Revisions to the Joyo Kanji List

December 28th, 2008

I’ve ranted about the joyo kanji list before. There’s an ongoing discussion about a proposal for revisions to the list, which has been going on since 2005 and is tentatively scheduled to go live in 2010. I found this recent, very interesting paper about it published by NHK (or something affiliated with NHK, at least) that I would very much recommend anyone who’s interested in the subject to read. I would like to point out some observations about the proposal here.

Characters removed from the joyo list

Only five kanji are proposed for removal: 銑 錘 勺 匁 脹. Notice that 匁 (monme) that I specifically ranted about before is among them. Good! 脹 (as in for instance fukuramu, but I guess we can write that using 膨 anyway) and 錘 (tsumu, although I associate it more with omori, which is usually written 重り anyway) are a little surprising though, I would say.

Characters added to the joyo list

The following characters are highly likely to be added to the list: 藤 誰 俺 岡 頃 奈 阪 韓 弥 那 鹿 斬 虎 狙 脇 熊 尻 旦 闇 籠 呂 亀 頰 膝 鶴 匂 沙 須 椅 股 眉 挨 拶 鎌 凄 謎 稽 曾 喉 拭 貌 塞 蹴 鍵 膳 袖 潰 駒 剝 鍋 湧 葛 梨 貼 拉 枕 顎 苛 蓋 裾 腫 爪 嵐 鬱 妖 藍 捉 宛 崖 叱 瓦 拳 乞 呪 汰 勃 昧 唾 艶 痕 諦 餅 瞳 唄 隙 淫 錦 箸 戚 蒙 妬 蔑 嗅 蜜 戴 瘦 怨 醒 詣 窟 巾 蜂 骸 弄 嫉 罵 璧 阜 埼 伎 曖 餌 爽 詮 芯 綻 肘 麓 憧 頓 牙 咽 嘲 臆 挫 溺 侶 丼 瘍 僅 諜 柵 腎 梗 瑠 羨 酎 畿 畏 瞭 踪 栃 蔽 茨 慄 傲 虹 捻 臼 喩 萎 腺 桁 玩 冶 羞 惧 舷 貪 采 堆 煎 斑 冥 遜 旺 麵 璃 串 塡 箋 脊 緻 辣 摯 汎 憚 哨 氾 諧 媛 彙 恣 聘 沃 憬 捗 訃.

If you’re a gourmand like me you’ll be pleased to find that fond concepts such as 丼 (don, that I specifically asked for), 串 (kushi, skewer), and 酎 (chuu, as in 焼酎 shochu) are among them.

Early in the list we also find some characters used for place names such as 岡 (oka, as in 福岡 Fukuoka), 奈 (na, as in 奈良 Nara), 韓 (kan, as in 韓国 Korea), 阪, 那, 鹿, etc. As you know, place names have as a principle been excluded from the joyo list before, being included instead in the jinmei-yo kanji list, but these have been deemed so frequent and common that they will now be on the joyo list, according to the paper.

By the way, a kanji has to fulfill one of the following in order to be considered for inclusion:

  1. It appears frequently, and also has a strong ability to form words. Examples: 闇, 溺.

  2. In mixed kanji-kana writing, it increases the reading efficiency.
    → Or even if it doesn’t appear frequently, writing it with kanji makes it more easy to understand. Examples: 遜 in 謙遜 (kenson, humility), 堆 in 堆積 (taiseki, pile).
    → Widely used pronouns. Examples: 誰 (dare, who?), 俺 (ore, I/me).
  3. As an exception to the non-inclusion of proper nouns.
    → It’s used in the name of a prefecture or such. Examples: 畿 (kin of the 近畿 Kinki region), 韓 (kan of 韓国 Korea).
  4. It’s often used in social life and seen as necessary.
    → Although its frequency of use in newspapers and magazines is low, it’s a necessary character. Example: 旦 in 元旦 (gantan, New Year’s Day).

On the list we also find such well-known favorites as 誰 (dare, who?), 尻 (shiri, buttocks), 叱 (shika.ru, scold), 桁 (keta, beam or digits), and 嵐 (arashi, storm), that – I don’t know about you, but I at least learned pretty early on in my Japanese studies, so I would say they are kind of basic. 挨拶 (aisatsu, greeting) is also making its joyo debut. Other more contemporary kanji characters includes 癌 (gan, cancer) and 拉 (ra, as in both 拉致 rachi, abduction (as in by North Korea), and the more pleasant connotations of 拉麺 ramen).

Characters considered for inclusion but dropped

Now this list is more surprising, I think. The following characters were being considered for inclusion in the joyo list, but alas they won’t be included: 叩 噓 噂 濡 笠 嬉 朋 覗 撫 庄 溜 鷹 揃 頷 摑 翔 喋 嚙 洩 禄 栗 馴 駕 鴨 淵 駿 賭 蘭 胡 蘇 狼 蝶 搔 惚 蒼 腿 菩 吊 雀 樽 壺 祀 卿 歪 棲 釜 毅 磯 桶 柿 揆 躇 躊 鷲 憐 狽 萌 媚 寵 秤 撥 遡 謳 套 刹 蔓 醬 疼 賤 顚 捏 糊 饉 倦 屛 毀 恍 斡 膠 誼 疇 謗 乖 截 誹 綬.

