Quote:
Originally Posted by jrocka83
The number of possible characters is disputed. The "Daikanwa Jiten" contains about 50,000 characters, and this was thought to be comprehensive, but more recent mainland Chinese dictionaries contain 80,000 or more characters, many consisting of obscure variants. Most of these are not in common use in either Japan or China. So 130,000 Charecters..
I'm sorry, I was off by 20,000. My bad  . |
Assuming that a regular Japanese person knows all the Kanji presented in a dictionary (that happens to specialize in obscure Kanji) is pretty close to assuming that any native English speaker knows
every word covered in the biggest English dictionaries.
It`s simply not true. If it were, then passing the top Kanji Kentei wouldn`t be such a huge deal. (at 5 or 6000)
You can go on forever about how many Kanji have ever been used, and it`s likely an infinite number as writers in the past have even been known to make ones up to cover ideas they felt weren`t covered well enough with the existing set. But that doesn`t mean it ever appears outside of that one publication, and it certainly doesn`t mean anyone today can read any of them.
Most Japanese don`t even know all the Joyo to read them, let alone write them.