Talk:Kyōiku kanji

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Zontas (talk • contribs) 23:20, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Macrons

The Kyouiku list is 1006 *without* the roman numerals; you can run a kanji count on the list given in this article and see that. Is there some reason you're using circumflexes instead of macrons for long vowels? adamrice 03:52, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I did that because it was the way it was spelled on the French Wikipedia page, and googling was inconclusive. But if you think it makes more sense to go with the macrons, I have no objection to that. I'm not an expert on this subject, and I'll defer. --Arcadian 04:07, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

subpages

Hi. Aren't all those links with kanji information better placed in the wiktionary? Therefore, wouldn't it be better if they link directly to wiktionary entries? Another case would be if there would be some additional information, but all I could think of is info as how to learn them, e.g. "looks like...", i.e. according to some system, and this would be a case for wikibooks. Therefore, move to wiktionary all those other pages? Ben (talk) 06:58, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

• There are also many links to pages that bear no connection to the kanji character, e.g. shima links to island. Does this make sense? I think it doesn't. Ben (talk) 07:01, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Romanization

Hi! I'm currently learning Japanese and it would be a great aid if someone completes the romanization on the page. I then could memorize all the words and continue to Joyo kanji.

Pronounce

Is it really a good idea to add alternative pronunciations to the kanjis that are listed on this article? Kanji characters all have several different ways of being used and pronounced, but I think we'd rather leave all the other possibilities out. The character set is complex in nature. I think the article was already good enough while listing pretty much just one pronunciation for each kanji (which I think are the most known ones, but that's just my opinion), but someone just added at least another one to almost all characters listed here. By the looks, they seem all on-yomi to me, and they were added before the pronunciations that were already there. On most cases, those are the uses for compounds, not the characters alone. I think that's not a very good idea. It looks too confusing. I vote to keep it the way it was before.

What do you think?--Kaonashi 02:46, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion the pronunciations are totally off the topic of the article unless they are the same pronunciations as the kyouiku kanji themselves. The kyouiku kanji consists of a set of kanji and their readings, the readings are learnt at different school years as well as the kanji. The English "meanings" are irrelevant - they don't belong here at all - the page is about the Japanese system of kyouiku kanji, and what the kanji mean in English has nothing to do with that. Also, synchronizing the meanings should they turn out to be mistaken is a big job. Meanings can be handled by links alone and should be removed from here. --DannyWilde 04:12, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

If what you say it true (and probably is), I guess it's beyond my knowledge in Japanese. My opinion is that it was better the way it was before. I think those anonymous changes only made things a lot more confusing. Like I said before, we're dealing with something that can't be easily explained. It's complex in nature, so I think the simpler, the better. This might sound silly, but the way it was (one "obvious" pronunciation and the most "obvious" meaning in English) might be inaccurate and inappropriate, but I think it worked. At least, worked better than it does now.

But yes, if you can, you should try doing what you said. If someone disagrees, it can be discussed here.--Kaonashi 04:49, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I strongly support Danny on this one. It's a common misconception that kyouiku kanji is just a list of characters. It's not: it's a list of characters and their readings. This page is therefore incomplete until the readings are added, including an indication of which are on and which are kun. The linked kanji in Wiktionary do not contain this information either; just a list of all readings, whether official or not. English meanings, though strictly speaking off-topic, are useful. --Auximines 17:46, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe also worth pointing out that some readings are taught at higher school years. For example a kanji taught in the first year might have a reading taught in the second year as well, so to be 100% accurate, the table should reflect that - there should be extra readings for kanji X in year Y as well as the initial entry. Also, the list of kanji taught changes sometimes. In order to get this table right, someone needs to get hold of recent information and go through and check the whole table and add the readings for the years. As I said above I don't think the "meanings" are appropriate. --DannyWilde 00:08, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

996 vs 1006

Let's count the kanjis:

• First grade (80 kanji)
• Second grade (160 kanji)
• Third grade (200 kanji)
• Fourth grade (200 kanji)
• Fifth grade (185 kanji)
• Sixth grade (181 kanji)

So:

• First 2 grades: 80+160=240 kanji
• First 3 grades: 240+200=440 kanji
• First 4 grades: 440+200=640 kanji
• First 5 grades: 640+185=825 kanji
• First 6 grades: 825+181=1006 kanji

So it's 1006 kanji without Roman numerals, not 996 kanji + 10 Roman numerals. Something is wrong in the article's introduction. Taw 18:43, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Table format?

