For the purposes of my own study, I don't want to learn to write every kanji. I want to remember how to write what most Japanaese remember how to write. The problem is, how can I determine which kanji those are?

I'm worried that using a frequency table like the wikipedia frequency list will not generate a realistic scenario of what kanji people here in Japan actually remember how to handwrite, and wiki is a pretty formal kind of text anyway.

Any lists or discussion in your wisdom guys? Which kanji should I learn for production and which for recognition, to best represent common practice in Japan. Is it at all possible to know?

Thanks very much once again to this excellent forum .


(I'm not sure if I should I have started a new thread. I made one recently about naming kanji, I could have asked further in there. If so, feel free to merge it.)

Well, the japanese learn to write them all, and then they forget some from lack of use over time. So that would differ between people. So don't wuss out. Learn them all, a great many of us have and its not very bad at all. Meaning its not that difficult.

Yeah, I'll learn to write them all, even with the recognition cards I will still write them out, but the real difference is while Japanese learn to write them, they don't use SRS programs to keep them in their memory all the time.

I'm thinking more about cards for after RtK, like sentences and vocab. I don't really wanna spend my time writing them all, cause writing takes up most of my review time.

Instead of spending time writing all my cards out all the time to keep them in active memory, why not spend that time learning more words which is much more useful considering there is not a real need to write them all.

I've done 1500 of RtV anyway, but as I said, I'm thinking beyond that, for future cards.

shinyclef Wrote:Yeah, I'll learn to write them all, even with the recognition cards I will still write them out, but the real difference is while Japanese learn to write them, they don't use SRS programs to keep them in their memory all the time.

Yes, they're sadly inferior to us. Kawaiisou. /sarcasm

Seriously, learn them... SRS the crap out of them... And then stop SRS'ing. You don't need to do it forever, unless you want to remember that forever. If you use the language, you won't lose it and don't need to SRS for the rest of your life.

wccrawford Wrote:

shinyclef Wrote:Yeah, I'll learn to write them all, even with the recognition cards I will still write them out, but the real difference is while Japanese learn to write them, they don't use SRS programs to keep them in their memory all the time.

Yes, they're sadly inferior to us. Kawaiisou. /sarcasm

Seriously, learn them... SRS the crap out of them... And then stop SRS'ing. You don't need to do it forever, unless you want to remember that forever. If you use the language, you won't lose it and don't need to SRS for the rest of your life.

I agree.For me personally I'll keep srsing until I feel I'm at the levels I want in the language. You don't always need to srs everything. But until you reach a certain level where only immersion and using the language reminds you of certain things. Then you will have to keep srsing.

Of course they are not inferior. Using the language naturally atually leads to forgetting how to write particular kanji. I don't want to keep those kanji in my memory forever which is what an srs is designed to do. I'd rather spend that time doing something else, like you know, using the language... eventually I'll probably stop srsing altogether, but I'm not at that point where I can dive in.

Ok, here's a new question for anyone who feels like helping.
For curiosity's sake, has there been any information collected that anyone knows of that shows which kanji are commonly kept in active production.

Sorry guys, I'm just not looking for a debate on what I should or shouldn't do. You don't have to answer lol.


To try to keep this on topic, I'd like to restate that my question is about any lists or information about which kanji to focus on retaining writing, and which kanji to be fine with recognition, in cards after RtK, like vocab and sentences. I will keep srsing until I am comfortable learning naturally from native sources. Writing takes up most of my time currently, and I feel that I could better use that time learning other things, as my Japanese friends told me I'm wasting my time with certain kanji, as they don't even know how to write them. That's all... ^^;;

There's no reliable and recent studies of literacy in Japan, so it's hard to say what kanji a Japanese would know how to write -- it depends a lot on their education level and current job, of course. It also depends on exactly what you mean by "remember how to write". I've heard estimates ranging from 500 to 3000 as the number of kanji an "average" Japanese would be able to write. I put more faith in lower numbers than higher numbers, but there's no way to know for sure.

To sum up, there's no way to give you a list of kanji that you should be able to know how to write. This number differs for everyone anyway.

