Total Number of Kanji
The number of possible characters is disputed; in principle any Chinese character can be used as kanji, which often occurs with proper names or names of food. The Daikanwa Jiten contains about 50,000 characters, and this was thought to be comprehensive, but more recent mainland Chinese dictionaries, such as the Yiti Zidian dictionary published in 2004 contain 100,000 or more characters, many consisting of obscure variants. The vast majority of these are not in common use in either Japan or China; as discussed below, approximately 2,000 to 3,000 characters are in common use in Japan, a few thousand more find occasional use, and a total of about 13,000 characters can be encoded in various Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji.
Read more about this topic: Kanji
Famous quotes containing the words total and/or number:
“I believe in the total depravity of inanimate things ... the elusiveness of soap, the knottiness of strings, the transitory nature of buttons, the inclination of suspenders to twist and of hooks to forsake their lawful eyes, and cleave only unto the hairs of their hapless owner’s head.”
—Katharine Walker (1840–1916)
“After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies. We get to be responsible for our faces.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)