Jisho will mark a kanji as either Jōyō or Jinmeiyō, such as:
面 : (めん) Mask -> Jōyō
兎 : (うさぎ) Rabbit -> Jinmeiyō
However, Kanji that are neither Jōyō or Jinmeiyō do not appear to have a name tagged, examples:
姦 : (かん) Wicked
葱 : (ねぎ) Welsh Onion
癌 : (がん) Cancer
As level 1 of the 漢字検定 (Kanji Kentei) draws from over 6,000 Kanji, test takers will be seeking Kanji from outside of these lists, so how would they go about finding these "unlisted" Kanji?
Hello everyone,
many people claim that kanji are difficult, because they have multiple readings. However, this is not entirely true. 40% of 2136 jōyō kanji have only one Sinojapanese (on) reading and all jōyō kanji have, in average, only two readings. What is more, I have also found out that approximately 1/5 of these readings are redundant for people who do not aim to go beyond JLPT N2-N1.
This is an updated version of the document and it incorporates 4369 out of 4381 jōyō kanji readings. The complete list of changes, as well as some additional data are provided in the "changelog" sheet. The process of determining usefulness of individual readings is briefly explained in the "method" sheet.
link >>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357163811_Joyo_Kanji_Readings_ver_11
Google docs link >>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11U1dIY6cpQm3-F_yz_GtDURI3zArdOVn4dr95JlVyCU/edit?usp=sharing
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Does anyone know why there are 1780 kanji on this list? The official Jōyō high school kanji list only has 1,110 characters.
The jinmeiyō kanji consist of 863 kanji, so it can’t consist of all of the secondary school kanji.
I created some study lists for myself and shared them so they can be available to everyone else. These are some really helpful study lists for the JLPT N5, N4, N3, N2 and N1 exam levels. Furthermore, there's a study list that contains all the Jōyō Kanji. In case you don't know, the Jōyō Kanji is the list from the Japanese Ministry of Education that covers all "common" kanji. This is a great list to study to become quickly proficient at understanding written Japanese text.
These lists are on Nihongo Master so if you have an account, you can items from this list quickly to your drills so you can study them quickly.
Hope they help!
http://www.nihongomaster.com/lists/view/40/jlpt-n5-study-list
http://www.nihongomaster.com/lists/view/41/jlpt-n4-study-list
http://www.nihongomaster.com/lists/view/42/jlpt-n3-study-list
http://www.nihongomaster.com/lists/view/43/jlpt-n2-study-list
http://www.nihongomaster.com/lists/view/44/jlpt-n1-study-list
http://www.nihongomaster.com/lists/view/45/j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D-kanji-study-list
Jōyō kanji is a list of kanji. Is there a similar, official list of vocabulary words that K12 students are expected to know by the end of their studies? If not, is there maybe such a list for primary school, mirroring Kyōiku kanji?
I'm doing RTK and was wondering if Genki only uses jōyō kanji, because if it does it makes things alot easier to learn when I do start Genki again.
From time to time people ask what some common non-Jōyō Kanji are here and I decided to provide a decent reference after stumbling onto it the other day. The source for the data I am using in this post is here: http://www.mwsoft.jp/programming/nlp/cjk_count.html
I am excluding symbols or kanji only used to make pictures.
These kanji are among the 1000 most common on Wikipedia, but not Jōyō Kanji: 伊 之 彦 弘 阿 也 龍 頁 智 幌
All of them except 頁 and 幌 are common due to their use in names, and should be learned for that reason. 頁 is common because it's the kanji for ページ. Though there is also an article on 頁岩 and that's not exactly an unusually rare word per se.
幌 has its own Wikipedia article, but it's common largely due to its use in the city of 札幌 (Sapporo) in Hokkaidō.
These kanji are among the 1000 most common on Twitter, but not Jōyō Kanji: 嬉 萌 伊 綺 嘘 菅 貰 縺 繋 呟 也
伊、菅 and 也 are there due to their use in names. The rest are all from very common words that you should know. 嬉しい、萌える、綺麗、嘘、貰う、縺れる、繋がる、呟く。 Those words are all common and you should memorize them.
The source also covers the 1001-2000 most common that aren't Jōyō Kanji, but you can go through that section on your own if you would like at your own pace. I just wanted to list the absolutely essential ones.