Delete the kanji cards that seem useless to you. Keep the rest. Once the intervals get long it doesn´t take much effort to maintain. It takes less than two seconds to hit "easy" on a character you see all the time.

Only once you start spending a significant amount of time reading Japanese and all of the intervals on your kanji cards are really long does quitting become a decent option.

I believe there is a big difference between what a Japanese native can write in terms of simply prompting them on individual Kanji vs their ability is to write entire words.

The reason I believe this is:

1. It happens to me on rare occasions. I'll be messing around doing Kanken stuff on my DS and not remember how to write a single kanji word.......only to check the answer to find that the kanji I couldn't remember is one that I've written correctly within a multiple character compound. If this is happening to me at my extremely low level (all things considered) then I have a small hunch that it applies to native Japanese speakers as well.

2. I tested a Japanese native who has been living in Alabama for the past 4 years. Without one second of practice on my DS, and never taking the Kanken in his life, he ALMOST passed level 3 on his first try, and in fact I'm pretty sure he really did pass if it wasn't for the fact of him not being used to the DS's character recognition (it is easy to click the answer button without checking to see if it recognized the character correctly). If a Japanese native is essentially able to pass Kanken 3kyu after living in America for 4 years, and doing all of his major writing assignments in English, then it leads me to believe that the average educated native can still write a ton of characters.

Although 3kyu only tests the writing of about 1300 characters or so (it's the kyoiku set plus the 4kyu kanji, for some reason they don't make you write the 3kyu kanji until 2kyu).

It only actually tests you on writing a specific subset of that 1600. Something like 300 characters. The previous levels have covered the 1300 before but the KanKen still tests you on how to read the rest.

But I'm sure most would agree that the 300 or so Kanji tested in the 1300-1600 Kanji frequency range tested aren't exactly coming from uber common compounds. As other advanced learners have mentioned in previous threads, even if you have a JLPT1 level vocabulary you'd probably still be lucky to pass an even mid-lower level Kanken exam on your first try. The fact that he could still pass level 3 after living in America for 4 years says a lot.

Hey, I've got a buddy learning English.

He only wants to learn to spell properly the words that most Americans can spell.

Anyone got a list?

/sarcasm ^_^

activeaero Wrote:If a Japanese native is essentially able to pass Kanken 3kyu after living in America for 4 years, and doing all of his major writing assignments in English, then it leads me to believe that the average educated native can still write a ton of characters.

A ton of kanji? That's a very general conclusion. I can write a ton of kanji.

Quote:The fact that he could still pass level 3 after living in America for 4 years says a lot.

His passing level 3 says a lot about him and only him. He's working in America for a reason, no? I'm sure we can find an example of native who scores significantly less "while living in Japan."

The amount of kanji a native can write varies based on age, class, occupation, education and a host of other factors. If you only want to learn to write the kanjis a native writes, then you need only learn to write all the jouyou. Once you've learned to write all the jouyou, the ones you write less frequently will naturally fade from your repertoire. You will have achieve the goal you sought after.

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:Hey, I've got a buddy learning English.

He only wants to learn to spell properly the words that most Americans can spell.

Anyone got a list?

/sarcasm ^_^

You might think /sarcasm is perfectly appropriate in this case, but if your buddy was not an advanced student, and he had words from some old dictionary on his list like myrmecophilous, timenoguy and caesaropapism, I would suggest to your friend that he could better spend his time doing something else to more effectively bring him to a higher level of functionality in English, rather than spend his time learning to spell these words. While my case is exaggerated, it is still valid.

My goal is to learn the most useful stuff first, and well, I just don't think learning to write some of the kanji in the joyo list is practically the best use of time.

This is just my situation because production cards take a long time for me to get through, and I'm eager to be learning more words instead of the struggling to write the kanji my Japanese friends are even clueless about.

Thanks for contributing to the discussion positively to those who have

shinyclef Wrote:

Dustin_Calgary Wrote:Hey, I've got a buddy learning English.

He only wants to learn to spell properly the words that most Americans can spell.

Anyone got a list?

