Do Japaneses really recognize all Kanjis?

[sodapple]

Mina-san

Well, it's some difficult for me to learn the Kanjis and I would like to know if Japaneses really know all kanjis and other question: in what age they finish to learn all kanjis?

Arigatou!

[thegooseking]

As I understand it, there is a list of 1,945 "jouyou kanji' which everyone (adults) knows, and which are the kanji you would find, for example, in a newspaper. This list was implemented by the Japanese government in 1981 (replacing a slightly smaller list which was created shortly after the Second World War). A subset of this is 'kyouiku kanji' which are 1,006 kanji which elementary school children are officially supposed to learn.

There are a lot more kanji than just the jouyou list in existence (some estimate about 50,000, if I remember correctly - I don't think anyone knows exactly), but kanji outside of the jouyou list are normally annotated with furigana, just like the kanji in children's or some learner's books, to give a hiragana reading of the kanji and help people understand what it means.

I could be wrong on some aspects of this - this is just what I've heard.

[Javizy]

This topic should answer most of your questions.

Kids learn a set number of kanji each year in school, and finish the 1945 character jouyou set by the end of junior high school. You can get by with this in most situations, but there are a good number of kanji, like 誰, 嘘, 貼, and 喋, to name a few, which are used quite freely without furigana. Proper nouns also use a large number of extra kanji, and you will encounter hundreds more in various forms of technical writing, and in a lot of cases it's the choice of the writer to use furigana or not.

When I asked my friend how many she knew, she couldn't answer, but I got the impression it's well over 3000 from some follow-up questioning. It's definitely possible to become proficient though; just make sure you give kanji some attention on a daily basis.

[QuackingShoe]

As in any language, you never know everything, and you never stop learning until you die, even if you're native.
That said, they learn something like 2000 kanji in school and many, many more outside of school, so yes, they can read quite a lot of them. They wouldn't be literate otherwise, and Japan's literacy rate is quite excellent, heheh.
However, though they can read thousands, due to the modern conveniences of technology many can't actually write some number of them from memory very well. Sortof like how my English handwriting is terrible and I can neither write nor read cursive because I haven't written English with anything other than a computer since I was 11

[hatch_jp]

Elementary School
1st = 80
2nd=160
3rd=200
4th=200
5th=185
6th=181

Junior High school
939 kanji 3 years

[KikoSoujirou]

you never really stop learning kanji...infact after awhile they start forgetting them. After about 1-2nd year of college they start forgetting kanji. Theres thousand and thousands of kanji...almost impossible to remember them all. You just memorize around 2000 then any special characters that you use on a daily basis, your speciality. Reading the newspaper will increase your number of kanji you use daily.
I've asked professors how many they know...and around 2000-3000 is the norm.

[Grimga]

Do all americans know every word? Think of technically. And ask real questions please.

[jhalton]

I think a more interesting question would be, what do people do when they come across kanji that they don't know?


For example, somebody from the city where everything is spelled out in kana or english, goes to the countryside and sits down at a restaurant where the menu has a bunch of kanji he doesn't recognize. What does he do, ask the waiter what it is? Just look at the other words and figure out the ones he doesn't know by filling in the blank in his head?

Of course he could simply ask what it says, but in the 3 seconds where his eyes scan the words, how will he "figure out" what it's saying, you can't "spell" kanji.....

[julian_81015]

The question above is interesting. I asked my wife what she would do, and she simply said “order something else!”
My mother in Law is constantly looking up Kanji to do with business papers etc though, and of course there are so many names that hardly anybody knows how to read. I think it’s like someone mentioned above – how many English speakers know every English word? Considering the complex history of the language, almost none I’m willing to bet.
_____________________
www.juliankitagawa.com

[Foniks]

My girlfriend (who is japanese) studied in the medical field in an English speaking country. She says she could not (and would not be allowed) to work in Japan as she can't recognise many of the medical terms - not only due to the terminology being different, but also some of the Kanji used can be obscure. She would need to train again in Japan to work there.

