Post #2450597
2026-05-07 14:32 UTC
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com The advantage of the Latin alphabet is that, even if you know zero English, 26 letters is far easier to decipher than, for example, 46 hiragana + 46 katakana + 1026 “mandatory” kanji which you learn in grades 1-6 (this doesn’t include the “modified sound” letters like っ or ば or ぱ, which will add another 100 maybe?).
Replies (1)
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@agnes@pdx.social 2026-05-07 14:42
@philip@mastodon.mallegolhansen.com On second thought I should’ve cited the number of 常用漢字 (2136 kanji) not 教育漢字 (1026 kanji)… but Japanese is a child’s game compared to Chinese, they regularly use 6000 or 8000 or some other truly impressive number 😂 EDIT: I got curious so I looked it up: the 常用國字標準字體表 (standard list for Taiwan) has 4808 kanji, and the 通用规范汉字表 (the standard list for China) has 8105 kanji!