/sarcasm ^_^

You might think /sarcasm is perfectly appropriate in this case, but if your buddy was not an advanced student, and he had words from some old dictionary on his list like myrmecophilous, timenoguy and caesaropapism, I would suggest to your friend that he could better spend his time doing something else to more effectively bring him to a higher level of functionality in English, rather than spend his time learning to spell these words. While my case is exaggerated, it is still valid.

My goal is to learn the most useful stuff first, and well, I just don't think learning to write some of the kanji in the joyo list is practically the best use of time.

This is just my situation because production cards take a long time for me to get through, and I'm eager to be learning more words instead of the struggling to write the kanji my Japanese friends are even clueless about.

Thanks for contributing to the discussion positively to those who have

My point must have been taken wrong.

I was going for the fact that everyone has different words that they can or cannot spell due to their backgrounds, so to make a list would be close to impossible.

I certainly don't want people to waste time learning words or kanji that they will never use, but what one person will commonly use can be separate from what another will, even in everyday life. I also highly doubt there is a properly compiled list of kanji retained versus the actual joyo kanji, so just learn them and forget what you don't use.

Sorry for the confusion :p I'm not THAT much of a jerk, haha

The closest we've come, and it's reasonable at that, is a common usage list. This can be common kanji and common words via internet scans.

Knowing how to read, write, hear and speak the top 6000 words (and associated kanji) is easier to train anyway. It's not only available, but by virtue of being common then you'll run into them all the time via recreational exposure (is there a better term here?).

After that level is reached, it really does come down to specializing for business or rounding out via next group of common words/kanji.

Personally, I stopped writing during my reviews. Learning to type fluidly may be a better skill to reinforce which can be done during reviews or just visiting lots of blogs/forums.

kazelee Wrote:His passing level 3 says a lot about him and only him. He's working in America for a reason, no? I'm sure we can find an example of native who scores significantly less "while living in Japan."

1. He went to school in America, not work.

2. Yes I'm sure we could find a native speaker living in Japan that would do worse. We can find a lot of things if we look.

3. I specifically mentioned "averaged EDUCATED native".

4. The kanken testing organization themselves states that most natives can pass pre-2kyu with a slight amount of studying.

I never made the claim that everyone is like my friend but he is definitely not a Kanji master according to his girlfriend that makes fun of him for his lack of ability. I actually mentioned this several months ago in the video I made about this little experiment so this isn't just something I added in now. His girlfriend was another Japanese student a few years younger and thus she was able to notice how his Japanese ability had diminished with him being in the states for these past 4 years. Yet, I give this guy the 3kyu and he essentially passes it on his first try.

Does that mean every native is just like him? Of course not. Does it suggest that native Japanese might know quite a bit of Kanji? Possibly.

Activeaero and the like.

Dude I seriously don't understand why so many people on here are so worried about what the **** japanese know in regards to Kanji.

"Does it suggest that native Japanese might know quite a bit of Kanji? Possibly."

Possibly?? I mean seriously you only give it a possibly? I live in China for example, kanji is written everywhere on everything, everyday. I look around and wonder "These people might know themselves some kanjis possiblyss.." Of course they do! Same thing in Japan, its like saying "I wonder if them americans can spell thems any of them words"
The answer is an overwhelming and resounding YES THEY MO****F***** can...Ok now that i got that out of my system. Is it really worth conversation to discuss the undereducated or otherwise unintelligent minority that maybe lacks a strong knowledge of Kanji? And is it worth it to consider whether a japanese economist is familiar with the writing zoological terms in kanji? No it isn't, it's god honestly a waste of time. I guess if you find it interesting to hypothesize about meaningless and vague statistics, rather than useful uses of time, like actually studying your L2...than it's ok, but it is good to consider that this discussion is probably of no benefit in acquiring your L2, save the part about usage lists.

Sorry, it's just a bit pointless imo.

Yonosa Wrote:Activeaero and the like.

Dude I seriously don't understand why so many people on here are so worried about what the **** japanese know in regards to Kanji.

"Does it suggest that native Japanese might know quite a bit of Kanji? Possibly."

