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Try to be careful when assessing a kanji’s usefulness by its ‘frequency number’, because these are based on statistics done mostly on written materials such as newspapers and may not necessarily reflect the true importance of a kanji character. For example the kanji 議 which means debate, is listed at 20 out of 2500 kanji because it is used very often in articles about politics. On the other hand, some ‘uncommon’ kanji for parts of the body (ear耳 is ranked at 1328) or animals (such as dog犬: 1326), are important and encountered very soon in Japanese learning materials.
Section 1 of the studybook includes any top 30 kanji not included in GCSE or JLPT specifications, as it still remains one of the best estimates of a kanji’s usefulness to a beginner. In order to avoid overloading each page with minor details, each kanji is ranked on a simple 1-10 basis. This frequency of use rank number for a kanji is simply described as its ‘rating’ in the book.
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1
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1- 100
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‘Frequency of use’ is between the numbers shown in the second column. For example ‘rice field’ 田with a frequency ranking of 90 is in group 1, or one the top 100 most used Kanji.
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2
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100-200
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3
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200-300
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4
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300-400
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5
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400-500
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6
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500-1000
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7
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1000-2000
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8
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Kanji outside the top 2000, but is taught at school.
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9
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All other kanji between 2000-2500
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10
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Kanji not in the 2500 listed with a frequency rank
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