As you can see, the list includes the very frequently seen 嘘 (uso, lie), 噂 (uwasa, rumor), 喋 (shabe.ru, talk), among others. The paper lists the following as reasons for not including a certain kanji in the list, but I can’t really figure out which one applies to the above…

  1. Although it appears frequently, it has lost its ability to form words. Examples: 濡, 覗.

  2. Although it appears frequently, it is mostly used as a proper noun. Examples: 鷹, 鴨.
  3. Its ability to form words is weak, and instead it can be handled by writing kana or adding furigana. Examples: 醬, 顚.
  4. It has a weak ability to form words, and is restricted to particular fields such as transcriptions or historic words. Examples: 菩, 揆.

I can see why 栗 (kuri, chestnut), 雀 (suzume, sparrow), 柿 (kaki, persimmon) and the like were dropped – even though they’re quite common characters, they refer to very specific and specialized things and aren’t useful for writing anything else (except 麻雀, mahjong), but I would have thought 釜 (kama, kettle) and 淵 (fuchi, abyss) were common enough concepts, and the kanji used in enough compounds as well, to be included.

Also, classics such as 萌 (mo.e), 遡 (sakanobo.ru, go back), and the recently popular and esthetically intriguing 乖 of 乖離 (kairi, separation) are apparently not good enough to make it into the list.

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Anyway, these proposals are tentative, and with the kanji of the year being 変 (chenji, change), who knows how the final list will end up?

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Learning Kanji – It’s Called Literacy, Dumbass!

August 18th, 2008
Do You Have To Know All The Joyo Kanji?

I seem to see the question Do I really need to learn all the joyo kanji? It’s like two thousands of them and that seems a bit too much…

You know, that list was created by a bunch of bureaucrats who have nothing better to do than invent stupid lists and laws all days. Especially the order of the kanji in the list is completely insane – in many cases complex, compounded characters come before the compounds they’re made up from, for instance.

Also, the word 常用(jouyou) means “daily use”, right? Go out any exit of any train station in Tokyo and look around, and tell me if you don’t see the kanji 丼(don). That kanji is not on the list. I guess the bureaucrats don’t eat domburi, but that’s their loss. On the other hand, they put 匁(monme) on the list – and that kanji is so stupid and useless I can’t help but remember it, but I’ve never, ever, seen it used.

So, no, you don’t have to learn all the joyo kanji! There are maybe 20, maybe even 50 or more on the list that you actually don’t need to know. But here’s the catch: you have to learn a lot more than that!

How Many Kanji Do You Actually Need To Know?

Unlike the last question, where I held on to the answer until the very last paragraph, I’m gonna answer this one right away: maybe about 3,000. Now, granted, I pulled that number out of my arse, but I think it’s a decent estimate. That’s in order to be considered literate in Japanese… If you don’t need to be able to read all male given names (yeah I understand it’s cool to give your kid some uncommon character, but come on…).

You see, even though school teaches the roughly 2,000 joyo kanji until high school graduation, most Japanese people can read more than that, even by the time they finish high school. That’s what happens if you spend 19 years surrounded by kanji. Non-joyo kanji are not uncommon – I’m speaking from experience here – and in fact most Japanese people don’t really know nor care about that stupid list – kanji are just characters you use to write stuff.

But 95% Is Good Enough For Me – Or Is It?

When I started learning Japanese, and in fact some times since then as well, I’ve seen statistics saying that 1,000 characters are the 90% most frequent, and 2,000 characters constitutes 98% of the kanji used. That might very well be true – I believe those numbers are more or less correct.

So then a seemingly valid, and common, argument would go something like “I don’t need to be able to read specialized texts - or even the newspapers – manga/technical specs/email/whatever is enough for me, so being able to read 80/90/95/98% of the kanji is all I need”.

I used to think a little bit that way too, to be honest. But there’s a fundamental fault in that reasoning: Yes, no one needs, or can ever hope to be able to, understand 100% or even 99% of everything – I mean a lot of stuff in this world is meant for specialists in a particular field – but that’s not the same as not being able to read the characters it’s written in – that is called illiteracy! And kids: say Yes to mild stimulants, and No to illiteracy – its the bad.

Let me make up an example. This isn’t gonna be the best example ever but bear with me as I’m just making this up. Let’s take a word like 国立造幣局. Now, three of those kanji (国・立・局) are very easy – I’m sure they were among the first one or two hundred I learned. 造 is also pretty easy, it’s at least below JLPT level 2, and very common. But 幣 is not very common, and has a somewhat specialized meaning (but it’s on the joyo list and not knowing it constitutes illiteracy). So in that five-kanji word 60% of the kanji are trivial, and 80% are easy.

But then there’s one that – while definitely not complicated – is at least JLPT level 1 worthy of difficult. Yet that’s the one kanji that conveys most of the meaning, not to mention you can’t pronounce the word without knowing its reading, so those who settled for 90% of the kanji will be 0% literate in this example.

Look at it this way: say that pronouns, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions made up 50% of the words used in an average English sentence. Then, would someone who decides to learn only the pronouns, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions of English be able to get the meaning of an ordinary English sentence? Of course not! Even though that person would understand at least 50% of the words used. Now, kanji are characters used to write words and not words in themselves, but anyway… if you want to get down to the monkey’s balls with the Japanese language, you have to learn kanji thoroughly. And you might as well do it right away.

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Now I hope we have established a shared understanding that almost perfect kanji literacy is indispensable for the Japanese language learner. Next, I will be writing about how that literacy is best achieved.

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