Hello everyone,

I am looking for a list of the most common kango in Japanese. Something with around 2000 words or more.
Cheers

漢語? As in chinese words?
Don't you mean 敬語 / honorific speech?

Rekkusu Wrote:漢語? As in chinese words?
Don't you mean 敬語 / honorific speech?

漢語 are Japanese words of Chinese origin. Japanese words of native origin are 和語.

I am looking for the "most common kango" list, that is a list of words of Chinese origin, such as junbi, shitsumon, anshin, teian, keisatsu etc. Compound words (apart few exceptions) that can be written with Chinese characters.
I have just found something that might be good here :
http://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/KG_Top6Words.zip
but I haven't tried it yet, plus it doesn't include all the kanji of the 1kyuu.
Any help is appreciated.
Cheers

Hello,

I tried to make a table out of the files, but the result wasn't so good, especially because there are many words that consider the kanji alone, with their kunyomi, that are not necessary for the spreadsheet I am making.
Has anyone found better kango lists?
Cheers

Jarvik7 Wrote:

Rekkusu Wrote:漢語? As in chinese words?
Don't you mean 敬語 / honorific speech?

漢語 are Japanese words of Chinese origin. Japanese words of native origin are 和語.

Since we're on the topic of "most common", I'll add some unnecessary information that 大和言葉 (yamato kotoba) is a more common term for 和語.

clemente Wrote:I am looking for the "most common kango" list, that is a list of words of Chinese origin, such as junbi, shitsumon, anshin, teian, keisatsu etc. Compound words (apart few exceptions) that can be written with Chinese characters.
I have just found something that might be good here :
http://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/KG_Top6Words.zip
but I haven't tried it yet, plus it doesn't include all the kanji of the 1kyuu.

It sort of makes sense that a list of common words wouldn't include some of the kanji.

Wago is much more common in linguistics texts that I've read..

Thanks for the replies.
I am of course aware that there are many wago and that a general most common word list would include them, but that is not what I was looking for. I am specifically looking for a most common kango only word-list. Probably no one ever made one so I guess I'll have to start working on it.
I have found this link http://www.manythings.org/japanese/news/ and the sections with words with kanji seems interesting, but I can only access the quizzes, not the lists proper.

Why are you getting some list of kango in the first place?

The actual reason is that I have been studying Japanese for a long time and now I am starting to learn Korean as well. Since I have a list of very common Korean words (including hanjaeo, that is words of Chinese origin), I wanted to cross reference it with one of kango to help myself with memorization. In many cases the pronunciations are very similar if not even the same junbi->junbi undou->undong etc.

大和言葉 has the nuance of what was spoken in Japan before the arrival of Chinese culture, whereas 和語 stands as a better contrast to 漢語

Ahh nice Clemente. Good luck with your find!

And yes Smackle is right

Smackle Wrote:大和言葉 has the nuance of what was spoken in Japan before the arrival of Chinese culture, whereas 和語 stands as a better contrast to 漢語

I'm fairly sure that most Japanese people don't know either of these words, so it's great that you not only know both of them but can even tell the difference between them.

So if an average Japanese person does not know a certain aspect of Japanese, it's impossible for a foreigner to know it? It's not often that we get nihonjin-ron here!

But wait... aren't you non-Japanese? Didn't you correct my usage of 和語? How would you know, as a foreigner?

Quote:<snip>両者は同じにあつかわれることが多いが、区別することもある。すなわち、大和言葉といった場合には、日本（ヤマト）に大陸文化が伝来する以前の、日本列島で話されていた言語そのものを指すというニュアンスがあるのに対し、和語とは、漢語・洋語などとともに、単語の種別を表す用語としての側面が強調される。

So I guess there was no need to correct me or challenge everyone that came after, other than in an attempt to show off your ego / look down on all us simpletons that use(d) a gimmicky get-rich-quick kanji book...

Ben Bullock Wrote:

Smackle Wrote:大和言葉 has the nuance of what was spoken in Japan before the arrival of Chinese culture, whereas 和語 stands as a better contrast to 漢語

I'm fairly sure that most Japanese people don't know either of these words, so it's great that you not only know both of them but can even tell the difference between them.

You are stupid.

liosama Wrote:

Ben Bullock Wrote:

Smackle Wrote:大和言葉 has the nuance of what was spoken in Japan before the arrival of Chinese culture, whereas 和語 stands as a better contrast to 漢語

I'm fairly sure that most Japanese people don't know either of these words, so it's great that you not only know both of them but can even tell the difference between them.

You are stupid.

LOL seconded.

大和 is ancient Japan so 大和言葉 obviously refers to ancient Japanese. Any Japanese person knows 和　refers to Japan and 漢 refers to china so even if they didn't know the words they could still work them out with 0 problems.

Although according to your logic they wouldn't even know what 和食 is either. Surprising considering they've been eating it most of their life. Funny that. Oh wait, it turns out they do... guess they know Japanese after all.

やまとうたは ひとのこころをたねとして よろづのことのはとぞ なれりける.

mezbup Wrote:大和 is ancient Japan so 大和言葉 obviously refers to ancient Japanese

I know people are having fun beating up on Ben, but 大和言葉 is still definitely used to refer to modern Japanese 和語; it may not be as common a word as 和語 (I'm not sure about that), but it's used.

People were beating up on Ben because he has a horrible attitude/superiority complex, is a hypocrite, and because his "correction" was at best unnecessary and at worst incorrect.

He's gone now anyway.

Without a doubt やまと言葉 is something people do use to mean the same thing as 和語, but I felt like 和語 was being invalidated when it's not an invalid term at all. I found it more appropriate for this context so that's why I said it. If he could add an unnecessary tidbit, so could I.