Japanese+Kanji+vs+Chinese+Kanji

(All found on page 1)

1. **//Japanese children are expected to know all of the jōyō kanji by the end of high school but to read specialist publications and ordinary literature, they need to know another two or three thousand kanji.//** **//2. “The word Kanji is//** **the Japanese version of the Chinese word** //**hànzì**//**, which means "Han characters".”**

3. “Between 5,000 and 10,000 Chinese characters, or kanji are used in written Japanese.”

4. "When the Japanese adopted Chinese characters to write the Japanese language they also borrowed many Chinese words." //**5. "**//**//In 1981 in an effort to make it easier to read and write Japanese, the Japanese government introduced the jōyō kanji hyō (List of Chinese Characters for General Use), which includes 1,945 regular characters, plus 166 special characters used only for people's names//."** **6. "There are also a number of characters, //kokuji// (national characters) which were invented in Japan."**

**7. "Some of the //kanji// have been simplified, although not always in the same way as characters have been simplified in China:"**



8. "Today about half the vocabulary of Japanese comes from Chinese and Japanese kanji are use to represent both Sino-Japanese words and native Japanese words with the same meaning. " **﻿** 9. "Government documents, newspapers, textbooks and other publications for non-specialists use only these //kanji//. Writers of other material are free to use whichever //kanji// they want. " **﻿** 10. "The general rule is that when a kanji appears on its own, it is given the //kun yomi//, but when two or more kanji appear together, they are given the //on yomi//."