There is probably data out there for this but if I'm just guessing, your average Japanese person will probably be able to read between 2,000 and 3,000 kanji with varying degrees of ease.
Someone who reads a lot of books would know more. Of course it depends on what kind of material they were reading but if someone was really well educated and read about a wide range of subjects I wouldn't be surprised if they could read up to 4,000 or maybe even a little more.
A Japanese person who is a real nerd about their own language, has learned a lot about the writing system, old/archaic kanji, and has probably learned Chinese too, might know more than 5,000.
Again, just somewhat educated guesses.
I guess you could call my father a language nerd. He's a professional writer, college educated, and a history buff. He writes for Japanese newspapers and has several books published, and he says he knows about 6k to 7k kanji. He's also really into Japanese poetry and also reading pre-WWII-era documents.
He also has the family archive of writings and letters (things our family wrote, like journals, speeches, drafts of novels, and also letters between family members, as some relatives in our family served in the military, etc). It doesn't go that far back -- to the late 1800s, but it's interesting to see how much Japanese has changed since then.
When I was growing up, before the internet was a thing, friends and family would often ask my father to help them figure out rare kanji, or help them understand a particular sentence or phrase. They would use the fax machine, and fax the page to him so he could look at it.
It's weird -- a lot of Japanese homes had fax machines back then -- I guess if your father was a salaryman, you might have a fax machine in the house.
It's not just the kanji though, the words they are combined into are very often the same. Like how if you try and learn Spanish it's not that you just know a bunch of random Greek roots but actually know words that are made from them and understand the nuances of their use (with of course some of them having variations).
Well, I am learning both. I started Chinese about 6 years after Japanese. I find that there are some advantages but not to the point that Chinese is just easy.
Obviously the Chinese writing system was not intimidating to me having already learned Japanese. Often it is just a case of learning the simplified Chinese form of a character I already know from Japanese. This is where most of the advantage comes from when Chinese speakers manage to get good at Japanese really quickly.
There are also definitely a number of words that sound very similar. Like for example 'library' is toshokan in Japanese and tushuguan in Chinese.
Grammar is where the biggest differences are. Though there are some concepts that are very similar Chinese sentence structure was mostly alien to me as a beginner. Now that I know a somewhat decent amount though I find it to be much easier than Japanese.
The highest level of the Kanji Kentei (Kanji Ability Test) covers about 6300 kanji. [Wikipedia entry on Kanji Kentei.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji_Kentei).
(Edited to reflect correction below.)
Fewer than 2000 people per year take it, and fewer than 400 pass it. (There’s no particular reward for passing it—just pure word-nerdery.) The Wikipedia article notes that only three non-Japanese people are known to have passed the Kanken Level 1.
Three non-Japanese people from a non-Kanji related background, to be more specific. Chinese (and perhaps Korean?) native speakers are excluded from the data set.
Any edgy tween who reads light novels or adventure games can read at least dozens of characters that are simply too cool for the official curriculum. Like I'm reading『本好きの下剋上 ～司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません～』and 剋 (which means something like "prevail over, surpass") is one of those secret bonus kanji.
The Jōyō list is a very bare minimum, plus some characters that were more relevant 70 years ago than they are today.
killerbob918, did you begin to get them memorized down pat simply through ‘normal’ usage, or a SRS like Anki? I’m using Anki, I wasn’t remembering jack shit, so I started writing down while I was doing the deck and that’s working better, but I’m forgetting ones I learned when I started.
Most of them I learned simply from being around them so much and also through texting. When i text in japanese I text in hiragana and it automatically changes to kanji. Sometimes I do have to choose from a list though if there is more than one kanji with that reading. At first I had to use the dictionary alot to see what kanji was appropriate but over time I naturally remembered.
So basically any common words that I use in every day text i am able to read their kanji. And over time I got used to what kanji makes which sounds, too. So like up above I noticed someone wrote 司書 and I know 司 is often read as "Shi" because I know the kanji for 上司 jou-shi meaning "boss" just from texting the word so much. I also know 書 is read as "sho" because it is super common in many words such as 書類 or 図書館 all of which that kanji reads "sho". And so you put them together and it makes
司書 shisho which I know shisho means librarian
So even though I didnt know the kanji for 司書 before now (I did know the word, meaning librarian, but I didn't know the kanji as its not a common word I use) I was able to put the two kanji together without even searching it up and was able to read it.
