How many characters are there in Japanese? How many scripts are used in japanese?

Question by AJIT M: How many characters are there in Japanese? How many scripts are used in japanese?

Best answer:

Answer by flemmingbee2
There are two sets of phonetic alphabet in Japanese – Hiragana and Katakana – and there are about 50 letters in each. I said ‘about’ because the exact figure depends on several factors, such as whether or not to count letters that are used only in old scriptures.

In addition, there are Chinese characters, which are ideograms (representing meaning rather than pronunciation). Although there are tens of thousands of these, if you know about 800 you can get by (e.g. able to read newspaper). It is said that a reasonably educated Japanese can read around 2000 Chinese characters.

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