kana and kanji percentage in Japanese

[Tania-chan]

Hello everybody!

Is there any study about the percentage of kana and kanji in a common Japanese text?

Browsing the web I found this:

"A typical Japanese newspaper consists of approximately 70 percent kanji, 20 percent hiragana, and 10 percent katakana."

What do you think about that? Are those percentages accurate? And what about other texts (not just newspapers)?

 

[nice gaijin]

That sounds probable; newspapers use a lot of kanji to save space. Other texts don't need to do the same thing, so the ratio of kanji is likely lower. It depends on the sentence, of course.

 

[yukio_michael]

Case in point, other than the recommended kanji set up by the Ministry, are there any studies on the most-commonly-occurring kanji in written texts?

 

[hkBattousai]

That sounds probable; newspapers use a lot of kanji to save space. Other texts don't need to do the same thing, so the ratio of kanji is likely lower. It depends on the sentence, of course.

Maybe saving space is an important reason. Using kanji instead of hiragana may reduce thickness of a book by 50% or more.
In some movies and anime, I see people writing down small notes with lots of hiragana + katagana and a few kanji. No need to save space when writing small notes.

 

[Qutiepie]

I think there is a policy in Japan on standardized Kanji for specific usages,I don't have the full details off hand.


This was explained to me by one Japanese cyber-acquaintance,Kanji is common in formal academic and political contexts whereas hiragana in teen cultures or katakana in computer and fashion subjects.




A popular Japanese teen website as one example : yaplog.jp/strawberry2

 

[nice gaijin]

yes, the subject matter does greatly affect which type of characters show up more frequently. I think that writing book in the same style as a newspaper would be a bad idea; it's like asking any author in English to truncate their style to save space for the publishing costs.

 

[Qutiepie]

Browsing the web I found this:

"A typical Japanese newspaper consists of approximately 70 percent kanji,20 percent hiragana,and 10 percent katakana."

Are those percentages accurate ?

There is absolutely no basis for this dubious information on exact approximation percentage for particular written scripts of Japanese language.