I've done a quick stab at reformatting the page into table format at User:Tobias Wolter/Kyouiku Kanji This also fixed up some formatting errors in general (my regexp didn't convert those and made me look again), but there's still some points open:

• Using hiragana for the readings?
• An extra column for special readings?
  • Which of those are special readings, anyway?
• Checking for errors in general.

RFC, please. --towo 01:23, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Is there a reason why the readings are written in romaji rather than in hiragana? I don't really see the use of knowing the reading of a kanji without being able to read hiragana. Erikku 03:41, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to know which are on and which are kun readings. --Auximines 22:26, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest making a table with just the kanji, with each kanji linked to the Wiktionary as it is now. In my opinion, the layout and order of the kanji should be the same as in this Monbusho page [1], making the article much more readable than it is now. I don't know if it is an issue, but when the article is 58 KB long now, which exceeds the recommended 50 KB for a Wikipedia article (see Article size). This might be good to keep in mind when thinking of adding or deleting the readings and meanings.

However, if there is a consensus to keep the readings, they should be selected with care. As it is now, someone seem to have personally selected one or two common readings, regardless of how many readings a kanji has. We need to decide how the readings are to be selected, and also make a clear statement about it in the article. I suppose the best thing would be to write all readings taught, but I see at least two problems with this: (1) the size of the article would become even bigger than it is now, and (2) I don't know of a reliable source to get that information from. This page has information on readings not taught at first grade (and up), but I don't know how trustworthy this information is.

Finally, I don't see why the meaning needs to be written. A kanji can often not be explained in a single word - it needs an explanation, and such explanations are already written in the Wiktionary pages, which are linked to. Erikku 04:29, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

For them to be useful, they should reflect the meanings that are taught when they're introduced. That's a bit of a slippery concept, though. They're generally introduced as single-kanji words (usually using the kun-yomi), like る, and then used in various combinations, like , that may or may not share a degree of meaning. Book () and Thursday (よう) don't share any meaning at all.　I think they end up being useless -- but they provide a certain comfort factor for English speakers that I can't really argue against. Bob Kerns 09:16, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Meaning of 本

本 is given as meaning 'book', doesn't it mean (also) 'root', 'origin' and 'base'? those meanings seem to me at least as much important. Plch 12:39, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

A good reason is that 'book' is the meaning that it taught at this level. Remember, these are young kids. They will learn the other meanings in later years. I don't have any references to when (and whether it's officially part of the　), but I do remember it happening. (My experience is limited to helping with homework up to -- third grade). This is similar to the various yomi -- typically only one or two are taught initially. For , they'll learn "book", but they'll also learn , and they learn (き) and よう(もくようび)(they don't learn the 曜 in until later). Bob Kerns 08:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC) (corrected either very silly / mistake or confusing example, to say what I was trying to say... Bob Kerns (talk) 22:45, 23 December 2007 (UTC))

Seriously, young kids? You really don't know how kids are trying to be mature nowadays. Even kids who don't go to school yet should know what 本 means, it's part of the country's name. --2.245.192.127 (talk) 18:40, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

"Kids who don't go to school yet" haven't learned reading or writing yet... Perhaps, some have started, but they'll probably start with "mommy", "daddy" and "cat" and "dog" before even realizing they're in a country, let alone how to read its name. But maybe the "mature" kids in your neck of the woods should skip to grade 2 and start with learning "katana" and "bow" instead.

