Depends how hard they study. For some reason, when I'm outside of Japan, I can't retain ANYTHING. When I'm in Japan, I retain EVERYTHING. It's weird. But I've seen a LOT of Japanese majors who barely know 300 Kanji; I dunno about many other schools, but the schools in my home state (MD) don't have too many Japanese majors that aren't weaboos. Maybe on the west coast people are more hardcore? I know the Australian Japanese majors are really good, but America does not produce decent Japanese speakers or readers/writers >_<

Well yeah, considering literacy in Japan is almost 100% :P

I attended one of the best universities for learning Japanese. I think we'd covered somewhere around 500 by the end of JPN 412L, which was fourth-semester Japanese. It may have been higher, but I don't think it could have been higher than 700 or so.

@GTJ

Having studied with Australians, I have to say that you're wrong. The Americans almost uniformly had better Japanese, whether we were from Kansas or Texas. Interestingly, those from California and Washington (West-coast, most "Asian" of all states) were the weakest of the Americans in my opinion.

I honestly have no idea. I use a dictionary constantly and learn new kanji daily. I also forget kanji daily.

I recently bought a new dictionary to deal with a very niche translation...

Isn't that kind of low? Like Nagoyankee said, that's less than middle schoolers, and those finishing Japanese 412L are full-grown adults (taking into consideration the few choices for internalizing kanji as well as time constrants and the fact that the Japanese kids learn them for years and years and see them every day)


Seriously? Jeez... I make the assumption based on an Australian I knew who was ridiculous at Japanese and had never even been to the country before. He was at my university and of course got all the girls... he was kind of a prick about his Japanese, actually, but still. I know that Japanese is a widely-offered subject down under from at least high school (certainly not in the States), so that's the basis for my assumption. Guess it was wrong!

I'm also blown away that the "asian" states would have the weakest Japanese speakers. There are far more opportunities to actually speak to natives and practice. I know in my state there are probably a total of TEN Japanese. There's about a million "Japanese" restaraunts, but when I was there I'd go in and ask right away if anyone there was Japanese and they'd admit no. Absolutely no place to practice. >_<

@MMM: Yeah, it's like trying to pick up an armful of wet bars of soap sometimes. I can't seem to remember some kanji past the span of ten minutes @_@

To be fair, it could be because those who "need" to be in Japan the most (i.e., those who don't have a lot of Japanese people in their states) go abroad, while those who already speak it well stay behind.

But that would imply a different approach to Japanese, then, between those in "flyover country" and those on the Pacific.

I don't think 5–700 is low for someone having studied 2 years. Japanese high school students learn about 1000 during high school for college entrance exams, I think (having learned 1000 up through eighth grade, this makes 2000-ish). This would be 1000 in four years, or 250/yr. And then when you consider that a few weeks at the very beginning of your freshman year in the US is spent learning kana, that leaves about 1.75 years for 5–700 kanji, which puts you on an even or faster pace for kanji than even people living in Japan go through.

In my opinion, if you know how many Kanji you know... You don`t know enough.
:)
Obviously, there are going to be exceptions with extremely OCD people who count every single one, remember when they learn a new one and keep track, etc...
But even if you cover all the Joyo in a Japanese class, if you have any real contact with Japanese literature you are going to need to have acquired quite a few more.

I have absolutely no clue how many Kanji I know -though I am totally sure it`s well over 500. :P With 500 I most certainly wouldn`t be able to read novels. I`d say in an average novel, I pull out the kanji dictionary maybe 5 to 10 times when I don`t know how to read a character. By around the 3rd time I come across the same one I didn`t know I`ve memorized it. Or at least for the meantime. If I don`t encounter it anywhere else for a while, I`m sure I forget it.
If I had to give a guess, I`d say that I can read and recognize around 2000+? But the number fluctuates, the subjects they are related to vary, etc. I know bunches of medical specialty terms, but political and financial stuff I suck at reading.
And I also get to enjoy the amusement of being able to "read" some stuff without having any firm comprehension of it (this is really bad when it comes to the political/financial stuff... Nikkei kills me) because I know what the sound of the word would be but not what it means.
It`s down to interest though, I guess. I don`t usually have all that much interest in the financial/political sections in the newspaper or magazines, so even when I do have interest and put forth the effort to read them and remember the terms... I forget them before the next occasion.
I have found that I am usually about par with native chuu3/kou1 when it comes to speaking and reading... Which I guess I can`t complain about.

Today I had an embarrassing moment when I forgot "疑" while actually reading something aloud and had to stop... Which was really awful.

If the 500 figure ever really comes up, it sounds like it would be closer to the number of Kanji an average technologically savvy adult could write by hand if asked out of nowhere. :P

Oh, you won't catch me arguing with that! and is JF broken for anyone else? Every QUOTE I see has nothing but mojibake.

Reading through the posts on this thread of both native speaking Japanese and native English speakers , I am very much inclined to say that I think It is not true.

If you read through some native Japanese speakers posts and threads, I'm sure you will be able to count more than 500 Kanji;)