Hiragana & Kanji
 

So I'm wondering how much Kanji you need to know. From the Japanese people that I've met they all seem to know the entire alphabet, etc for Hiragana, but I not all of them know all of Kanji. And I understand that Hiragana is the main form of Japanese, just Kanji is used often as well. I'm not entirely sure how this works but how much of each do you really need to know for a fluent lifestyle level? And for a singing level? How long does it take to learn those levels if you are taking college courses on it (with the assumption the variables are on average).

When I took a japanese intro course at my college the teacher told me around 2000 kanji to be able to read a newspaper fairly easy.

Searching around my own finds that you need around 3000-5000 to be fluent enough in kanji.

Personally, I just want to be able to have conversations & read and write some. I guess it depends on which direction you're headed.

Japanese students learn approximately 2,000 kanji in school. This is what is considered necessary to be literate in Japanese. These kanji will usually not appear with furigana in newspapers, books, or magazines (unless it's written for children or using an irregular reading). Most Japanese adults know more than those basic 2,000 - upwards of 3,000 for your average adult, 5,000 for scholars.

I'm not sure what you mean by "not all of them know all of Kanji." If they're native Japanese, they should know pretty much all of the Kanji that are in use. There are some that are no longer in use (though I expect most people would know a lot of those anyways.)

There is something like 2500-3000 in use iirc (I don't know where 5000 came from, I've never heard of that many outside of Chinese) and if you want to be fluent you should understand all of them. There are thousands upon thousands of compounds that you also need to know (which also frequently change the pronunciation.)

You would have to take like 15 years of Japanese courses to learn them all if you didn't do any outside study. In other words, Japanese courses aren't going to teach you all of the Kanji - They should teach you quite a few of them with compounds, but there just really isn't enough time to teach all of them.

It's also not really correct to say that Hiragana is the 'main' writing form - Kanji are used when writing almost as frequently as possible. Katakana is also very common. It would be correct to say that all three combined are their main writing system.

[quote=jesselt;711781]I'm not sure what you mean by "not all of them know all of Kanji." If they're native Japanese, they should know pretty much all of the Kanji that are in use. There are some that are no longer in use (though I expect most people would know a lot of those anyways.)
QUOTE]

I'm a Japanese native speaker and unfortunately this is not entirely true. Most people know Kanjis which are taught by the time you graduate from high school, but it not all the kanjis in use. There are actually Kanji exams for Japanese people. You are asked to tell how to "read" kanjis on university entrance exams.

My recommendation is to get the text books for real kids in Japan, and learn from them step by step. Realistically speaking, once you learn Highschool level Kanjis you are fine.

By the way, we still be able to "guess" the meaning of a Kanji from a radical orr things like that when we don't know the meaning of a kanji or how to read (pronounce) it.

Several years ago, I investigate how foreign people learn Kanji for Japanese language.

Learning first 300 kanji could be painful but next 500 could be easier because he knows basic radicals and see the configuration of each kanji. With these 800 kanjis, you can compete with 10-12 years Japanese kids and can learn more kanjis in daily life.

As for me, I could read about 5000 or more kanjis and could write perhaps 2000-3000. Using PC, I quickly forgot how to write kanji day by day.

so what's a good way to study kanji?

i already know kana and recently started studying kanji. i can read only a little less than 100 kanji, but if you asked me to write one of them i wouldn't be able to.

what's a good way to learn how to read AND write kanji at the same time?

That's easy. Practice, practice, practice. Pick the Kanji you wish to learn and do nothing but write it, over and over, for an hour.

Yes, an hour. No breaks, no TV, no distractions. Write it. Refer to your source now and then to ensure you're not introducing errors.

The next day, pick another kanji. Practice it for an hour. Finish by doing five minutes of yesterday's kanji without referring to the source until the end to ensure you got it right.

If you have more than one free hour a day, do two Kanji a day, or more. Just don't forget to have a comfort break between kanji hours.

If my research proves correct, 'scholars' (take that as you will) in Japan do not only learn Japanese-language kanji. From what I can gather, it's like how in English, we take on Latin phrases for medicine, science, philosophy, etc. Although they are not actually English, we use them as if they were.