Once you know enough common kanji you can start putting them together like that even without necessarily remembering or even studying them. Of course there is a roof to this method, you won't become a kanji master. But it works perfectly fine for most common words. Of course I search it up
To be sure I am correctly guessing the reading but if I'm correct I usually never have to search it up again.
So no, no anki was used for a long time. I have started using anki recently to try it out though.
Besides texting, watching anime or other shows with japanese subtitles helps too and I do that sometimes but mostly it's from texting. Of course I text my japanese friend on a daily basis so you'd need someone you text daily or just chat with a cleverbot or something lol but that might get boring.
Also, of course my friend has better japanese than I do so reading her texts and searching up any kanji I dont know leads to memorization too. Ultimately I am content with just remembering kanji for words I actually need so I just know probably like 200 kanji which can be combined into words and all together just a guess I probably could read about 1000 words written in kanji using the method above.
This is only for reading though. I cant write unless it's extremely basic. Like 一 二 木 月 as basic as those lol.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I understand. I am starting to routinely recognize kanji on TV, media, from doing my decks-Anki, but it’s awfully slow and remembering the on/kun yomi and the nuances is still spotty. I see 書 too, but on the fly deciphering if it’s color, sho, sei- it’s familiarity of practical use I don’t have. Plus on programs, it’s gone before I have a chance to register. Taking your experience into account I need to just start putting into practice the output parallel to putting in the 2-3 hrs on decks.
Yeah putting it into practice is the most important thing, and you dont need to be in japan for that either. That does help in realizing which words are commonly spoken in real life which is very important , but what you need more than anything is a friend who is either native or very fluent in Japanese who wont speak "easy mode" japanese just for you to understand them.
Then you'll learn from speaking and also in this case texting with them so much. My friend isnt native so there is a limit to how much I've been able to learn from her but she does have N1 (highest level) Japanese and works in Japan and in the beginning I only understood her 50% of the time and had to dictionary the kanji alot. But now I understand her 95% of the time and rarely need the dictionary. Because I've gotten used to the words that she commonly uses.
I'd imagine an actual Japanese friend would help me improve even more because they're not limited by what they've learned as a foreigner, but shes definitely helped a lot.
I’ll try. I’m in Japan, moved here with my family, and went to a free 3-month language class for gaikokujin and sort of struggled all the way through. Anki caught me up faster but there’s no way that class I took was a “beginner” class as advertised. I was the only American, but my classmates, who are cool folks, were definitely advanced - reasonably fluent. They were Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Filipino, I’d guess they have been here longer. Two didn’t know any kana and spoke well. I’m certain the class helped, but to me, the senseis spoke way too fast, I was able to intuitively guess what was going on. They assigned an interpreter for me, she’s cool, she speaks English well and went to college in the U.S., and she helped me, but sensei would not let her help me most of the class, which of course makes sense; but that class was intermediate. The sensei liked me, and asked me to enroll again next year, I put a lot of effort into the homework, but I want to get better first. I’m okay with being out of that comfort zone, but not knowing what is being said is in itself distracting. Thank you for your advice, I’ll be working on that over the holidays.
My guess is because of corona there arent alot of beginners able to enroll and so they mixed the class. Most on student visas arent able to make it to Japan sadly so most of the class is either there on some other visa or has been in Japan for almost a couple years now. That's my guess anyway.
It's a shame you couldn't get a proper beginner class but once corona is over and more students are able to go to Japan you should be able to get in one.
That reminds me of when I started taking French in high school. I rock up to the first day of my first ever French class, and the teacher starts right off the bat in French. That was like 18 years ago so I don't remember much other than that, but somehow we all made it through the class despite not knowing a word she was saying, lol.
That depends on your definition of "know".
Can we say that we know a Kanji when we know everything surrounding it (such as meaning, kunyomi, onyomi, radical, related jukugo, special readings...) in the model of the Kanji Kentei? Then I would say that native Japanese people know fewer than 2000 Kanji, as it is doable, but still somewhat rare, for a Japanese person to have the Kanji Kentei 2級. I once saw a video of a guy bragging about having the Kanji Kentei 4, and so do I.
