I apologize if this is a no brainer, I'm fairly new to the kanji game as I only just finished RTK1 last week. It seems odd to me that the kanji 誰 is only now being proposed as a joyo kanji. This is such a staple word I was surprised to find that I hadn't learned it in RTK1 despite being composed of very common primitives.

Does anyone have any insight into why it wasn't included? Has the word typically been written in hiragana form all these years?

My guess would be because most of the question words are usually written in kana so it was probably just thought だれ would become the most common form. For some reason, the kanji has stuck (probably because it's cool).

That's kind of what I thinking. I was just dumbfounded when I ran across it in the first lesson of Tae Kim and I was like "Dude, I don't know anything about word turkeys.". In fact I think it's even in the example story in the reading section of koohii.

It's a very common Kanji and it's being included in the revised Jouyou list.

Lots of common kanji are absent in the current jouyou. For example, 俺 and 丼.

It's also kind of a nobrainer because it's so damn common how could you forget it at all? It's only 2 radicals Glad to see it's being included in the new jouyou though.

The notion of the jouyou kanji is interesting because the last 500 are common but they're common amount the rarer characters. Then there's 1000 about jouyou which could actually call rare and mean it. Then there's 3000 after that which are almost a joke to call "rare". Then there's the 3000 after that which if not even kanken tests you're probably really never going to encounter them!

And then there's 「熊」（くま）which for some inexplainable reason was only recently re-introduced to the joyo list even though it's part of the name of a freaking prefecture for goodness' sake...

When you read through the average Japanese novel, it's interesting to see how these are treated... Usually, non-joyo kanji will get furigana treatment, but some words like 誰 do not, presumably because most people should know them already (even though not being on the joyo/"everyday use" list is supposed to mean that they aren't used everyday...)

zohar Wrote:And then there's 「熊」（くま）which for some inexplainable reason was only recently re-introduced to the joyo list even though it's part of the name of a freaking prefecture for goodness' sake...

I guess there just weren't enough newspaper stories about bears back in the day...

zohar Wrote:And then there's 「熊」（くま）which for some inexplainable reason was only recently re-introduced to the joyo list even though it's part of the name of a freaking prefecture for goodness' sake...

Aren't there still a bunch of kanji like that? I was learning prefecture names briefly at one point and there were a few characters I didn't know.

There are currently 13 prefectures (well, 都道府県) that cannot be written with Jouyou Kanji:
茨城県, 栃木県, 埼玉県, 神奈川県, 山梨県, 岐阜県, 静岡県, 大阪府, 奈良県, 岡山県, 愛媛県, 福岡県, 熊本県, 鹿児島県)

All of the kanji from there are in the proposed additional kanji.

You would think that prefecture name kanji would be considered important enough to keep in the list, which makes me wonder why they were dropped in the first place, never mind being *re-introduced* now...

They were never "dropped", they weren't on the Touyou or Jouyou list.

I could of sworn reading somewhere that 「熊」 at least was once on the list, but I could be wrong. It may be that the kanji lists before the post-war reforms can't be considered Joyo or not, and in that case I'm just confusing things... I just remember reading that a lot of words like 「熊」 used to be a part of the standard usage list, but were dropped for the present-day list. But if Joyo only really talks about the post-war reforms, then I don't know...

Yes, 誰 was one of the first kanji they taught me at school in first year Japanese. I was so surprised to find it wasn't in the Toyo list.

Names are a different situation. As well as the ~2000 Joyo, there is a supplementary list of kanji that can be used in names (it too has slowly grown over time). So quite likely the prefecture name kanji are included in this extended list and so are quite "standard", even though they're not in Joyo proper.

Another point... I don't think how common they are is the only reason for inclusion. For example, 昭和 is probably the only use of 昭 and it's use will decrease over time. However, for political reasons it had to be included in Toyo. Likewise many kanji for archaic units such as 匁 and 勺.

I wonder why they want to increase the number of kanji in common use? Seems like a backward step to me. They should be gradually reducing them over time.

Raichu Wrote:I wonder why they want to increase the number of kanji in common use? Seems like a backward step to me. They should be gradually reducing them over time.

Well, there's some Kanji being added (fairly common ones) and some being removed. Guess there's just more common ones outside of the Joyo Kanji than obsolete ones inside.
Easy come easy go.