There are multiple readings for most kanji - the onyomi and kunyomi. The onyomi is the "chinese" reading (or, rather, the japanised pronunciation of the chinese reading), and the kunyomi is the Japanese word that the kanji is used for.

Many kanji have up to around five readings - multiple onyomi and / or kunyomi.

Hurrah!

It is fair to say though that 音読み (onyomi) are kinda limited and repeat themselves. I know somewhere in internet you can find the pattern they use, I lost that URL (not that I understood much out of it).

I'm aware. I wasn't referring to readings, but rather individual characters. The person I quoted didn't understand where the figure of 5,000 characters came from.

I'm also finding it a lot easier to learn the language, then learn kanji, then learn more words, then more kanji. It helps to learn readings if you already know the words - cuts half the trouble out.

Aye. I just figured the OP might like to know :)

The latin-based words we use in English sure are English words. Just like "croissant" is an English word even though it comes from French, "video" is an English word even though it is literally the Latin phrase for "I see," etc.

Just because you don't think it's English doesn't make it so.

I mean, is "sushi" not an English word? Is "karaoke" not an English word? Is "opera" not an English word (Italian plural for "opus")? Is "fjord" not an English word? Is "parrot" not an English word (from French)? Is "Africa" not an English word (from Latin)? Etc.

And as far as the number of Kanji, the 大漢和辞典 has 50,000 characters. Not all of them are in use in Japan (or China), but I'd say that suggests there's more than 2,000 characters.

I didn't say Latin-based. I said Latin. ^.^ I meant actual Latin words (and other languages) that we use but aren't really considered English. A priori? Deus ex machina? Even ergo. Those are terms students of English probably wouldn't learn unless they spoke with native speakers, or perhaps studying in English the field in which said terms are involved. Do you see the analogy now?

This is where the phrase "In-Use" comes up.

Hey, in Italy we use the words baseball, football, computer, baby sitter...how stupid I am. Thank you Kyle I didn't know they were Italian words and not English :)

chryuop, if you use a word in Italian and it's not a rare occurence in the language, it's Italian.

Tangram, I consider "a priori" an English phrase because I use it on a regular basis as a native speaker.I consider Deus ex machina and English phrase as well. "Ergo" I'm not so sure about because I never hear anyone using it unless they're trying to be pretentious by using Latin words.

And so what if an English student wouldn't use the word? They wouldn't learn the word "aglet" either, but that's undeniably an English word. What is your criteria for "word in XXX language"? What makes "fjord" an English word but "a priori" not English?

I mean, would you consider コンピューター not Japanese? Would you consider しよう not Japanese because it's a Japanese attempt at pronouncing the Chinese 使 and 用?

It's remarkably silly to try and claim loanwords belong to any language. They are exactly that - loanwords. Although English is a mix of Latinate and Germanic languages (and thus contains 600,000 common-vocabulary words, as opposed to the 200,000 common-vocabulary words in French or 300,000 in German), usage, spelling and pronunciation have shifted so much over the centuries that it is it's own tongue.

Words and phrases like fjord, cul de sac, a priori, deus ex machina, tagiatelle and so on have changed neither in spelling, pronunciation or meaning since they were adopted by the English, and thus remain loanwords. We all use them, we all understand what they mean, and eventualy one day they may mutate to become genuinely English. But at this moment in time they remain of the language which spawned them - particularly Latin words and phrases, as Latin is not evolving and changing with time, so their meanings will never be altered within the context of native speech.

Give yourself a little credit for knowing a large number of foreign words :mtongue:

I guess American and Italian language professors think differently. Even tho for certain words we have no Italian translation and we use only English words (like baseball or computer) we do not call them Italian words. We call it foreign words borrowed by our language (or borrowed words). Esterofilia (sorry, not sure how to translate it, it is the "love" for foreign countries) is always more growing and not only in Italy. If every country should consider their own, words borrowed from other languages we would end up having a big messy language...which was already tried to be created and failed miserably.

