The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild

Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by Legogris on Saturday August 17, 2019 @02:58AM (#20722607)

And still you're fluent in English (I assume) - it's not an issue with the English language but your understanding of the context. Japanese (and Chinese) work a bit differently than latin languages. Even if you know 100% of the kanji (very few Japanese people do), it doesn't mean you know 100% of the words - and vice versa. Since the characters are idiomatic, it also makes it easier to guess the meaning of a word or character you don't know than if they would have been written out phonetically.

Kanji: The Chinese characters in question

N2: The second highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). N1 is by many seen as a very high bar and many Japanese employers demand it if you'll be using Japanese as your main working language. N2 is generally attained after 1-2 years of Japanese studies.

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by barry-cotter on Saturday August 17, 2019 @03:35AM (#20722739)

> Since the characters are idiomatic, it also makes it easier to guess the meaning of a word or character you don't know than if they would have been written out phonetically.

Ideographic, as in trying to portray ideas graphically, not idiomatic, as in using expressions like a native speaker

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by Legogris on Saturday August 17, 2019 @05:48AM (#20723104)

I had a feeling I was not using the right word, thanks for pointing out :)

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by franciscop on Saturday August 17, 2019 @07:56AM (#20723548)

> "N2 is generally attained after 1-2 years of Japanese studies"

From my own experience, this would only be true in the most favorable of the situations. 2 years studying fulltime while living in Japan sounds about right. 1 year studying as a hobby few hours a week, no way.

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by Legogris on Sunday August 18, 2019 @05:35AM (#20729220)

Oh yeah, I definitely meant full-time studies coupled with practice outside of study-hours.

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by unfreezingly on Saturday August 17, 2019 @03:50PM (#20725934)

I think your estimate for N2 is a bit too optimistic: passing it in two years would be very difficult without living in Japan.

For context, it took me 3 years of university (outside Japan) to pass N2.

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by esrauch on Saturday August 17, 2019 @04:57AM (#20722960)

Surely no one knows all the Kanji, since some of them have open academic investigation whether they even are a valid character or not?

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2018/10/29/language/ghost-...

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by needle0 on Saturday August 17, 2019 @06:03AM (#20723160)

No one knows "all Kanji" much like no one knows "all English words" even in native English-speaking countries.

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by derefr on Saturday August 17, 2019 @11:25AM (#20724483)

Do kanji handwriting-recognition models even “know” (i.e. are trained on) all in-use kanji, or do they just not bother with some of the rarest ones because their presence in the dataset would decrease the likelihood of correctly matching more-common characters, which it’s overwhelmingly-likely are what you’re writing?

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by esrauch on Monday August 19, 2019 @09:31AM (#20737554)

Presumably it's the same as words in English, where you'd never make a word suggestion model that just blindly considers all possible words. You swipe jow or gow and it will change it to "how" despite the other two existing in arguably correct English in some very obscure case.

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Re:The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kan... by Legogris on Saturday August 17, 2019 @05:49AM (#20723112)

Indeed. Which means if your goal is fluency, it's silly to strive for 100.0%.

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