If you are learning kanji, you might be interested in this list of the 2501 most-used kanji, in order of usage frequency. I actually had difficulty finding this kind of resource, so thought I’d post it here for anyone else who might want to see it.
UPDATE: I have no idea why it doesn’t display straight up in unicode. It’s got a unicode header doesn’t it? Anyway, if you can’t see the proper japanese, switch to unicode encoding. (FIXED)
February 23rd, 2006 at 10:49 pm
It was interesting.
But who chose those 2501 kanji(es)?
I don’t think many Japanese can write kanji(es)
from No.1203 to No.2501.
We are becoming more stupid and lazy for many things.
It’s sad thing to hear.
February 24th, 2006 at 1:02 am
I believe the list is compiled from newspapers and other popular media in which kanji appear. They are simply the most common, as actually used.
Well, it is not so necessary to write every kanji. Most people will have no need to write the rare kanjis at all during their life. Therefore, being able to read and understand is OK.
As you know the situation is the same with english. Our literacy seems to decline every year. It is always depressing for me to read letters to the editor from, say, 100 years ago, and see a level of quality and wordmanship impossible to find in any current literature. And that’s just a letter to the editor!
I could be selfish and take some satisfaction in the fact that I can speak much better english than most of my countrymen. However, I can’t escape the bad feeling that the generally declining intellectual tradition will have dire costs for us in the future, if not already.
February 24th, 2006 at 3:04 am
Hey.. awesome resource! Thanks for posting this.
The situation with English is as dire as ever, probably moreso. However, stupid people will continue to be stupid and the lowering of standards with time will continue (if it hasn’t already reached the cold, dark, abrasive granite surface of ‘rock-bottom’). That being said, smart people will always endeavour to be smarter, and even in 1000 years there will be more people better at English than I am now than I could ever know or count. So that’s a comforting thought.
Either that or we will communicate solely with telepathy.
PS. Kanji 2501 – I didn’t know ebi could be written like that! I had enough trouble learning 海老！
February 24th, 2006 at 6:11 am
My Japanese-teacher said that the easiest language to speak badly is English, and I would tend to agree. I also think it will get worse before it gets better.
Another thing is that I think it not only applies to language, I think that the ability of the unwashed masses to appreciate a complex plotline, and more importantly, the ability to themselves interpret ambigious situations, is decreasing. Just like USA’s two-party system, people seem to rapidly become confused when there are more than two alternatives to choose from.
February 24th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Your server is sending this with the wrong “Content-Type” (obtained using “curl -v https://fukamachi.org/media/2501.html“):
February 24th, 2006 at 8:20 am
Eaten by Wordpress:
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 22:18:01 GMT
< Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Debian GNU/Linux) PHP/4.3.10-16
< Last-Modified: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:52:18 GMT
< ETag: “837cb-998a5-43fda1f2″
< Accept-Ranges: bytes
< Content-Length: 628901
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
February 24th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Well spotted my friend. I’ve realised what happened:
Most pages should be set with a default charset of UTF8. However, I’d forgotten that this is done by the htaccess in the /wp directory, and I’d placed the file outside of that. The solution was to simply add “AddDefaultCharset utf-8″ to httpd.conf and force everything to always be utf-8. I think everyone should always use utf-8 for everything anyway, unless there’s a very good reason not to.
I would have expected the meta tag to override the content-type though! Otherwise what’s the point of having it?
February 25th, 2006 at 5:18 am
Irrad, I also recommend http://tensaimac.com/, a free kanji/日本語 dictionary for the mac. It’s very good, and free, check it out.