Seems like often, usually complicated or obscure vocabulary
Well I would say they’re “reading” it… if ya know what I mean. Badabing
Deflne average, because age and education play a large part.
I asked my Japanese husband how often he comes across a kanji he doesn’t understand (ex. Reading business newspaper, etc) and he said “Almost nothing.” I tested him with Coto’s most difficult kanji and he couldn’t read any, he said “難しい, nobody knows those). [Coto’s list of the most difficult kanji](https://cotoacademy.com/the-most-difficult-japanese-kanji/)
Been working for a Japanese company for 8 years now and I’d say the average employee makes a mistake reading a kanji once a week or so during our meetings when the kanji is not widely used.
There are employees who studied kanji more than others who never make mistakes and then there are others who are just not good at kanji that make more mistakes.
Probably everyday (which is natural and normal for any language). I’m a native English speaker and I feel like I see words I can’t pronounce and don’t know the meaning of all the time. Yesterday I saw the word “Propitious” and was like WTF?
Having a lot of Kanji that is hard to read doesn’t make a Japanese person illiterate or would make reading more difficult than other languages (I’ve noticed a lot of people keep implying this but it’s wrong. Japan has a 99% literacy rate.)
Japanese people (like all other people) learn the most commonly used words. English has spelling that’s so irregular that people consider them symbols in themselves and we remember all of them (most of the time) just fine. Japanese people are the same in this way.
One factor that would confuse this a bit is that a Japanese person has a lot of contextual information that would allow them to make a very good guess at the meaning and reading of an unfamiliar character (in the same way you could probably read a text where part of the page was cut off with annoyance but no great difficulty)
It’s also worth mentioning that reading and writing are completely different skills. Every Japanese person I knew was be able to *read* 薔薇 (bara; “rose”) but none of them could write it on demand, even immediately after reading the word. (It’s worth learning just to pull out at parties to impress people. 😉)
So I kinda think “how many writing mistakes does the average Japanese person make?” is as interesting and likely the number is significantly higher.
I know a girl from Japan, as I’m from Hong Kong she calls me and other Hong Kongers kanji masters and exclaimed that she’s quite bad at kanji and has said that she disliked learning kanji when she was in highschool.
9 comments
Seems like often, usually complicated or obscure vocabulary
Well I would say they’re “reading” it… if ya know what I mean. Badabing
Deflne average, because age and education play a large part.
I asked my Japanese husband how often he comes across a kanji he doesn’t understand (ex. Reading business newspaper, etc) and he said “Almost nothing.” I tested him with Coto’s most difficult kanji and he couldn’t read any, he said “難しい, nobody knows those). [Coto’s list of the most difficult kanji](https://cotoacademy.com/the-most-difficult-japanese-kanji/)
Been working for a Japanese company for 8 years now and I’d say the average employee makes a mistake reading a kanji once a week or so during our meetings when the kanji is not widely used.
There are employees who studied kanji more than others who never make mistakes and then there are others who are just not good at kanji that make more mistakes.
Probably everyday (which is natural and normal for any language). I’m a native English speaker and I feel like I see words I can’t pronounce and don’t know the meaning of all the time. Yesterday I saw the word “Propitious” and was like WTF?
Having a lot of Kanji that is hard to read doesn’t make a Japanese person illiterate or would make reading more difficult than other languages (I’ve noticed a lot of people keep implying this but it’s wrong. Japan has a 99% literacy rate.)
Japanese people (like all other people) learn the most commonly used words. English has spelling that’s so irregular that people consider them symbols in themselves and we remember all of them (most of the time) just fine. Japanese people are the same in this way.
One factor that would confuse this a bit is that a Japanese person has a lot of contextual information that would allow them to make a very good guess at the meaning and reading of an unfamiliar character (in the same way you could probably read a text where part of the page was cut off with annoyance but no great difficulty)
It’s also worth mentioning that reading and writing are completely different skills. Every Japanese person I knew was be able to *read* 薔薇 (bara; “rose”) but none of them could write it on demand, even immediately after reading the word. (It’s worth learning just to pull out at parties to impress people. 😉)
So I kinda think “how many writing mistakes does the average Japanese person make?” is as interesting and likely the number is significantly higher.
I know a girl from Japan, as I’m from Hong Kong she calls me and other Hong Kongers kanji masters and exclaimed that she’s quite bad at kanji and has said that she disliked learning kanji when she was in highschool.