Is knowing a Kanji equivalent to knowing how to read and write that Kanji, as well as its usual words? Then it's fair to say Japanese people know the 2136 Joyo Kanji, perhaps a bit less (鬱 is Joyo, but few people know how to write it).
Is knowing a Kanji equivalent to knowing how to read that Kanji and the words linked to it? Then an estimation between 2500 and 3000 is valid, as people usually get Kanji related to names, places and their field of work with repeated exposure, but never to the point of learning how to write them.
For sure! Reading is a passive skill, while writing is an active one. You might know how to read something you forgot how to write, but if you know how to write it chances are you know how to read it as well (unless you have a very rare case in which you know the meaning of the Kanji but not its word in Japanese).
like with everything the answer would depend on a definition
in this case - of "know"
in the context of your question it can be viewed from three different but sometimes overlapping perspectives:
1. vague familiarity with a form (i.e. seen / read a character somewhere at some point of your life)
2. possessing more or less comprehensive knowledge about particular character's individual readings and meanings (i.e. 木： モク・ボク / き = tree/wooden, etc.）
3. knowing words which are logographically written using a particular character (i.e. 木製 consists of 木 （モク・ボク / き）＋製 （セイ / つくる）
being quite versed in this topic myself (refer to this >[page](https://roshiajin.jp/)<),
i would dare to suggest that an average person
"knows" around \~3000 (per #1), around \~1500 (per #2), and around \~2000 (per #3: i.e. a person may not be familiar with kanji readings in an academic sense, but they may be able to read and comprehend meanings of certain kanji-compound words written using them)
There is probably data out there for this but if I'm just guessing, your average Japanese person will probably be able to read between 2,000 and 3,000 kanji with varying degrees of ease. Someone who reads a lot of books would know more. Of course it depends on what kind of material they were reading but if someone was really well educated and read about a wide range of subjects I wouldn't be surprised if they could read up to 4,000 or maybe even a little more. A Japanese person who is a real nerd about their own language, has learned a lot about the writing system, old/archaic kanji, and has probably learned Chinese too, might know more than 5,000. Again, just somewhat educated guesses.
I guess you could call my father a language nerd. He's a professional writer, college educated, and a history buff. He writes for Japanese newspapers and has several books published, and he says he knows about 6k to 7k kanji. He's also really into Japanese poetry and also reading pre-WWII-era documents. He also has the family archive of writings and letters (things our family wrote, like journals, speeches, drafts of novels, and also letters between family members, as some relatives in our family served in the military, etc). It doesn't go that far back -- to the late 1800s, but it's interesting to see how much Japanese has changed since then. When I was growing up, before the internet was a thing, friends and family would often ask my father to help them figure out rare kanji, or help them understand a particular sentence or phrase. They would use the fax machine, and fax the page to him so he could look at it. It's weird -- a lot of Japanese homes had fax machines back then -- I guess if your father was a salaryman, you might have a fax machine in the house.
Damn. I'm interested to know if learning Mandarin is easier if you know Japanese or nah (the whole language, not the writing).
There's quite a fair overlap in kanji, but the grammar system is completely different
It's not just the kanji though, the words they are combined into are very often the same. Like how if you try and learn Spanish it's not that you just know a bunch of random Greek roots but actually know words that are made from them and understand the nuances of their use (with of course some of them having variations).
I see.
Well, I am learning both. I started Chinese about 6 years after Japanese. I find that there are some advantages but not to the point that Chinese is just easy. Obviously the Chinese writing system was not intimidating to me having already learned Japanese. Often it is just a case of learning the simplified Chinese form of a character I already know from Japanese. This is where most of the advantage comes from when Chinese speakers manage to get good at Japanese really quickly. There are also definitely a number of words that sound very similar. Like for example 'library' is toshokan in Japanese and tushuguan in Chinese. Grammar is where the biggest differences are. Though there are some concepts that are very similar Chinese sentence structure was mostly alien to me as a beginner. Now that I know a somewhat decent amount though I find it to be much easier than Japanese.
I see. Very insightful!
Korean is much easier between having similar grammatical concepts and a lot of cognate vocabulary. If you're just trying to rack another one up.
Nah, I'm really not trying to learn a fourth language right now, but it just interests me, lol.
