1/2 Most Frequent 1000 Kanji of the Japanese Language

Here are the most frequently used 1000 Kanji in the Japanese language according to a survey of 55 million characters done by the National Language Research Institute. It includes 993 main entry characters found in levels A and B of the Joyo Kanji lists. Presented for you are the individual Kanji and below the English root word, that is the keyword that gives the most concise meaning. Some of the English meanings have additional words in parentheses, this was added to clarify certain meanings. For example, in English "light" can mean light in weight, light in color, or light from the sun. There are also entries in brackets, these are not actual root words, but used to indicate conceptual Kanji such as counters or grammatical stems. If you can see, there are numbers on the bottom, the middle number is the character entry number found in _The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary_ which is the source material and a very useful book, and the frequency number on the right.
I don't know how else to climb this mountain of Kanji other than to take it one step at a time. There are no readings presented here, since each Kanji has anywhere from one reading to a dozen. This presentation is just the first 1000 Kanji, there are more than 1000 to go. Combinations of two or more Kanji make up over 10,000 words and form the majority of concepts in the Japanese language. Please leave any comments or questions. Will consider suggestions for further projects.
MUSIC: Sigur Ros ( ) Untitled track #3, and Explosions in the Sky "Your Hand in Mine"

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Kanji
• Japanese
• Language

[kimiko121]

Ok, silly question I am sure but I am only a beginner. I noticed some Kanji have more than one meaning, does that mean that you have to relate it to the correct context when seeing it in a newspaper, for example?

[twlight76]

@kimiko121 Seems so. They combine two or more simple words to make compound words, similar to what the Germans do. Guess that's why they call it the language of the infinite. Go one at at time, get 50 or 100 down to start and stick with very core meanings.

[jgrider234]

you people! There are more then just 2000. And that thing is wrong. You have to know at least 5,000 to be called fluent. There are actually over 50,000 kanji characters.

[twlight76]

@jgrider234 No, sorry you're incorrect. Practically speaking one only needs the 1,945 kanji in the Jooyoo Kanji, and only 1000 are taught in elementary school.

[jjsakuraiii]

wait!

1:31 is it kanji? XD

Kanji font has that letter, but i think it's from arabian figure 0

[twlight76]

@jjsakuraiii The special reading maru (which means "round" or "circle"). It is used when reading individual digits of a number one after another, instead of as a full number. A popular example is the 109 store in Shibuya, Tokyo which is read as ichi-maru-kyū。 This usage of maru for numerical 0 is similar to reading numeral 0 in English as oh. It literally means a circle. However, as a number, it is only written as 0 or rei (零).

[donefor]

This is probably insignificant to everybody, but at 3:43-3:54 , it's not the character for "stone" they show, it's "right". Just saw that running through it.

[kakatja]

Could you perhaps slow it a bit down?... It's hard to read the English and the kanji

[maneatingbanana]

There's actually 2,136 kanji.

[kiraraperson]

I love that you can watch these 20 times and

1. It still wouldn't be enough to remember all

2. You wouldn't feel guilty on youtube wasting your time

[psychopomp88]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think there were two slight mistakes. First, 兆 means "one trillion" or "a sign of something" You might be confusing it with 北. Also you wrote 院 as "sell" perhaps confusing it with "売". '院' refers to institutions as in the case of 病院 (hospital) or 学院 (graduate school)

[BrownLaura8847]

how the hell do they take notes in class?????

[nirvanapower1991]

@twlight76 now it's a little under 2100

[LittleLulubee]

I like this, but it's going too fast for me to read the english