As a bonus here are Jōyō Kanji that aren't even in the top 3000 most used kanji:
Wikipedia:
萎 楷 諧 慨 嚇 憾 憬 倹 錮 恣 摯 𠮟 酌 拙 羨 箋 塑 唾 惰 衷 嘲 捗 朕 塡 痘 謄 貪 剝 頰 辣 厘 賂
Twitter:
畝 謁 虞 楷 諧 劾 倹 舷 錮 墾 桟 蚕 諮 璽 𠮟 儒 詔 嘱 斥 租 塑 嫡 衷 朕 逓 塡 痘 謄 陪 剝 罷 丙 頰 沃 吏 厘
I want to make a special note on 𠮟. This is a variant form of the more commonly used kanji in 叱る. You want to learn this word. You don't want to worry yourself over a minor graphical (stroke) variation you will likely never notice if it isn't pointed out to you.
I hope people find this helpful.
In Japanese the most common Kanji’s that are expected to be known by everyone are the 2136 Jōyō kanji.
Is there a Chinese equivalent to that, where the most common Hanzi that are required for general literacy are listed?
Currently I am just a beginner and study 30 kanji’s per day. I think I’ll be finished in 3months. Is it worth it to continue studying kanji or stop ?
Hi everyone,
I'm a graduate in Japanese culture and language and author of books on the subject.
Since the English edition of my book on learning Jōyō Kanji was recently released, I've decided to share with the sub 3 full free excerpts in a pdf file.
In detail, they are the full Radicals and essential components chapter, the first chapter on Numbers (and graphically related kanji), and the appendix chapter about kanji writing/Hiragana/Katakana/Rōmaji.
In my method, truly useful 142 radicals and basic elements are immediately explained in such a way that every subtle nuance, usually overlooked, can be immediately known and grasped at once.
That chapter is extracted in its entirety, so that it can be used in learning Kanji without necessarily needing the entire book, but just using one's own imagination and/or experience, helped out by consistent guidelines.
The first thematic chapter on Kanji is still fully extracted to show how knowledge of radicals is applied (thought it will be already clear from some of the entries that Kanji's etymologies can really be more complex at times, often influenced by phonetic references, corrupted shapes, transcription mistakes, loanwords and simplifications).
The appendix chapter briefly completes the basics for those still unfamiliar with Japanese syllabaries.
Hoping to please those interested in the topic. I leave the direct link to the file: "A learning handbook for Jōyō Kanji": excerpts (pdf)
Daniele
After much deliberation, I've decided that the best thing to do is simply memorize the meanings of the kanji, and learn the nuances of how they work in the context of reading afterwards. Doing RTK seems to make the most sense, but I've heard that many keywords given in RTK don't correspond with the actual kanji meanings, which bothers me. KKLC has more accurate meanings, but as a consequence its keywords overlap.
So it seems like the choice is: do RTK and have simple but inaccurate keywords which are often unfaithful to the meanings, or do KKLC in RTK style and have keywords which are faithful to the meanings but overlap and are more confusing. I'm leaning toward doing KKLC because the meanings would be more accurate, but RTK seems easier, having a single keyword anchored to every kanji. I'm not sure which is better.
Hi everyone,
I've started to make a poster with all 2200 Kanji from jōyō and WaniKani: https://github.com/Mononofu/kanji_poster
It's similar to the Kanji Wall Poster from OMG Japan (former white rabbit press), but I wanted to show the readings and meaning right next to the kanji, to make it easier to check if I forget :) (Of course not all of them fit, so I only show the first onyomi, kunyomi and reading for each kanji)
I've been experimenting with different ways of sorting and coloring the kanji; currently I have them sorted by the order they occur in the Remember the Kanji books by Heisig, and colored by the frequency they occur in some texts that I had to hand (NHK Easy News, Satori Reader and Harry Potter).
I'd be curious to hear if you have any ideas for different ways of sorting and coloring the poster, or maybe some other information I should include in it?
Hey Everyone!
I've just finished creating a new course on memrise for the full Jouyou/Jōyō kanji list (URL at the bottom). The reason I made this course is because I couldn't find a course that also provided and tested on the readings, so I included that in this course (the top Onyomi and Kunyomi reading for each kanji are provided and tested on, and all meanings and readings are grabbed from Jisho.org). The course separates all learning by grade.
