How long does it take to learn to read and write chinese or japanese perfectly ?

Question

Is it necessary to learn all of the 2000-5000 hanzi or kanji before you can speak?

Answer 1

it is possible to speak fluent japanese without knowing the kanji characters. it actually easier, because when you can speak japanese, the hirigana/katakana will suffice (although most natives will find your spelling childish, they will be able to follow it)
you can then start by learning the kanji.

my knowledge of the chinese characters and language is very limited, i do know however that chinese children get Pinyin(chinese isn roman characters) in schools before they learn the chinese writing. this because in pin yin accents can be included, which is handy since má means mother, and mà means horse.

sufficed to say, it will take you a while to learn either. depending how much you practice, id say 2 -10 years.

Answer 2

They claim that it is almost impossible to learn to read and write them Perfectly!. Less than perfection might be good enough, though!There are people who translate from Chinese or Japanese like old poetry to their mother tongue -and they have learned the language as grown ups. I find it pretty impressive!

You might be interested in finding James W. Heisig's book:remembering the Kanji -as he has a totally different way of teaching the Kanji's. He claims that the last person to ask how to learn the characters is a Chinese or Japanese who learned them as a child -because you are not a child and you have to learn them differently! and he claims to have learned the some 1900 Kanjis in one month!
but for speaking-you don't need any!
good luck and a lot of perseverance!

Answer 3

You don't have to know any kanji in order to SPEAK the languages. To read/write in Japanese, you need to know the standard 1,945 characters. For Chinese, there is a 3,000-5,000 range of characters that you should know to be able to read most things.

The amount of time it takes depends a lot on you. If you dedicate yourself to learning them, then it will take much less time than if you just study occasionally. The Japanese actually learn them throughout elementary school and junior high. I'd say for a foreigner, it should take at least 2-3 years of SOLID studying. If you learn kanji as you learn vocabulary words, it will help you to remember them.