It's a good point however, that there are different meanings. Having just (semi)finished grade 1 of the kanji, I'm not up on all the meanings or even pronunciations yet. I was considering going back to go more in depth and/or wait until I need find them "in the wild". Is there any 'official' word on which definitions and related pronunciations for each character are taught in the actual classroom?OmikronWeapon (talk) 14:20, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Meaning of 世　

世 is named "world" here, but 界　is named "world" as well, as in Heisig's Remembering The Kanji. To remain Heisig's designation we should give 世 the meaning of "generation".

85.2.50.169 (talk) 17:15, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

ON and kun

It's great to have this list with all the main translations. But why is there no distinction between ON and kun ? Also, as someone mentionned, the pronunciation should rather be in kana. Hiragana for kun and katakana for ON as it is standard. Having ON and kun yomi all mixed up is somewhat confusing.

I read the kana argument elsewhere on the page. I do agree with that person that one should have mastered kana before starting kanji, but to a layman user wandering onto this page, kana would make the list unintelligible, but keeping them in romanji wouldn't matter to people who can read kana.

In fact, both readings ARE distinguished by being in separate columns. Something that is bothering me however, is the exclusive usage of "on" (consistently capitalizing it as "ON" makes no sense to me btw, even less so if you don't do it with "kun") and "kun". Nowhere on this article are the full terms on'yomi and kun'yomi even mentioned. (although their article is linked to) I can understand shortening both when space is at a premium, but the columns seem to provide ample room. For casual readers it might even seem like the abbreviations are the official term. I suspect the same goes for some who are more familiar with kanji, seeing how no one bothered to include them. This is an encyclopaedic repository of knowledge after all, not a collection of shorthand crib-notes.

"Yeah, it's the ON reading and this is the kun" "-What does it mean?" "Don't know, just ON and kun" (capitalized "on" for sarcastic effect, I couldn't help myself, I apologize)

I'll make the top most column-headers the full term, that should be sufficient mention without going overboard. OmikronWeapon (talk) 15:09, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Table

The French wiki page (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C3%B4iku_kanji) has a very good list of ALL characters for a particular year at its beginning. It would be great to have this on the English wiki page as well!! 83.77.175.39 (talk) 15:16, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I've taken a first cut at splitting out the kun and on, but I encourage others more familiar with Japanese to check for errors. --Arcadian 19:31, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I think a notation on what the hyphens in the kun-yomi are about would be in order. I'm not used to seeing it in romaji, so I was thrown for a bit, myself. (The part on the left is the yomi; the part on the right is the "standard, dictionary" inflection of a word typically using it. For example, やはーい: い, which could also occur as く or かった) Bob Kerns 09:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Hyperlink Underlining

I don't know what's possible in the WikiPedia formatting engine and CSS, but it would be nice to suppress the underlines in the links to the character pages. For one thing, it makes look like . It's OK in running text, but the point here is to display the character. Bob Kerns 09:21, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this is a problem, but I wonder if removing the underline (were it possible) would stop people from realising that they are links. I think a better solution, though not perfect, is to remove the link entirely and add a "Wiktionary Entry" column to the tables. This column would always contain the text "definition" linked to the entry for that row.

If there's no concerns, I may be bold and make this change next time I have a free moment.--jwanders^Talk 07:25, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Move this page to an English title?

I tend to think that this page ought to move to an English title, such as Japanese kanji curriculum or something similar. No one will be searching for this unless they already know what the name of the standard curriculum is in Japanese. What the page should be called in English, though, is something I am not certain of. - Smerdis of Tlön 17:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. The fact that you don't even know what to call it in English suggests that any English name for the list is not well-established (nor is it Wikipedia's place to try to establish one). "Kyoiku kanji," (along with Joyo/Toyo kanji) OTOH, is pretty well-established among people marginally conversant with Japanese. adamrice 18:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

At the most, English titles should just redirect here, since Smerdis of Tlön dies have a point that no one would end up searching for "Kyōiku kanj"

"THROUGH FIRE, JUSTICE IS SERVED!" 22:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