I also had the audio uploaded for some of the kanji but have since removed it because there seems to be some issues with memrise audio playback at the moment (would randomly choose to playback a single audio file if there was more than one, i.e if i had onyomi and kunyomi readings uploaded it would just choose to play one and in the wrong scenarios) so i'll add the audio back in once these issues are sorted.
Side note: If anyone has a full audio pack for the these kanji would be much appreciated, right now I was grabbing the the mp3's using jpod101, but they don't have recordings of everything): http://assets.languagepod101.com/dictionary/japanese/audiomp3.php?kanji=%kanji%&kana=%kana%
Please let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions for this course, thanks! (Also please let me know if you have any other course suggestions, I've created a few scripts and programs that helped me with generating this memrise course so i should be able to make any new courses fairly quickly!)
Here is the URL:
https://www.memrise.com/course/1956163/joyo-kanji-by-grade-meanings-readings/
Life was good at the start when I began RTK nearly a year ago 人 口 出 (wow these are useful characters I see all the time).
Fast forward to now, near the end and I'm pretty much just learning every tree and flower that exists... 桐 茅 梓 (I don't even know these in English)
What are your least favourite things about the Jōyō?
I've finally decided to start using Anki to help me learn kanji. But I can't seem to find a deck for the jōyō kanji that is actually good. I've only been able to find one that alternates between having the answer be the kanji for every other kanji. I'd much prefer one that shows the kanji first and gives the readings, meanings, and etc. for the answer. I was wondering if anyone knows of any like this?
I know Japanese has almost entirely eliminated ateji for foreign place names (goodbye 米国, hello アメリカ), but after seeing California labeled as 加州 on an old Japanese map from 1902, I started to wonder if other states also had assigned kanji or if California was just special since it was the largest, closest destination in America and had been important since the opening of relations between the two countries.
I was thinking it might be fun to know what was in use for other places, if anything.
(What I really want, aside from just satisfying historical curiosity: reasonably believable/recognizable kanji for Massachusetts, as the name of a fictional region that will contain a fictional city that is a visual blend of Boston and Yokohama.)
Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask.
I'm currently studying advanced level Korean and so I know a good amount of unsimplified hanja/kanji. I plan on studying Japanese soon and I was wondering if there was a list showing all the simplified Japanese kanji and their unsimplified equivalents?
Thank you!
Just as the name says, if you have a suggested book I can buy, or a .pdf that you can share, it would be very appreciated.
Thank you :)
Hello fellow JL enthusiasts,
I guess some of you were, at some point, looking for a reliable source on kanji frequency-of-use information. Many dictionaries and websites, such as jisho.org use only a single obsolete source (news texts from 90's, etc.). Even the official Japanese 2136 jōyō kanji are, in fact, not the 2136 most frequent kanji and there is over 200 characters which average frequency number, in the majority of sources, is well above 2136.
Therefore, consider this a Christmas gift from me to you, this lovely community. I decided to gather data from seven different freely accessible kanji frequency databases and created what is probably the biggest (and the most accurate!) source of kanji frequency data on the Internet. I hope that the list will help you to assess which jōyō really are quite frequently used and which are not. Feel free to use the list for any research purposes. It contains all 2136 jōyō kanji and additional 106 kanji that I have included in the MBO 2000 kanji list ver. 5.9. The order in which kanji are presented is identical with the MBO 2000 kanji list ver. 5.9 + additional 242 jōyō kanji that I have not included in my list.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. The most important information is provided in the "data" sheet of the document, so make sure to check that first, because you might find the answers there.
link to the document >>> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357159664_2242_Kanji_Frequency_List_ver_11
I don't know where to find one and I don't have money to buy a textbook.
I've been trying to search online for a bit and can't find anything that has a lot of words or kanjis. Would be neat if it was something with 1000+ words
I'm just very curious if there are two kanji characters that stand out due to looking considerably similar to one another because of a very small difference.
I'm also learning the kanji radicals which I've just learned to have pairs of that only has small difference in their writing.
Hello, I am Mari, I am Japanese.
I made Japanese road map.
Because when I studied English, I got lost how to study it.
I didn’t know what to do for each skills like reading, speaking..etc🤔
So I did some research on Japanese learning materials and made a list of how to study Japanese.
You can see the good learning materials that the native speaker think it is good for these skills.
