http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp...&type=lgns

Quote:

?Look at this one,? he says, pointing to a symbol for the butterfly. There are more than 80,000 of these characters, called kanji, and while Valentine isn?t endeavoring to learn them all, he wants to reach the 2,000 or so needed for high school equivalency. He has spoken Japanese for years. That wasn?t enough, which, as with Valentine, often tends to be the case.

He?s using a system espoused by an American theologist who taught himself how to read in Japanese. It?s all about imagining, and the kanji for butterfly combines three other symbols Valentine has already memorized: insect, tree and generation.

?So,? Valentine says, ?in my mind, for this word, butterfly, I have the vision of a tree that has this cocoon that has been there for generations, and it has this little insect coming out the end of a cocoon. And with it, I go insect, tree, generation. And I?ve got the kanji.

?Isn?t it crazy?

End Quote

Well, it doesn't mention "Remembering the Kanji" so it could also be Kanji ABC. Anyone know for sure what method he's using?

Nukemarine Wrote:Well, it doesn't mention "Remembering the Kanji" so it could also be Kanji ABC. Anyone know for sure what method he's using?

The Article Wrote:He's about a quarter of the way there, 540 kanji conquered, and with a 12-a-day pace figures to finish in July. Opening day?s dozen had a decided lilt toward nature: butterfly, rainbow, snake, lightning bug, insect, pond, bug, ground, scorpion, horse chestnut, single and prefecture.

That's 513-522, so looks like Heisig

Where did they get that 80'000 number? That seems high even for an exhaustive count of all inventoried Chinese characters (which I thought was about 50'000, and around 30'000 if you count only those that have been used in Japan).

And the way the article is written, people will think that Japanese people actually learn 80'000 kanji and that Valentine is learning only a tiny fraction of them. v__v

Recent mainland Chinese dictionaries count up to 80,000. Most are not in use by Chinese or Japanese though.

Cool, but yeah, I don't like how it makes it sounds like there's 80,000 kanji in use >_>
2100 is normal, I think. 3000-4000 if you read wordy stuff.

Quote:"Eighty-(expletive)-thousand," Valentine says, "and I'm learning them."

Kanken 1 tests approximately 6000 kanji, but many Japanese people can't even pass that. The 3000ish in Kanken pre-1 is probably a good estimate for modern literacy.