One of the great challenges when learning the Japanese language is kanji (Chinese ideograms), on this subject 2 questions arise that many people ask: How many kanji are there? And how many kanji should I learn in Japanese? In this article, we are going to talk about these 2 subjects.
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How many kanji are there?
It is impossible to know the exact number of existing kanji. In China thousands of kanji were created in different regions throughout history, Japan also created its own ideograms. And throughout the history of Japan some kanji are no longer used, or are rarely seen. For these reasons it is impossible to determine an exact number of kanji in the Japanese language.
If you are going to count all the kanji used in Japanese history, before the existence of hiragana the numbers can exceed 40,000. The Japanese Ministry of Education has established a list called Jouyou kanji (常用漢字) with a total of 2,136 kanji. This list was made to catalog the most used kanji in the Japanese language, in newspapers, TV, books, etc.
1006 kanji taught during primary education and 939 kanji taught during secondary education. The numbers are not exact, because over the years several kanji have been dropped and some have been added.
How many kanji should I learn?
You should learn as much as possible without worrying about quantities. More than 2,000 characters are used in the Japanese language, but you won't need all of them to achieve fluency. Learning the 1006 kanji taught in primary education is more than enough for you to understand 80% of the language.
If you want to learn kanji, we recommend not focusing on quantity, try to learn the characters the way Japanese students learn in schools. That is, if you want to learn how to write and read each kanji, try to learn between 100 and 200 characters a year.
To improve your learning, we recommend studying words and sentences instead of isolated ideograms. Try to learn the Japanese language and not just kanji. Avoid trying to memorize ideograms and don't waste time counting the number of kanji you've learned.
I personally think it's completely wrong to count the amount of kanji we've learned, and I think many would also agree. Luiz Rafael made a video talking exactly about this subject and you can watch it below:
Suki Desu has been working with Luiz Rafael to provide you with a better education. If you still don't know Luiz Rafael's work and his closed course, we recommend that you sign up on our website, and follow our social networks for more information. You can also read this article talking about the Japanese Online Program.