- Hiragana – ひらがな
- Katakana – カタカナ
- Kanji – 漢字
- Grammar – 文法
- Listening – リスニング 聞く
- Reading – リーディング 読む
- Speaking – スピーキング 話す
- Writing – ライティング 書く
- Vocabulary – 単語
Hope it helps your Japanese learning✍️
I'm usinng anki deck to learn kanji and I wanted to use a list of kanji and their pronounciations just to check it if i dont remember something.
Hello, fellow kanji enthusiasts.
I would like to ask for your feedback regarding the list of 2000 kanji that were ordered according to multiple criteria. I think it may help some students to learn kanji in the more effective manner that should improve the long-term memory retention rate.
In fact, I would like to conduct a computerized research and create the list of 1500 most frequently used kanji, as other 500 are usually used in only one or two words.
The link to the list >>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K1X5ew0eUBVyXfxv9iL3-Uhm0OtbuyPGaVcDXc6-wgU/edit?usp=sharing
I am revisiting Heisig's RTK. Was there a list of "false friends" floating around? I thought there was one in the old koohii forums but just can't remember.
I was thinking of pairs like:
賄 / 賂
bribe/graft
砂 / 沙
sand/grains of sand
志 / 忠
intention/loyalty
滴 / 漏
drip/leak
怠 / 忘
neglect/forget
Hey guys, For a number of years I've been using a homemade software to count word occurrences in Japanese drama so that I can focus on learning the most useful words and I'm slowly moving this online.
Anyway for fun I have counted all Kanji occurrences and made a JLPT style list based on how often a kanji appear. I also compared the position of the Kanji with the assumed jōyō position and JLPT position. For the JLPT I used the list that's around on the web and which is definitively not to be trusted (分, 誰 are supposedly not in the JLPT for example!).
This list might be quite useful for people who want to focus on spoken Japanese, since the list you find around are usually built on written Japanese (most used words in newspaper or wikipedia), whereas here it's a transcription of the Japanese spoken in dramas, which is in my opinion fairly close to "real" Japanese, although hopefully you will not "殺" as often as they do in drama !
The list can be found on: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jK4RTZwkwaXu8oRNnmgwavigp_vyFtfekP-CmxFQ4RA/edit?usp=sharing
Bonus challenge: could you guess what is the most used kanji? ;)
PS source is JPSubbers
Hi all,
I was just wondering if there exists a comprehensive list of required JLPT Vocabulary/Kanji/Grammar, or something close to that out there? I've done my googling and know that there are a few individual non-official ones out there (such as http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/), but I was just wondering if there was an official list out there that I could get my hands on? Or are the ones such as tanos the best I can get?
Also kind of curious because there seems to be a ton of apps on the app store that have kanji/vocab/grammar tests for JLPT level, but where do they get their list from?
Edit: Top Six Words per Kanji in Top 40,000 Words for 5000 Japanese Novels
Includes three sheets: six words per kanji, each kanji per word, top 40k vocab. Uses 'source' count (number of novels word appears in) to ensure words/kanji that are used in few novels but in larger numbers do not get ranked as high by frequency alone.
/Edit
Top Six Words per Kanji in Top 30,000 Words in Japanese Novels
The 5100 Novel Scan was done by CB4960 and his program "Japanese Text Analyzer". While text analyzers have improved in recent years, the file is still usable until I get around to updating it.
To make the kanji list, I split each character in its own row then merged the rows so each character got the original vocabulary info. I then sorted got a kanji count by adding up word frequency per kanji. Lastly was just getting the top six words for each kanji.
Reason I made this was in preparation to do my "Remembering the Kanji Optimized Part 4" anki deck, which is the fourth most frequent kanji group in groups of 500 ie kanji ranked #1501 to #2000 that are then sorted in RTK order. Before, I used the Core 10k to populate the example words for kanji. Turns out a lot of these kanji don't have words in the Core list so made this to save me time finding them manually like I had to do near the end of RTK Opt pt 3. Yes, I included names in this list since names do show up in Japanese novels after all.
EDIT: Since people keep asking for other resources here's the stuff I've replied with -
-
Video of RTK Optimized deck in use. Shows how I used this resource in these decks.
-
NetFlix Subtitle Vocabulary Frequency files in the video description. Also explains how he uses such a list.
