Hyōgai Kanji

, also known as , is a term for Japanese kanji outside the two major lists of kanji, which are taught in primary and secondary school, and the kanji, which are additional kanji that are officially allowed for use in personal names. The term is also encountered, but it designates all the kanji outside the list of kanji, including the kanji.

Number of

Because is a catch-all category for "all unlisted kanji", there is no comprehensive list, nor is there a definitive count of how many exist. The highest level of the Kanji kentei (test of kanji aptitude) tests approximately 6,000 characters, of which half are and 2,999 are from the official lists (2,136 kanji and 863 kanji). While in principle any Chinese character or newly coined variant may be used as , the ''Kangxi Dictionary'' and the 20th century '' Dai Kan-Wa jiten'', both extremely comprehensive, contain about 47,000 and 50,000 characters, respectively, of which over 40,000 would be classed as or non-standard variants if used in Japanese.

Traditional and simplified forms

While many kanji are printed using simplified forms (, in opposition to traditional forms, ), are officially printed with traditional forms such as , even if some simplified variants are officially recognized in print, such as the simplified , from the traditional as well as from .See the official list published in 2000 , where there are 22 simplified non- kanji variants commonly used in print called . http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/old_bunka/kokugo_index/toushin/1325296.htm

The kanji list (used for names) recognizes in most cases the traditional form along with the simplified form (when one exists).

However, other unofficial simplified forms exist, known as these come by applying the same simplification processes as in the development of . The newspaper ''The Asahi Shimbun'' developed its own simplified characters, known as Asahi characters, and they have their own Unicode code points. Some of these simplifications are part of the standard JIS X 0208 and later versions. Among extended , only a few are '' de facto'' frequently used, including , (extended for the kanji , ) or , (extended for the , ).

Japanese computer fonts

The issue of variant non- character forms becomes apparent when using many commonly available Japanese fonts. While characters not frequently used generally retain their traditional forms, those commonly used in Japanese writing frequently are reproduced in their unofficial simplified form ( extended ), rather than their official printed form. Well-known examples include:

* instead of standard
* with simplified phonetic component, rather than standard
* with simplified phonetic component, rather than standard

Some characters are provided in both their official and simplified forms, as is the case with (official printed form) and (simplified variant), but most of these characters are provided in one form only. Thus, unlike the aforementioned "Asahi characters", simplifications are not comprehensive, meaning that are rendered as a mix of both standard classical forms and unofficial simplifications. This is perhaps most obvious in the archaic kanji spelling of . The characters, both , are displayed with a simplified and an unsimplified "barley" radical side-by-side, which can be visually jarring. The lack of an unsimplified variant in many fonts leaves the user with no choice but to reproduce the word as shown above.

The use of in computer fonts was brought to the fore with the 2007 launch of Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard". This release included the fonts Hiragino Mincho Pro N and Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro N, which reproduce in their official printed forms.

A related weakness (though less relevant to modern language use) is the inability of most commercially available Japanese fonts to show the traditional forms of many kanji, particularly those whose component radicals have been comprehensively altered (such as in , in , and in or , rather than their traditional forms as used in , , and ). This is mostly an issue in the verbatim reproduction of old texts, and for academic purposes.

Uses

The character is often mentioned as an example of a very commonly used . While the official recommendation is to write the word in hiragana or katakana, a corpus survey in 2003 showed the kanji form to be by far the most common in practice.

are often used in the names of wagashi, which draw from ancient literature.

kanji may be often used in manga works for stylistic purposes in character names, place names and other phrases, typically accompanied by furigana gloss to aid with their reading.

Modern Mandarin Chinese borrowings into Japanese are typically rendered with katakana like any other Japanese loanword; however, they may be sometimes stylistically spelled with their original Chinese characters and given a non-standard borrowed pronunciation, many of these characters are technically classified as due to the difference in common character use between the languages. This is particularly common with mahjong terminology.

See also

* List of kanji ''ja.Wiktionary''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyogai kanji
Kanji