She definitely doesn't recognise ALL kanji she comes across in normal day to day reading either - in magazines and newspapers, she'll occasionally find one that stumps her. She's only been living outside of Japan for 4 years and goes back regularly so I don't think she has simply forgotten it.

[jhalton]

reply to girlsblue:

That's a funny answer.

Yea, I always wondered how Kanji (and chinese) even has lasted this long when people can't possibly be expected to remember ALL the words in their own language, let alone how to write each one when each word has a different symbol.....

I figure that's why they're teaching english in these countries so much, and why in china they teach them to spell the words in english, rather than (pinyin?) the original "alphabet."

[Foniks]

With regards to english people remembering every word? Yeah, i doubt it. I think everyone is familiar with the standard oxford dictionary, but I once saw the "complete" oxford dictionary in a bookstore.

Lined up end to end (about 20 odd volumes), it would have been a couple meters long. With regards to the next edition according to Wikipedia, they are adding more than 4000 new words a year and don't anticipate the next set to be complete until 2037...

[Ben Bullock]

I would like to know if Japaneses really know all kanjis and other question: in what age they finish to learn all kanjis?

No, probably nobody in Japan knows all the kanjis there are to know. I have a web page on the total number of kanjis which you might be interested in. You might also be interested in my page on the Japanese education system. There must be a few people in Japan who know upwards of six thousand characters, since this is the number of kanjis in the level one "Kanji Kentei".

[yaroujidai]

I would like to know if Japaneses really know all kanjis

Answer is NO

they learn and forget,

most japanese people I know have kanji dictionaries in home or electronic dictionaries.
it is the same as english people have english dictionaries. you can try online dictionary. http://dictionary.reference.com/

kanji have many readings, japanese people may not know all of them.
example if kanji character has 3 readings they may know only one or two of them.

to know how kanji looks like and stroke order to write it does not mean they know everything about kanji.

about the number of kanji
from my research I assume that japanese people know about 600-800 kanji well. as for the rest they may have incomplete knowledge about them. of course it depends on how much time they spend learning kanji. some people may really know about 2000 kanji or more but I doubt they have the time to learn more useful things. Kanji learning takes too much time of which they could spend on learning more practical things.

If you want to ask a Japanese person about the number of kanji they know ask yourself how many english words you know first. probably you can't answer.

some people mentioned kanji used in japanese names.
the truth is that they may use non standard kanji outside of the kanji list including old type Kyuujitai. the reading may be different too. japanese people often ask how to write persons name.
example: Sakurai can be written 桜井　or　櫻井
from a daily life, in some restaurants when there is a queue people are asked to write their names and they write them using kana. I don't know exactly what it is about maybe they book a seat. it is not the point here.
There are many more examples. names may be made out of one, two, three or more kanji.

in what age they finish to learn all kanjis

they never stop to learn kanji.

just think about it, there is no possibility for any person to remember them all.

If you want to count the chinese characters there will be about 3k and if you include multiple versions of transformed, simplified, artistic and archaic characters not used anymore then that number could reach 100k or more than that. The Taiwanese dictionary contains over 106k characters.

Simplified chinese - about 2300 + 1000 obsolete but used in some regions
discovered from about 6000 BC - 3100 characters

the rough number of characters in the set is 3000.

there are many countries that use their own different sets of characters like
China (Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu[Shanghainese]), Japan (Kyuujitai, Shinjitai), Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia ...
the list goes on

[goulnik]

the numbers are 1.5 to twice higher for Chinese, in their respective countries - though in practice, educated people in the mainland would also recognize 'traditional' characters used in Taiwan. In other words, literacy is 2000-3000 characters, with many educated Chinese knowing / recognizing 4000-6000. Again, with all the nuances of knowing / being familiar / understanding / recognizing / pronouncing. Simpler in Chinese where multiple readings are way less than in Japanese, and phonetic component often helps guessing. But then, no hiragana/katakana backup there.
Having said this, it's very common (and quite a joy to watch Chinese friends struggling to remember the particular 'spelling' of some characters, which they know and would recognize instantly, but aren't used to handwrite after graduating.