-
Full Frequency List of the 5100 novels. Note this is not a great list to use in an app due to it not showing how many different novels a word appears, meaning main character names have higher than necessary listing.
-
Kanji Frequency List of the 5100 novels
-
[Non-compiled Kanji words](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IdRdV3GTvuArUGs3-T9DuluBtQ7h
TLTR, Here's the list:
- Main animes, mangas, games ordered by difficulty.
- Video game text / scripts dumps (japanese, english or both).
- Resources list.
GENERAL STUDY DECKS
MORPHMAN DECKS
- Anime: Chi's Sweet Home
- Game: Animal Crossing New Horizons
- Game: Dragon Quest 1
- Game: Final Fantasy 7 (The original and Midgar only)
- Game: Pokemon Let's Go
- Game: Pokemon Fire Red (kana only)
- Manga: Yotsuba (5 chapters only)
Alright, now a bit more info. As I study japanese I like regrouping, fixing, improving, creating resources.
I'm sharing some of what I've compiled over two years so let's go over it.
SPREADSHEET
- If you don't know Anki, it's the a SRS flashcard software. It's better than paper flashcards because you can have pictures, sounds and all sort of goodies. And it's free.
- Morphman is an add-on that will decompose sentences into words (or morph), then reorganize those sentences so that you only study sentences with one unkown word. That word becomes known and builds the database. Rinse and repeat.
- More than that, give morphman a text, it will tell you (among other things), how many words you already know from that text, and how many lines you can read.
- That percentage is what I used to order the animes, manga, games...
- Now the limitation is that it only takes into account vocabulary. So if characters speak fast, have accents and so on, there's no number to account for it. However it does provide information for which source has the most common vocabulary.
- In absolute value, the number is meaningless, but the important thing is that you can order the resources.
- I used subtitles for anime, text dump or transcript for games and so on to make the corpus of what Morphamn uses for frequency list. New words I learned were based on that frequency list. Hope it's clear. More explanations are present as comments on the sp
Six months ago I made a commitment to move to Japan to study full time and transition out of the beginner rut I've been in for so long. In preparation for that I picked a goal to complete RTK (along with other self-study resources like genki) to prove to myself that I would use my time there wisely once I moved.
Specifically I chose to use HeisigLite+ which is 2273 kanji from RTK books 1 and 3. I guess 3000 just sounded too high. I was fooled and thought it would take 4 months, but I managed to finish it in 6 months to the day with pretty good retention, studying an average of an hour and 15 minutes for 7 days a week.
It was a very difficult challenge, more than I had even feared, but I get so much enjoyment from recognizing kanji in my studies now. Many rightfully point out that kanji recognition is not Japanese fluency, but its hard to quantify the confidence I have from removing my biggest psychological obstacle in my learning journey.
I wrote a very detailed blog post that I hope can help anybody else interested in RTK. Something I get into at the end is how despite it working for me, RTK was not the primary reason I leveled up, and the dangerous trap I encountered of seeking the "best" way to learn.
https://www.alexnaraghi.com/blog/remembering-the-kanji
Kuchiro Kudoyama, Ultimate Bounty Hunter, Male
Aiya Nasaku, Ultimate Ballerina, Female
Nikku Usuro, Ultimate Actor, Male
Daitan'na Watamura, Ultimate Daredevil, male
Kevin Dalton, Ultimate Rapper, Male
Harushi Ubukata, Ultimate Plane Pilot, Female
Katsu Yamaguchi, Ultimate Lawyer, Female
Tamisu Otanaji, Ultimate Scientist, Male
Shizuki Madora, Ultimate Dentist, Female
Michio Agawa, Ultimate Racecar Driver, Male
Ken Bayara, Ultimate Weightlifter, Male
Nakano Bushida, Ultimate Samurai, Female
Emoru Chigiri, Ultimate Journalist, Female
Liam Tegushi, Ultimate Puppeteer, Male
Hikari Myoga, Ultimate Roller Skater, Female
Tomura Morioka, Ultimate Soccer Pro, Female
Ones for my next class:
Ryuta Okimara, Ultimate Dragon Tamer, Male
Julius Renner, Ultimate Gladiator, Male
Asa Horimatsu, Ultimate Boy Scout, Male
Moreki Ayutaro, Ultimate Knive Thrower, Male
Fernando Jiminez, Ultimate Bull Fighter, Male
