Wussup, I’ve been trying to find the list of sinographs that are used in Taiwanese schools, but It is a hassle. I’ve looked on the internet, and even an all-Taiwanese library here in New Yor. No results.
I have the lists of other countires
China: 3,500 frequetly used characters, plus 3,500 more to make the list of 7,000 general used characters.
Japan: 1,945 general used characters ( jouyou kanji)
South Korea: 1,800 characters
Taiwan: ??
Hong Kong: ??
Macau: ??
The Ministry of Education has an official list. Gest Library at Princeton has copy in their reference room, although I’m not sure it’s the latest. The big5 character set might be a rough equivalent.
Is a ‘sinograph’ supposed to be a Chinese character? If so, why not just say ‘Chinese character’?
You want an official government list rather than reality based lists?
[quote=“yonglan”]Is a ‘sinograph’ supposed to be a Chinese character? If so, why not just say ‘Chinese character’?
You want an official government list rather than reality based lists?[/quote]
yes, sinograph means " Chinese characters", but the term " sinograph" is not just limited to " chinese language", it means Chinese characters in all the languages that use them, like Korean and Japanese.
I’ve been looking for official government list. Preferably on the internet and in English. I don’t know Mandarin.
Since they call them Chinese characters (Han characters) in Korean and Japanese, why not just use Chinese characters in English? Don’t know what they called them in Vietnam before.
As for your question,
chinese-forums.com/viewtopic.php … ol+readers
may be of some help (well, my posts there anyhow!)
Because in English if you call them Chinese characters, it implies they’re being used for Chinese. Personally I don’t see why we can’t just use the words “hanja” and “kanji” for them in English to refer to the Korean and Japanese usage of them respectively.
Plus there are actually differences between some Japanese kanji and their Chinese counterparts, and some kanji don’t and never did exist in Chinese, so calling them Chinese characters is inaccurate.
I guess that does make sense, as I am known to grimace when someone back home calls a Chinese character in Chinese a ‘kanji character’. BUT I still call them ‘Chinese characters’ even when talking about Japanese kanji or Korean hanja. I’m incurable, I guess (or dumb, as my friends say).
As for the Japanese making Chinese characters, I wonder if someone could give me examples? I’ve heard this claim, and know of one book that gives two examples (one of them being a character that’s well over 2,000 years old and appears in Zhuang Zi and Han Fei Zi, among other places; the other seems to fit the bill, but I didn’t put too, too much effort in). I’m not doubting, just wanting to know what characters these are.
NB I am not talking about ‘Japanese simplifications’ taken from calligraphic forms of characters. I am looking for honest to goodness SINOGRAPHS (are you both happy now?) that never existed in Chinese, in either any standard or calligraphic form, and were invented by the Japanese. For example, in spite of what many folks will tell you in Taipei, including my Chinese teachers at ShiDa until I was thoughtful enough to photocopy the appropriate dictionary pages for them (they loved me as always), the last character in 西門町 is NOT a Japanese character. And by the way it is not ‘ding1’; it’s ‘ting3’, unless you want to move to Yunnan. Go ahead, tough guy, give me a lecture on the difference between the dictionary and the living language, I dare you. I double dare you.
I’ll see what I can dig up, but it might be a while. I remember being taught this in my university course in Japanese, and being that I was majoring in Chinese as well I double checked with my professors in that and came out with some that were Japanese originals. But that was a good four years ago, and my notes and crap are in boxes in NZ, but I’ll see what I can pull up.
I remember there was a character that the Japanese made up. It had something to do with mountain and wind 
Sorry, never cared to remember more… 
Not sure about the list of Taiwan characters, but as for Japanese-invented characters, there’s several listed here and here.
The example mesheel was thinking of might be 峠 - “touge”, meaning “mountain pass”. (set your browser to Unicode UTF-8 to display this correctly)
Hm…might be. Sorry, don’t really remember. I never really paid attention in my Kanji course…
Thanks. I can’t get to the Geocities site as I currently live in China and the paranoid bastards who run the place block Geo and Tripod (which means I can’t get to my own site!).
Finally, I might have found something useful.
This link is to a number of links to stuff related to standard characters.
this font, at least according to this page, and this page, seems to be the “standard” font that includes the characters for use in Taiwan. Here’s what I gather.
According to a standard released in 1993, there are 18,369 total characters (including 4,808 ‘common use’ characters, 6,343 ‘less commonly used’ characters, and 3,986 rare characters and 2,820 variant characters and 412 附錄 fu4lu4 characters (?).
In 1997 they added an additional 5,879 characters (3,989 rare characters and 1,824 variant characters, 66 fulu characters and 684 “CNS 11643” [some international standard] characters)
That brings the total to 24,248 (with ~5,000 in ‘common use’ and ~11,000 in more general use).
Now, with that, somehow or another we should be able to get a list of all the characters. I just have no idea how to do it. Of course, Feiren’s suggestion of just getting the MOE publication with the list is probably the best so far.
P.S. I could be badly misunderstanding what’s going on here, I’m happy to accept any corrections.
TaiOanKok, 24,000+ is too large to be any government list. Computers in Taiwan only do 11 or 13,000 or thereabouts. If you’re talking total characters ever, the 漢語大字典 claims 56,000. Even 康熙字典 had 47,035.
I have heard it claimed that the MOE actually has or had a book out at one point of 5,000 necessary characters.
Imperial, you didn’t mention Singapore. I think they require 2,000 for elementary school, so I’ve read.
Also, Imperial, while there are lists for China for the most common 2,500 and then the next most common 1,000, I have not heard of any subsequent list of 3,500. Where did you see this information?