コンピューター is not Japanese.
使用 is a Chinese loan word.
哲学、資本、経済 are created by the Japanese but now used in Chinese and Korean, technically in Chinese and Korean, they are loan words from Japanese.
Kanji is a loaned writing system.

But at the end of the day, WHO CARES. :rolleyes:

コンピューター is so a Japanese word. 使用 is a Japanese word.

Is "croissant" not an English word? What about "naive"? "Doctor"? You realize "doctor" comes from French, right?

What makes a word "English"? I say that frequent use makes it part of the language.

And obviously I care. And obviously you care.

時間の無駄遣いだ。それよりも日本語を磨いたほうがい いじゃないですかね。

That would be Doctor, spelled and pronounced extremely similarly to Médecin, right?

The word Doctor comes from Swahili, Daktari.

But do carry on. This is highly amusing.

Troo, that is absolutely not true.
Online Etymology Dictionary
Please stop speaking of which you do not know. It is highly infuriating. Provide sources.

Kyle, Italian is derived from Latin, I am not saying all my language is borrowed from Latin.

What I divide from becoming your own language and what is borrowed language is one thing: is that language still alive?
If you use a word that comes from a live language and thus it is still used in that foreign language, then it becomes a borrwed word, not a word belonging to your language.
If you use a word that belongs to an old and dead language, then that is a derived word and belongs to your own language.

Anyway, I guess we will all keep our own opinions, so I guess it is futile (any resistance lol) to continue.

chruop So if people started speaking Latin again, would the words from Latin no longer be Italian words? They would just stop being Italian simply because some idiots revived a distinct language?

You'd be hard-pressed to find a word in English that isn't from another language. Only neologisms seem to fit under your definition.

But obviously I'm not going to convince you. I just hope that I can convince other readers on the board.

I think a very simple test is "is the word in the dictionary"-test. If the word is in a Japanese dictionary, it's a Japanese word. If it's in the OED, it's an English word. Etc.

Ah yes, a single source on the internet. Quick, let me just go write a wikipedia article and link to it as proof of my own genius.

Docteur (that would be Docteur, not Doctour, as your *cough* "highly reputable internet source" claims), Daktari and Doctor share the same Latin root... A language which itself was derived from Greek, Phoenician and Umbrian, which were derived from... Oh it goes on. You get the idea.

I'll just drop you a hyperlink to the evidence... Oh, wait, I can't. It's in actual, real, physical books on my bookshelves. The kind of books where they were proofread before being slapped on the internet and claimed as The One Truth.

Seriously though, you've got no grasp of how language spreads and evolves. You think "a priori" is English because you use it and "ergo" isn't because you personally don't.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a suitcase to pack. 私は東京に行きます.

***LOADING UP HIS GUN AND AIMING AT TROO***

Dang it if I am envious... 東京に行かないなら、トルーさんも行けない。:mtongue:

well your doing a bad job of convincing the "others" on here. Or at least me. I can see where your coming from....but it still is wrong in my opinion. Not like it matters what I say, your never going to see it any other way, which is fine.

Troo, here's my source for the etymology of "doctor": The Oxford English Dictionary. And I quote:Note that "OF" means "Old French." I'd love to know what source you've used that has more credibility than the OED (honestly, I would, because I'd love to have a more authoritative source that is also cheaper than the OED). I'd link you to the OED's page on "doctor," but it's a $500+/yr subscription fee I think. I get it for free through my university (until June 3, when I'm no longer a student :( :( :( )

But it doesn't really matter where it comes from. Even if I were to accept your thesis that "doctor" comes from Swahili, the point I was trying to make is that, despite the fact that the word comes directly from a still-in-use non-English language, we still consider "doctor" to be English because, well, people use it when speaking English.

@Barone1551 Could you explain why you think I'm wrong? I'll state my opinion clearly and then you can poke holes in it:
"When native speakers of language X use word Y, word Y is a part of language X."

Finally, after poking holes in my definition, could you provide a better working definition/method for determining whether word Y is part of language X?

I'm not interested in being right in the short term; I'm interested in being right in the long term. Thus, I welcome corrections with open arms. I'm seeking truth, not victory. I'll never meet a single one of you in real life.