しあわせ

This is a little FileMaker solution I’ve written.
It takes a piece of pasted Japanese text and analyses the kanji contained in it.

I wrote it as a quick and probably imprecise way of looking at kanji usage in texts. Probably because of the 1998 study of kanji usage in the Asahi Shinbun (Shinbun denshi media no kanji, Senseido, 1998) usually a figure is quoted of 1000 most frequent kanji account for 95% of usage. I have also seen this as 1000 characters allow you to read 95% of articles (a subtle difference) but I think this is a bit of an overstatement, (the thread below suggests 1900 kanji in order to read 95% of compounds). While doing a bit of research on this I came across several other frequency studies and an interesting thread where Jim Breen notes

…a discussion at a language teaching conference in Japan I attended in 1999, where there was general consensus that
the average Japanese adult could read 700-800 kanji…

Although I find this a bit hard to imagine, write by hand maybe…

Read the rest of this entry »

I never learn, so “once more unto the breach..”

I am interested in how people learn and the problems of kanji and language in particular.
The topic rises again and again on forums so I’ve been thinking a bit more about it. Instead of a long post into threads that have strayed and grown too long I thought I’d make it into a post here.
It has stayed in draft form for a long time but between a comment about Heisig on this blog recently and trying to catch up with half finished posts, I’ve revisited it. Hopefully this will put Heisig to rest for me, it becomes a little frustrating to have my kanji studies defined in reaction to a method developed 33 years ago by someone who self-admittedly knew nothing about Kanji or Japanese when he first developed it.

Read the rest of this entry »

These books have the usual unwieldy titles of so many Japanese books.
1行読んでおぼえる小学生必修1006漢字—低学年500漢字 and 1行読んでおぼえる小学生必修1006漢字—高学年506漢字. The idea behind them is quite simple though. You read one line per kanji to memorise if not all, at least most of its important readings. It’s similar to books written for Japanese second language learners like JLPT3 Kanji by Examples and JLPT2 Kanji by Examples.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve started making my Kanji Notebook.

The first week has seen me gather a lot of the basic data I want, some of it imported using XLST such as Kanjidic, some of it input by hand, some from tab separated files.

So I have the data on all the kanji I could want. I decided only to import the data I was interested in so many of the dictionaries and Heisig didn’t make the cut, nor did Spanish, French, Korean or Chinese. I might import this data later and allow it to be toggled on and off. One of the many reasons I’m doing this is that current dictionaries don’t display want I want how I want or give far too much information.

The radicals were only given as a number so I needed to make a table of the radical names and sub-classify a number of them. Then I needed to input an index from Basic Kanji Book vols 1 and 2 by Chieko Kano. I also put in an option to override Kanjidic’s keyword (too often derived from Heisig and too ambiguous) and use your own keyword or one from the Kanji Learners Dictionary if you input it using the index number for ease of lookup.
Read the rest of this entry »

As can be seen from the above certificate I passed 9th grade in the Kanken test. やった！
I was reasonably confident however. Although I can be a little proud of my achievement it only puts me on a par with a below average seven year old, with knowledge of 240 common kanji. However I can say that the knowledge is native level. I can read the onyomi, kunyomi and tokubetsu readings and write them by hand, not just put an English keyword to them.
Read the rest of this entry »

I read an interesting document about the new JLPT specifications for the test starting in 2010 from the Japan Foundation.

Considering the search terms people use in Google these points are a big departure from the old test:

There are no plans to publish collections of complete copies of tests administered in past years.

and

The goal of learning Japanese is not to memorize vocabulary, kanji, and grammar, but to become capable of using them as a means of communication. The new test is to measure both “Japanese language knowledge, including vocabulary and grammar,” and “the competence required to perform communicative tasks using language knowledge.” Therefore, we determined that it is not appropriate to publish “Test Content Specifications” which includes the lists of vocabulary, kanji, and grammar.

and

Failure to exceed the minimum acceptable score in any scoring sections will result in a fail for the entire test, even if your total score is above the minimum acceptable score.

Read the rest of this entry »