For the last few months, I have been collecting stories for Grades 1-6 kanji from various sources. I am hoping to have a story for each of the Grade 1-6 Kanji by the end of the year - I'm currently about 60% done.

For those interested in the work in progress, my story compilation is available from the following link (which I hope to update regularly until I have reached my target of all Grade 1-6 Kanji):

http://nihongonotto.blogspot.com/2007/11...ed-on.html

I am more than welcome to receive any comments and suggestions on the stories - just send me email, since I do not check this site regularly.

I was about to post asking if there was a reference that listed the Heisig kanji by frequency of use and my request was granted without even having to ask. Nice site!

Laura Wrote:I was about to post asking if there was a reference that listed the Heisig kanji by frequency of use and my request was granted without even having to ask. Nice site!

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the frequency numbers are the same as those in Jim Breen's kanjidic file. If you weren't already aware of it, I'd take a look at this before you use them:

Quote:F<num> -- the frequency-of-use ranking. At most one per line. The 2,501 most-used characters have a ranking; those characters that lack this field are not ranked. The frequency is a number from 1 to 2,501 that expresses the relative frequency of occurrence of a character in modern Japanese. The data is based on an analysis of word frequencies in the Mainichi Shimbun over 4 years by Alexandre Girardi. From this the relative frequencies have been derived. Note:

a these frequencies are biassed towards words and kanji used in newspaper articles,
b the relative frequencies for the last few hundred kanji so graded is quite imprecise.

Point a is particularly important, I think.

Yes, I realized the info was out there in the ether, but since my technical prowess is confined to turning my computer on... Cristine kindly sent me a list in Heisig order. As you pointed the frequency with which kanji are found in newspapers is not necessarily mirrored in other media. For example 輝く may be 1259 on the newspaper list, but in descriptions of musical theater it has to be in the top 500.