There are good English-titled articles (most notably Japanese language) that contain a basic explanation of what this list represents and link to this page; in my opinion that creates adequate discoverability for English speakers. If there were an English term established for referring to these kanji or to the list of them, then a redirection page would be in order, but I don't know of such a term. (Frankly I don't even know of a good English term for kanji in general, beyond just calling them "Chinese writing", which in this context would be potentially misleading.) I would guess that most English-speaking people do not know enough about Japanese to be aware the list exists, and probably most of those who *do* know about the list have encountered the Japanese name for it, albeit probably in romanized form. --Jonadab the Unsightly One, 2008 Jun 21. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.166.236.61 (talk) 18:10, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

/ marked readings?

Should this list of readings include those that appear in the 250 Man-nin no Kanken official book but are also marked with / i.e. do not appear on the test papers for 10-5 kyu? As it is, some are listed with such readings and some without. Personally I think that since this is a page about elementary school kanji the / readings should be removed, but in either case it would be better for us to decide on a standard rule. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eujensc (talk • contribs) 07:49, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Reference

I'm sorry for my poor English. Where is the source of this article? (For example, a page from Japanese Ministry of Education that shows the list of Kyōiku kanji.) Or is it common knowledge? --64.62.138.104 (talk) 01:58, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't find a government page with the list, but lots of resources have it. Aozora bunko is certainly not authoritative but it's at least trustworthy (download from the link in the section). -Amake (talk) 06:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I fail at Google. User:Erikku above links to this Monbusho page, which is authoritative. -Amake (talk) 06:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any references to translations of words. And some are confusing. For example, i couldn't find 屋=premise in usual dictionaries like wiktionary --82.114.244.151 (talk) 22:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

康

康 is listed as "ease". Ease?

• wiktionary says "peaceful, quiet; happy, healthy"
• saiga-jp.com's kanji dictionary says "healthy; sound"
• Heisig says (I believe) "SANE"

I'm not sure I see all of these (or any of these) as best summarized by the word "ease". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.172.83.1 (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

This is the difficulty with "interpretation". You may not see or completely agree with the author. Have you never heard of a "life of ease"? What does that mean? It could be considered "a life of peace and quiet and happiness". How would you sum up the definitions you listed? Boneyard90 (talk) 14:03, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Minor error for #953 縦

Currently the table gives an On-Reading of ju, should be jū (じゅう)? Please check again and correct. See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B8%A6 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.162.81.236 (talk) 12:48, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Another error, for #566: 漁, table gives reading gyō, should be gyo (ぎょ).http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%BC%81 How many more errors are there?87.162.79.74 (talk) 21:15, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Missing Kanji

I noticed that the Kanji for cat is not listed in the Kyoiku Kanji. Is this Kanji not taught until later (I doubt it) or is it missing. If it is missing, how many other Kanji are missing? --Rrrof711 (talk) 18:47, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

No mistake here, this is a high-school level kanji - you can find it on the List of jōyō kanji.62.56.57.80 (talk) 20:48, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Mobile version displays many kanjis wrong

On my Android smart phone (Sony Xperia), I see [Grade 1] #8八; #28土, #29空, #30田, #31天, #32土!(=#28), #33花, #34,草 #35八!(=#8); #44口; #47見; #68八!(=#8); #70見!(=#47); [Grade 6] ... #1003口!(=#44). Those where I put a "!" are wrong. Many more from grade 2 to grade 6 are wrong, too, in the Android display. The same error occurs in the German version (table with meanings in English), but not in the Russian one (table) nor the French one (list). On my PC all these Kanji display correctly. --Tim2007viatge (talk) 21:34, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

1006 or 1026

Did the number really increase? It was a plan, but can anyone confirm that it actually happened. 109.101.220.176 (talk) 00:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

In「Shingakushuū-Shidōryōyō」it is 1026kanji. So 1026kanji would be correct. H.K.pauw (talk) 09:00, 27 March 2024 (UTC)