The Japanese language has many homophones, or words that are spelled and sound the same, but have different meanings. To distinguish between the different meanings, the Japanese adopted many of the Chinese characters called kanji. Kanji are pictographs and represent ideas and things. The Japanese government has labeled 1,945 kanji as being "common use". That means that these characters are the ones that you must know to be considered fluent in the language. They are needed to read a newspaper or even the simplest book.