Transitioning to WaniKani From Anki - Why were there nearly 4,000 cards if there are 2,136 Kanji?

I studied Anki for a while, and I was using the All-in-One Kanji Deck which is the most used Kanji deck in Anki.

If you delete all the Recall cards and just left the Recognition cards, there were nearly 4,000 cards.

Why is this? There’s only 2,136 Kanji from my understanding. Now that I’m attempting WaniKani, that question still lingers in my mind. I only made it ~300 cards in before I stopped.

There are tens of thousands of kanji

There are more than 50000 kanji in the history of Japanese.

You’re thinking of the number of joyo kanji. The kanji taught in Japanese schools through 9th grade. This official status also means that the government will never use ones that fall outside of that list without providing pronunciations for them. Most literate adults know more than 3000 kanji. At least how to read them to some extent, the most common readings for some of the rarer ones.

7 Likes

Is that Joyo plus Jinmeiyo?

They do know the Jinmeiyo. Most know more than those two lists combined as well, but then it becomes harder and harder to make absolute statements about all adults.

All generalisations are false. :grin:

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.