Gasp!!

[GoldCoinLover]

Holy smokes! On my kanji program, it teachs you 1 kanji each day. I calculated it and found out it would take me 164 years to learn them all! :( :? :relief:

Holy smokes! On my kanji program, it teachs you 1 kanji each day. I calculated it and found out it would take me 164 years to learn them all! :( :? :relief:

I'd be 180 years old :(

The year would be: 2184!! :(

[stephenmunday]

That is a heck of a long time. What software are you using and how many are you planning on learning?

I have heard / read somewhere that with the kanji up to grade 6 elementary school, you can read 90% of the words in the newspaper. That may be a realistic target for you. Another good target is the Joyo kanji (1945) that I am working on at the moment. (I got Level 1 on the Proficiency test 5 years ago and I am still working on these kanji things. It takes a lot of effort if you really want to get familiar with them.

I can recommend some free software if you like.

[Golgo_13]

Holy smokes! On my kanji program, it teachs you 1 kanji each day. I calculated it and found out it would take me 164 years to learn them all! :( :? :relief:
I'd be 180 years old :(
The year would be: 2184!! :(



One Kanji a day is 365 per year. Times 164 = 59,860.

Nobody in Japan learns that many Kanji in school. Only a few thousand.

Pretty soon, nobody in Japan will be able to write kanji because pocket electronic Kanji dictionary will be so widely available that there won't be any incentive for people to study them (other than for the purpose of passing exams).

[GoldCoinLover]

Yeah, I know. 60,000 is a stretch. But I've heard in some advanced japanese novels there can be 60,000!

I have some software that is pretty good. Njstar. But it's on a 30 day free trial and can't afford to purchase it once that 30 days is up . Bummer

A few thousand is enough for me! :Gasp:

[Mandylion]

Maybe if you count them all one by one :-) Unless you are in academia or want to devote more time than the Japanese to learning kanji, just stick to the joyo and add things in as you go. The Japanese themselves often get sucked into big discussion about what this or that kanji is and how to write/read it. :-)

[stephenmunday]

If you read about kanji online, say at Wikipedia, you will see that the upper estimate of all known kanji is around 50,000. A literate Japanese is said to know about 3,500.

Here is some excellent free kanji programs on line.

I use

JFC - http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/f_main.html
Kanji Gold - http://web.uvic.ca/kanji-gold/

and this Java based site is good too, although occasionally it has incorrect English translations of the kanji

www.japanese-kanji.com

Hope this helps

[splice]

Yeah, I know. 60,000 is a stretch. But I've heard in some advanced japanese novels there can be 60,000!


I seriously, seriously doubt that ANY novel uses the majority of all kanji. Start with the joyo kanji and make your way from there. 1 kanji a day is all right, but at some point you'll probably speed it up once you start getting radicals down.

[Glenn]

I have some software that is pretty good. Njstar. But it's on a 30 day free trial and can't afford to purchase it once that 30 days is up . Bummer

That's easy to get around. All you have to do is delete it after the trial is up, then download it again. Then you have 30 more days! :-)

[splice]

Also, I will not tell anyone that http://astalavista.box.sk is a search engine for cracks, and has quite a few for different versions of NJstar. Beware of popup hell though (seriously, use Mozilla or firefox, or really anything but Internet Explorer).