Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica
Titolo: Confronto cinese giapponese


:> >
:> >Robert Hubert wrote:
:> >
:> >> [...]
:> >>
:> >> Even something like Kanji might not have been much worse than what we
:> >> inherited. Then, we'd have had to learn thousands of symbols, but as it
:> >> is, we must spend the greater part of a lifetime memorizing hundreds if
:> >> not thousands of word-spelling patterns.
:> >
:> >?
:> >
:> >Just like in Japan, most people have done all the needed memorizing in
:> >the first few years of grade school. (Not grad school, grade school.)
:>
:> Could you quantify "first few years" a little more precisely? It's always
:> been my impression (but I could of course be wrong) that Japanese
:> schoolchildren do indeed continue to learn new kanji at a relatively rapid
:> clip all the way through their formal education, then continue at an
:> increasingly slower pace to learn new ones all through their lives -- much
:> as any educated person learns new words in their native language (assuming
:> they continue to use it).
:>
:> I'm pretty sure there is a government norm in Japan that you're expected
:> to know, and are tested on knowing, the set of A kanji by age B, the set
:> of C kanji by age D, etc. I'd very much appreciate hearing the opinions on
:> all this of native-schooled Japanese or others familiar with the Japanese
:> educational system...
:
:There are only 1945 "required" kanji, a number I *think* is less than
:the number of English words that are sufficiently irregular that their
:spelling must me memorized.
Each kanji can have multiple readings in either On (readings derived from
Chinese origin) and Kun (readings derived from Japanese origins). These
various pronunciations affect the meaning of the kanji in the situation it
is used. So, one kanji is not necessarily one word. Kanji can come together
in combination for form words and phrases, and so knowing only as few kanji
as 2000 in number can give a very rich vocabulary.
Besides, less commonly used kanji can be ignored, and Japanese's other
orthographic tradition kicks in, by rendering the word in small kana
(furigana=reading of the character{s} in question) which are reduced in
sized situated above the kanji, or to its side. In publications where kanji
are not found in the jouyou kanji list, then one can always consult a kanji
dictionary.
A good dictionary for literature students can contain anything around 9000
kanji upwards. This isn't far off a good character dictionary for Chinese,
for instance Commercial Press' XinZiDian which lists 11,000 which includes
variants and simplifications.
I have read Japanese manga in which kanji character compounds have furigana
of foreign loanwords situated over the kanji compounds. For example, 'USA'
can be written using two kanji, bei-koku, but over the kanji is a-me-ri-ka
in furigana.
:The article in *Schrift und Schriftlichkeit*, unfortunately, is by Insup
:Taylor, but she may be assumed to have the facts correct: "About half of
:the official Jooyoo Kanji (1,006 in 1989) are taught in primary school
:and about 940 more in middle school. The children have to read all the
:educational Kanji and write most of them." (p. 1313b).
:
:(The index in Hannas's *Asia's Orthographic Dilemma* is not well done
:and I can't find the info about stages A/B/C/D there, though I think
:there's a chart.)
Jack Halpern's NTC _New Japanese-English Dictionary_ gives a list of the
characters found of the Jouyou Kanji, separated into six grades containing a
total of 1006 characters that "must be learned in the first six years of
compulsory school learning", and a list of 939 general use ones which the
student picks up after that.
Names are interesting, because in Japanese, characters can have totally
unexpected readings... As one participant on sci.lang.japan wrote (I
paraphrase) you can have almost any reading you like as long as you stick to
the government approved list of characters for names.
Dyl.
-- 
____________________________________
Giancarlo Pillan  -  Ivrea  -  Italy
____________________________________

 educational system...
The Ministry of Education has a list of 998 kanji called Kyooiku Kanji
(kyooiku = "education"), which is a subset of the 1,945 Jooyoo Kanji
(jooyoo = "daily use"). The Kyooiku Kanji are taught in elementary
school (six years), with around 150 kanji specifically assigned to
each grade. The remaining 947 of the Jooyoo Kanji are taught in junior
high school (three years), but the MoE has no rules regarding the
order in which they should be taught.
If you go on further to senior high school, as most people do, you'll
be taught even more kanji, but AFAIK there are no guidelines or
whatever from the MoE -- teachers and textbooks will simply teach you
whatever they think is necessary. Knowledge of the Jooyoo Kanji alone
is not sufficient to get yourself into the better universities.
Cheers,
-- 
Hirofumi Nagamura
naga...@kh.rim.or.jp