Possibly?? I mean seriously you only give it a possibly? I live in China for example, kanji is written everywhere on everything, everyday. I look around and wonder "These people might know themselves some kanjis possiblyss.." Of course they do! Same thing in Japan, its like saying "I wonder if them americans can spell thems any of them words"
The answer is an overwhelming and resounding YES THEY MO****F***** can...Ok now that i got that out of my system. Is it really worth conversation to discuss the undereducated or otherwise unintelligent minority that maybe lacks a strong knowledge of Kanji? And is it worth it to consider whether a japanese economist is familiar with the writing zoological terms in kanji? No it isn't, it's god honestly a waste of time. I guess if you find it interesting to hypothesize about meaningless and vague statistics, rather than useful uses of time, like actually studying your L2...than it's ok, but it is good to consider that this discussion is probably of no benefit in acquiring your L2, save the part about usage lists.

Sorry, it's just a bit pointless imo.

I agree with all of this. Please understand my "possibly" was a sarcastic way of saying, as you so clearly put it, "YES THEY MO****F***** CAN" lol.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we shouldn't learn kanji, I just want to prevent unnecessary leeches by avoiding the unnecessary kanji.
Yes they mofo can understand kanji, but this is not about understanding, this is about writing. This thread is more of a reaction to Japanese people telling me that no one really uses the kanji I'm learning to write, and others are so rare that Japanese people check their phones and dictionaries when they want to write them. I'm more interested in which kanji I don't need to deliberately keep srsing once I finish RtK, so I can use my time on the stuff I need to do most. But don't take it all so emotionally guys, I know we all love studying them lol.
And, lol, of course the Japanese know a lot of kanji, that's not what this was meant to be about.

Thanks for the info guys, I guess there's no information availble. That's all I needed to know, thanks.

Mostly I just got rid of kanji like "chrysanthemum."

The rest have been fairly useful, and I still remember how to write crysanthemum as it remains the herald of uselessness in my list of reasons why Heisig is dumb.

...I still don´t know how to spell crisanzimerm in English, though.

My advice would be to just do RTK lite and unsuspend cards for kanji as you come across them.

The main value of writing them isn't writing them out by hand/pretty handwriting, it's to help encode and recall them in/from memory. Don't underestimate the power of muscle memory. In fact, precisely because the trend seems to be that recognition is increasing and even usage might be or can increase (I'm not sure about what surveys say about the latter but to me the logic is sound that if people can produce kanji more easily with a computer, they'll end up using and thus seeing them more) thanks to typing and IME/etc., I think that's why it's more important than ever to have a way to incorporate muscle memory into the learning process. I use 'muscle memory' as a loose term. More: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...4#pid96254

Also, if your interest is simply what kanji to learn first and most efficiently, we have plenty of threads on that. I wrote a convoluted one in the Japanese Keywords thread and Nukemarine's got a nice guide for using RTKO Lite, smart.fm in the KO order, etc. I think eventually we should have enough native media as 'corpora' that we can all just pick what to learn first according to our own interests very easily, combining both learning materials/structured efficiency with the native/spontaneous stuff.

Either way, finding a streamlined strategy for incorporating muscle memory in varying degrees for any kanji you're learning and reviewing is important, I feel, and Science!™ agrees.

Personally I want to see some more multiliteracy studies across the board with rigorous models for cross-cultural/comparative analyses, because I'm convinced that kanji contribute to higher literacy in the long term even though they're initially more elaborate to learn, or rather that they can be, and I hope that Japan streamlines their kanji teaching and usage and other countries adopt logographs based on and alongside their own primary phonographic scripts, as Japan has adopted the alphabet. ;p Disagree? Prove me wrong! Anyone who can show me that Japan has worse literacy than say, America, and that this is because of kanji and not sociocultural/economic reasons, or even that any negative element of literacy in Japan is due intrinsically to kanji and not to how it's taught/those aforementioned reasons, I will pay them a million dollars taken from the James Randi fund.

Also: Japanese people are stressed because they can only read 500 Kanji. - Anyone who gets 'emotional' about such tangents is probably doing so based on videos like that. ;p

tokyostyle Wrote:Everyone can write the jyoyo kanji. If they can't then they are called idiots to their face.

That's nonsense. There's no way that "everyone" can write 2000 kanji. College graduates can't do that reliably.