Learning Japanese fast - Why not use frequency lists for 80% coverage?

erlog Wrote:I thought the same thing when I first started studying Japanese. I was highly skeptical of the 常用 kanji list because it was created in the days before computers. How could they have possible known which kanji to include and which not to?

The answer is that they were smart. In the research I did on the list(it was quite exhaustive), with the exception of a few kanji here and there the 常用 kanji list pretty much lines precisely up with the frequency data I was able to generate. All of the places it deviates are places that you could easily say, "Yeah, but this kanji is more important despite being less frequent."

Another possible answer is that the 常用 is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If those are the characters that the Japanese learn in school, then they will be the ones most commonly used in modern Japanese. Also, consider that, while Japanese is evolving, many of the new words are kana words, and I doubt many new kanji are being created.