How to Learn Japanese Vocabulary as a Beginner
After learning kanji, the next step is to use it to learn vocabulary. In a previous post, I discussed my general approach with regard to vocabulary acquisition both as a beginner and an intermediate learner. I also presented some of the challenges unique to Japanese such as the difficulty in looking up unknown words, and the double effort required to learn the meaning of a word along with it’s reading.
The conclusion was that as a beginner, especially in Japanese, it’s hard and boring to learn vocabulary through immersion alone. Taking the initiative to memorize some basic vocabulary pays huge dividends. And the fastest way to memorize is through using Spaced Repetition System (SRS) flashcards.
In this post, I’ll show how to concretely apply that philosophy in practice to learn Japanese words as a beginner. I’ll introduce the tools and resources such as word lists, apps, and Anki decks that I used to memorize vocabulary as rapidly as possible.
iKnow! Word Lists
iKnow.jp’s collection of Japanese words is one of the best resources for learning vocabulary. There are 6000 words organized into 6 groups of 1000 words each. Each of these groups is further divided into collections of 100 words each. It starts all the way from very basic beginner vocabulary in the core 1000 series and goes up to advanced in the core 6000 series. You don’t have to learn all of them. I myself stopped studying after the core 4000 series and then focused on learning new vocabulary by discovering it during immersion.
All the words are written in both kanji and kana and have audio pronunciation. Each word is demonstrated with an example sentence and the sentence’s English translation. The core 1k and 2k series have 2 example sentences per word. 3k onwards this becomes one. Up until the third or fourth step of the core 4000 series, there are also pictures. These aren’t always directly related to the word and sometimes relate more to the sentence instead.
iKnow Site and App
The site itself and all the words on it are free to access. However, reading off the site wouldn’t be an organized way to learn and revise. For that, you can use the iKnow! app available on both Android and iOS.
The app has various different comprehensive exercises meant to aid you in learning vocabulary. Last I used it, it was free to use for 10 collections of 100 words, after which you need to buy a subscription.
I personally didn’t use the app because I didn’t like how comprehensive the exercises were, such as one where you have to type out a word. Instead, I like to be able to quickly review something within a few seconds, and move onto the next card. I don’t like elaborate exercises because it takes me a few seconds to input the answer, even if I actually know it immediately. Instead, in Anki, I just have to click whether I remember a flashcard or not.
Anki
I like to use Anki to learn vocabulary because it feels much faster. I personally dislike exercises that require a few seconds to answer. I like to rapidly review whether I remember something or not and see the answer immediately if I don’t. The difference in momentum this means for me is the difference between getting bored and feeling challenged.
Since Anki isn’t very straightforward to use, I’ve written a guide on the basics. Though it seems like a lot of work upfront, the optimizations in learning you can make with Anki make the effort more than worth it over time. That said, you don’t need to know anything more than the bare basics to make use of the following decks.
Coming back to iKnow!, all words are available in the form of free shared decks for Anki:
Given that from the middle of the 4k series onwards pictures aren’t included, I’d strongly recommend you to add pictures for words yourself. This is an extremely beneficial aid to memory that shouldn’t be ignored.
How to Format Flashcards
You can skip this section if using Anki already intimidates you. Learning the above decks with the default settings will serve you just fine. The following is just how I tailor flashcards to suit my rapid learning style better.
As a beginner, you’ll want to practice both recognizing and recalling words. It’s actually more efficient to use flashcards for training just recognition and then training recall through immersion buy seeing the same word used over and over again in different contexts. Nonetheless, I assume that most beginners have a pressing need or desire to speak Japanese. Training with recall flashcards helps jumpstart that process.
Recognition Flashcard
To train yourself to read Japanese as a beginner, you should keep only the word itself on the front side of the flashcard. Everything else: the meaning, reading, picture, example sentence, audio, etc. should be kept on the reverse side.
