The power of frequency
When first starting out reading, the fewer words you know, the more words you’ll need to look up as you go. This can make the reading process drag on, as you’re piecing sentences together a few words at a time.
It’s appealing to consider learning as many words as possible before you start reading, but doing so comes has downsides:
- It’s easier to forget words if you are not encountering them from time to time, something reading helps avoid.
- SRS also helps avoid this, but SRS is better suited to helping remember words between encounters in native material.
- The words you learn may not appear in the material you want to read.
Non-targeted learning with Core 2K and Core 6K
Many learners of Japanese will gravitate to flashcard decks such as the Core 2K deck for learning some of the most common 2,000 Japanese vocabulary words, and the Core 6K deck which adds another 6,000 words to that.
These decks are great for amassing an all-around range of vocabulary words. If you’re planning on communicating with native Japanese speakers, or reading or watching a variety of Japanese content, you’ll probably want to know most of these words.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to read your first manga in Japanese, these decks will take a lot of time to give you little progress.
Consider the following manga series and the percentage of the words you would recognize from the first volume after learning all the words in either the Core 2K or Core 6K deck:
| Series | Core 2K | Core 6K |
|---|---|---|
| ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん | 62% | 75% |
| レンタルおにいちゃん | 57% | 73% |
| からかい上手の高木さん | 51% | 70% |
| 三ツ星カラーズ | 48% | 64% |
| よつばと！ | 48% | 59% |
| orange | 57% | 71% |
| 名探偵コナン | 49% | 67% |
| ハヤテのごとく！ | 50% | 67% |
Here, learning 2,000 words only covers about half of the vocabulary words in the first volume of each series. Learning another 4,000 doesn’t get you much further along.
For reading your first ever Japanese material, this is a significant time investment spent learning words with little benefit.
Targeted learning with frequency lists
If you target your vocabulary words learned to the specific manga you wish to read, you can reach recognition of 85% of the vocabulary words appearing in an easy manga often within 500 words learned. Further, 95% recognition for an easy manga is often within 800 words.
Consider roughly how many words you need to know to recognize roughly 85% and 95% of the vocabulary words within the first volumes of these same series:
| Series | 85% | 95% | 100% |
|---|---|---|---|
| ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん | 340 | 500 | 580 |
| レンタルおにいちゃん | 410 | 600 | 700 |
| からかい上手の高木さん | 480 | 720 | 840 |
| 三ツ星カラーズ | 510 | 765 | 890 |
| よつばと！ | 565 | 820 | 950 |
| orange | 500 | 870 | 1,060 |
| 名探偵コナン | 720 | 1,270 | 1,565 |
| ハヤテのごとく！ | 1,025 | 1,765 | 2,140 |
When you focusing on learning words based on their frequency in the material you plan to read, you can feel the progress you are making sooner.
Once you’ve learned the words necessary for one manga, you’ll find you know most of the important words necessary to continue reading the serires. And when you’re ready to branch out to other manga of similar difficulty, you’ll have a head start for them as well.
Manga frequency lists
Frequency lists for manga are hard to come by, and tracking one’s known words across manga is even more difficult. To solve this, I have developed the manga frequency list and known vocabulary tracking web site Manga Kotoba.