Question:
1) At which grade level do students in Japan finish their kanji education? In other words, starting which grade level does kanji education stop?
2) Approximately, how many kanji characters should I have under my belt in order to...
- read the newspaper, books, magazines, etc.
- sing along in kareoke that doesn't have furigana
3) Are "old form characters (known as kyūjitai 旧字体/舊字體)" understood at all by average Japanese people today? I understand it's been many decades since both Japan and Mainland China reformed their characters to simpler and perhaps more practical ones so I don't expect people to know the original forms well but if they ever encountered kyūjitai (which are still used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Korea, most overseas Chinese communities and Vietnam today), would they be able to recognize any?
Thank you. :)
Answer:
1) The most part of kanji education finishes when you leave Jr. high school, with approx. 1600 kanjis. Additionally you have to learn a little more, about 300 kanjis to complete the all of joyo kanji:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dy%C5…
2) There is a character set called "newspaper kanji (shinbun kanji or 新聞漢字）, which adds 2000 kanjis to the joyo kaji set and altogether the number is 4000.
However even only with joyo kanji set, you can explore the Japanese article if you excersize your intelligence to presume the unknown one, because the kanji is the set of symbols and each symbol helps you to understand the unknown kanjis.
As for karaoke, you need more colloquial one so you won't feel the difference as you read the newspapers or magazins.
3) The Japanese kanji reform was not so drastic as the one in the Chinese world. There are much similarity between the Taiwanese one and the Japanese one, but the Mainland's kanji, simplified Chinese character looks like bones without flesh to the Japanese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_sc…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_…
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