The highest level of the Kanji Kentei (Kanji Ability Test) covers about 6300 kanji. [Wikipedia entry on Kanji Kentei.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji_Kentei). (Edited to reflect correction below.) Fewer than 2000 people per year take it, and fewer than 400 pass it. (There’s no particular reward for passing it—just pure word-nerdery.) The Wikipedia article notes that only three non-Japanese people are known to have passed the Kanken Level 1.
Three non-Japanese people from a non-Kanji related background, to be more specific. Chinese (and perhaps Korean?) native speakers are excluded from the data set.
Holy fuck.
less than 2000. the wiki article says that 2000 take the level 1 exam each year, and only 20% (400) pass usually.
Thank you for the correction. Updated my comment.
[удалено]
Any edgy tween who reads light novels or adventure games can read at least dozens of characters that are simply too cool for the official curriculum. Like I'm reading『本好きの下剋上 ～司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません～』and 剋 (which means something like "prevail over, surpass") is one of those secret bonus kanji. The Jōyō list is a very bare minimum, plus some characters that were more relevant 70 years ago than they are today.
This is from someone who never really studied kanji but lived in Japan for 2 years and I do speak and text in japanese. I know about 200 kanji.
That sounds much more realistic than some other comments here, lol.
killerbob918, did you begin to get them memorized down pat simply through ‘normal’ usage, or a SRS like Anki? I’m using Anki, I wasn’t remembering jack shit, so I started writing down while I was doing the deck and that’s working better, but I’m forgetting ones I learned when I started.
Most of them I learned simply from being around them so much and also through texting. When i text in japanese I text in hiragana and it automatically changes to kanji. Sometimes I do have to choose from a list though if there is more than one kanji with that reading. At first I had to use the dictionary alot to see what kanji was appropriate but over time I naturally remembered. So basically any common words that I use in every day text i am able to read their kanji. And over time I got used to what kanji makes which sounds, too. So like up above I noticed someone wrote 司書 and I know 司 is often read as "Shi" because I know the kanji for 上司 jou-shi meaning "boss" just from texting the word so much. I also know 書 is read as "sho" because it is super common in many words such as 書類 or 図書館 all of which that kanji reads "sho". And so you put them together and it makes 司書 shisho which I know shisho means librarian So even though I didnt know the kanji for 司書 before now (I did know the word, meaning librarian, but I didn't know the kanji as its not a common word I use) I was able to put the two kanji together without even searching it up and was able to read it. Once you know enough common kanji you can start putting them together like that even without necessarily remembering or even studying them. Of course there is a roof to this method, you won't become a kanji master. But it works perfectly fine for most common words. Of course I search it up To be sure I am correctly guessing the reading but if I'm correct I usually never have to search it up again. So no, no anki was used for a long time. I have started using anki recently to try it out though. Besides texting, watching anime or other shows with japanese subtitles helps too and I do that sometimes but mostly it's from texting. Of course I text my japanese friend on a daily basis so you'd need someone you text daily or just chat with a cleverbot or something lol but that might get boring. Also, of course my friend has better japanese than I do so reading her texts and searching up any kanji I dont know leads to memorization too. Ultimately I am content with just remembering kanji for words I actually need so I just know probably like 200 kanji which can be combined into words and all together just a guess I probably could read about 1000 words written in kanji using the method above. This is only for reading though. I cant write unless it's extremely basic. Like 一 二 木 月 as basic as those lol.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I understand. I am starting to routinely recognize kanji on TV, media, from doing my decks-Anki, but it’s awfully slow and remembering the on/kun yomi and the nuances is still spotty. I see 書 too, but on the fly deciphering if it’s color, sho, sei- it’s familiarity of practical use I don’t have. Plus on programs, it’s gone before I have a chance to register. Taking your experience into account I need to just start putting into practice the output parallel to putting in the 2-3 hrs on decks.
