How much exactly are we talking about – or how many characters is it necessary to know?

○ there are two kinds of writing used in the Japanese language (hiragana and katakana, with 46 – 46 basic syllables). With the help of these and some modifications to them, all Japanese words can be written theoretically. This is the minimum that everyone should learn in the first few weeks because they are needed for most of the coursebooks and for using the worksheets prepared by the teacher.

○ The more complicated concept characters, the kanji is also used together with the syllable writing. This means that in a Japanese text, all the syllable signs and all the kanji characters can appear together and each has its unique way of usage.

○ The total number of kanji characters ever used (including Chinese kanji characters) is around 50.000.

○ However, not even the most comprehensive kanji dictionaries contain more than 10.000 characters – which is already an impressive number!

○ An average-educated Japanese knows 3.000 – 3.500 kanji characters passively (that means they can read but can’t write the characters, because there is normal as everybody can write much less than he can read – even the Japanese J)

○ However, "only" 1945 kanji characters are allowed to be used in official publications – this is also approximately the same number that is required of the highest level of the international exam.

○ Japanese learn 881 kanji characters in the first six years of elementary school, which is somewhat less than Level 2 of the JLPT (international Japanese language exam).

○ HOWEVER NO ONE SHOULD BE FRIGHTENED BY THESE BIG NUMBERS, BECAUSE THE KANJI CHARACTERS HAVE AN INCIDENTAL RATE WHERE THE FIRST FEW HUNDRED KANJI CHARACTERS ARE MUCH MORE COMMON THAN THE ONES AT THE END OF THE "LIST", SO, IT IS POSSIBLE TO READ A LOT ALREADY BY JUST HAVING THE KNOWLEDGE OF MUCH FEWER KANJI CHARACTERS.

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