Recall Card
Through Anki, you’ll basically be training yourself to associate a word with an image that you can easily recall that illustrates the meaning of the word well. You’ll be taking advantage of your superior visual memory to memorize words. Thus, you can keep the cloze version of the example sentence (the example sentence with a blank instead of the concerned word), and English meaning of the word on the front, but you should primarily focus on the image when you practice recall on Anki. Towards that end, if a picture is hard to relate to its word then change it.
Kanji Link
Add this link to your card templates:
<a href=”https://jisho.org/search/{{Vocabulary-Kanji}}%20%23kanji">Kanji</a>
Clicking this link while revising a flashcard will open up Jisho.org where you can check the meanings of the individual kanji of a word. This allows you to revise kanji while studying vocabulary.
I personally try to recall the keywords for the kanji in a word when I’m learning it. This link helps me to quickly check if I’m right or not.
I go into more details about designing flashcards for learning Japanese here:
Drops
Drops is a pretty popular app for learning everyday vocabulary. It’s got a great design and aesthetic and features fun exercises for learning words. Words are organized into categories such as transportation, food, etc.
Drops is alright for learning a few extra words but it can’t be the main pillar of your vocabulary study. Most of the nouns focus on everyday objects such as motorcycles or kettle, which you’re not likely to come across in Japanese media. Sure, you might need it if you’re in Japan, but in that case, you could probably ask a person around what an object is called anyway.
The exercises, though fun and effective, were an impediment to my rapid learning style.
Fluent Forever Word List
You’ll need to know how to make decks and add cards in Anki to make use of this. This is a list of 625 words that is meant to serve as a starting point for learning any language, not just Japanese. It mostly contains common everyday nouns and verbs. It’s not exactly a frequency list even though it claims to be one. While there has been some thought put into it about the frequency of words, it felt like words were included more based on how basic and tangible their meaning is. Thus, you might learn some words that seem really basic like ‘blind’ but which are actually very rare in practice.
The words on the list are all easy to remember because they’re easy to visualize and find pictures for. It can serve as a good starting point to build your confidence in memorizing vocabulary.
The main problem is that the list is in English and you need to find corresponding translations using Google Translate or Jisho.org yourself. Aside from this being bothersome, it’s not possible to know if a word you translated is actually commonly used. Many things in Japanese are expressed quite differently to English. Going back to ‘blind’, you’ll find that it’s translated to 盲目 (もうもく). However, not only is the phrase 目が見えない （めがみえない）more commonly used, but it’s also easier to remember.
Enter your email at the end of the page to receive the word list:
How Many Words Should You Learn a Day
The answer is actually just “as many as you can.” Even just one new word a day is still progress. This might sound ridiculous to you as it did to me when I first heard it but there’s some real truth to it. Besides being so easy that you can’t help but stay consistent, this takes advantage of exponential growth. The more words you know, the easier it becomes to learn a new one. Thus, for each word that you learn, it’ll become easier to learn the next word.
If you’re naive and over-smart like I was, you might’ve extrapolated 1 word a day to mean just 365 words a year. However, this math is flawed. Realistically, after learning a word a day for a week or a month, you’ll be able to increase how much you’re able to learn with the same effort in the next period, and so on.
For example, after you learn 強化 (きょうか) meaning strengthening and 補給 (ほきゅう) meaning replenishment, it’ll be trivial to learn 補強 (ほきょう) meaning reinforcement.
I played the math in the opposite way. Since I wanted to learn Japanese as fast as possible, I studied hundreds of new words per day and revised hundreds more. That’s why now I don’t need to make an active effort for learning many of the new words I come across. Seeing a word in use a few times is enough for me to remember it since I can learn the word through its kanji.
Conclusion
For 90% of you, using the iKnow app or the shared decks on Anki as-is will be the way to go. There’s no complicated set up involved. I may not have found the default configuration ideal, but they’re still very useful just the way they are. There’s no excuse for not starting.