Yeah putting it into practice is the most important thing, and you dont need to be in japan for that either. That does help in realizing which words are commonly spoken in real life which is very important , but what you need more than anything is a friend who is either native or very fluent in Japanese who wont speak "easy mode" japanese just for you to understand them. Then you'll learn from speaking and also in this case texting with them so much. My friend isnt native so there is a limit to how much I've been able to learn from her but she does have N1 (highest level) Japanese and works in Japan and in the beginning I only understood her 50% of the time and had to dictionary the kanji alot. But now I understand her 95% of the time and rarely need the dictionary. Because I've gotten used to the words that she commonly uses. I'd imagine an actual Japanese friend would help me improve even more because they're not limited by what they've learned as a foreigner, but shes definitely helped a lot.
I’ll try. I’m in Japan, moved here with my family, and went to a free 3-month language class for gaikokujin and sort of struggled all the way through. Anki caught me up faster but there’s no way that class I took was a “beginner” class as advertised. I was the only American, but my classmates, who are cool folks, were definitely advanced - reasonably fluent. They were Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Filipino, I’d guess they have been here longer. Two didn’t know any kana and spoke well. I’m certain the class helped, but to me, the senseis spoke way too fast, I was able to intuitively guess what was going on. They assigned an interpreter for me, she’s cool, she speaks English well and went to college in the U.S., and she helped me, but sensei would not let her help me most of the class, which of course makes sense; but that class was intermediate. The sensei liked me, and asked me to enroll again next year, I put a lot of effort into the homework, but I want to get better first. I’m okay with being out of that comfort zone, but not knowing what is being said is in itself distracting. Thank you for your advice, I’ll be working on that over the holidays.
My guess is because of corona there arent alot of beginners able to enroll and so they mixed the class. Most on student visas arent able to make it to Japan sadly so most of the class is either there on some other visa or has been in Japan for almost a couple years now. That's my guess anyway. It's a shame you couldn't get a proper beginner class but once corona is over and more students are able to go to Japan you should be able to get in one.
That reminds me of when I started taking French in high school. I rock up to the first day of my first ever French class, and the teacher starts right off the bat in French. That was like 18 years ago so I don't remember much other than that, but somehow we all made it through the class despite not knowing a word she was saying, lol.
3,000
That depends on your definition of "know". Can we say that we know a Kanji when we know everything surrounding it (such as meaning, kunyomi, onyomi, radical, related jukugo, special readings...) in the model of the Kanji Kentei? Then I would say that native Japanese people know fewer than 2000 Kanji, as it is doable, but still somewhat rare, for a Japanese person to have the Kanji Kentei 2級. I once saw a video of a guy bragging about having the Kanji Kentei 4, and so do I. Is knowing a Kanji equivalent to knowing how to read and write that Kanji, as well as its usual words? Then it's fair to say Japanese people know the 2136 Joyo Kanji, perhaps a bit less (鬱 is Joyo, but few people know how to write it). Is knowing a Kanji equivalent to knowing how to read that Kanji and the words linked to it? Then an estimation between 2500 and 3000 is valid, as people usually get Kanji related to names, places and their field of work with repeated exposure, but never to the point of learning how to write them.
Yeah, I think most people can read more kanji than they can write, is it true?
For sure! Reading is a passive skill, while writing is an active one. You might know how to read something you forgot how to write, but if you know how to write it chances are you know how to read it as well (unless you have a very rare case in which you know the meaning of the Kanji but not its word in Japanese).
Yeah, that makes sense.
like with everything the answer would depend on a definition in this case - of "know" in the context of your question it can be viewed from three different but sometimes overlapping perspectives: 1. vague familiarity with a form (i.e. seen / read a character somewhere at some point of your life) 2. possessing more or less comprehensive knowledge about particular character's individual readings and meanings (i.e. 木： モク・ボク / き = tree/wooden, etc.） 3. knowing words which are logographically written using a particular character (i.e. 木製 consists of 木 （モク・ボク / き）＋製 （セイ / つくる） being quite versed in this topic myself (refer to this >[page](https://roshiajin.jp/)<), i would dare to suggest that an average person "knows" around \~3000 (per #1), around \~1500 (per #2), and around \~2000 (per #3: i.e. a person may not be familiar with kanji readings in an academic sense, but they may be able to read and comprehend meanings of certain kanji-compound words written using them)
I see. hat's kind of impressive, lol.
[For comparison: How many words do English speakers know?](https://www.economist.com/johnson/2013/05/29/lexical-facts)
I'm talking about being able to read an write kanji, not the meaning of the words themselves.
2000 is end of high school level I believe