How many characters are used in the Japanese language?

There are 46 hiragana, 46 katakana, and about 1800-2000 kanji needed for everyday, basic fluency (e.g. the level required to read a newspaper) in Japanese. But there are thousands of kanji beyond those as well. There are ways to set up your computer to write in Japanese, but you would need to Google your particular model of computer or laptop and find instructions for installing (or activating the already-installed) package for writing in Japanese. Once you do, you should be able to write in hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Exactly how you wind up doing the typing will vary. Many modern computers allow you to type as though you were typing romaji, and the computer converts the writing from English characters to Japanese characters for you. Some older models have specific keys that correspond to each kana, and you will need to learn those keys if you want to type quickly in Japanese on a computer like that.

As someone else said, there are indeed 3 scripts used in Japanese - hiragana, katakana, and kanji - the latter of which are the most closely related to Chinese characters. In hiragana there are 48 characters, in katakana there are also 48. The exact number of kanji isn't really known for sure, but it's said that there may be up to or even more than 50,000. However, only 1945 are listed by the Japanese Ministry of Education as "joyoo kanji" - essentially those which are most frequently used and useful in Japanese, and which are taught throughout students' schooling. I think that most Japanese people will know about this many, and possible more (I may be wrong). I'm not sure how you can configure your keyboard to type those characters if you use a Mac computer, but if like me you use a PC, go to Control Panel. Select "Change keyboards or other input methods" below "Clock, Language and Region". In the dialogue box that pops up, select the tab "Keyboards and Languages", click "Change keyboards", and in the next window that opens up, click "Add" and select Japanese (I recommend the Microsoft IME setting). Then click "OK". This should then make appear at the bottom right of your screen (along the taskbar) "EN", representing English. You can click on it and select JP for Japanese. Now when you type as in romaji the letters will automatically convert to Japanese characters as you go. Hopefully this made sense! :)

In daily use you need to know about 2000 characters to read the average newspaper. There are thousands of kanji more, but about 2000 are officially thought in schools and must be known. Like the English language which is only made up of 26 letters, but you can make millions of words out of 26 letters, Japanese characters can be combined to create millions of words as well. As for Japanese input, you need to install the IME or activate it on your computer. Most modern Microsoft Windows operating systems allow you to activate Japanese input, the setting slightly differ depending on which operating system you have, research JAPANESE IME for more information.

There are thousands of characters, and three main scripts. Katakana, Hiragana, and Kanji. The kanji is shared in a lot of cases with the chinese. You can absolutely get Japanese characters on your computer. You're going to have to tamper with the language settings. Found in your control panel on a PC or in your system preferences on a mac.

Takes about 2000 to read a newspaper. A college graduate, at least from I have heard, my know 10 times that. My opinion? This the the time for Area52 to chime in. Me and him aren't best buddies. But either him or TheCheapest are your best bets for an accurate answer. As Clint Eastwood said, "A man has to know his limitations." I have at least a vague idea of my own limitations.

There are about two thousand kanji(Chinese Character). You have to know at least one thousand character and six thousand words for daily usage, the rest are in high-level and essential in reading economic newspaper like Nikkei Shimbun or reading a complex book. While you don't know the exact meaning of a certain combined character, it gives you a hint when you know the kanji's origin. Some native Japanese doesn't know all these two thousand character anyway, so don't worry. You can add Japanese Language from MS office to be able for you in write Japanese character. Good luck!

there is about 1,800 characters. You can't really configure your keyboard, but you can type something into some websites and it would translate to japanese, Writing english into japenese characters wouldn't make it japanese, it doesn't translate that way. if we translated the japanese word for hello to english characters it would be Kon Ni chi Wa, which doesn't spell hello.