How do you learn vocabulary besides WK and should I start already?

I’m thoroughly enjoying the Japanese like a breeze Anki deck. Very fun and a good complement to WK in my opinion. Makes you work on grammar and seeing vocab in context.

I roughly follows the grammar order of the Tae Kim Japanese grammar guide which is available for free online or as a pdf.

Your definitely can’t rely on wanikani to teach you the core vocab since it’ll teach you 外交 at level 5 but 誰 at level 43 and ここ never. That’s not to say that the vocabulary taught isn’t valuable, but the order is not optimal.

2 Likes

I meant to reply to the original poster, I’m bad at this.

1 Like

Wanikani is like the starter pack to get you into Japanese. It will help get you to a point where you can navigate the language without having to stop and search up every single word/kanji you come across.

Once you have 6,000 words from WK under your belt, and assuming you were also reading and using the language along the way, you should come out of level 60 with 10k+ words that you’re at least familiar with. Now at this point, you should be able to read with ease, meaning you can also search up new words in Japanese and understand the Japanese definitions. To me this has a compounding benefit much greater than sitting through an extra 20,000 word deck on anki.

The best way to learn new vocab is by making the language a part of your life. Slowly exchange your every day tasks with Japanese equivalents. For example, create a new YT account and only watch Japanese videos, so that that will be all the algorithm recommends to you; instead of Quora, use 知恵袋; instead of BBC news, use NHK news; instead of ENG>JP dictionaries, use JP>JP, have a question you need to google? Do it in Japanese.

You will eventually reach a point where using Japanese day-to-day will become more beneficial to you compared to studying using your current language.

When I started, I mainly used Tofugu and Maggie Sensei.

For grammar, I strongly recommend Cure Dolly.

And if you like the fast paced style of SRS, Bunpro is also great for grammar.

4 Likes

In the past, I have done Wanikani and Core 10k, as well as read a lot example sentences with translation, but I am not sure I would recommend that.

In recent history, I find Kanji knowledge, from Wanikani and a little more, useful for guessing meanings. Extensive looking-up, in a numerous amount, in a dictionary helped a lot for latter reading. I am not sure if exporting to SRS (Anki) is needed, even if I may forget some items.

So, I would emphasize on Kanji. There is also a thing about word roots, but it is hard to find a collection and learn that – and they aren’t necessarily frequency vocabularies.

My idea have become of doing intensive and extensive reading concurrently, or alternately.

1 Like

I tried to write vocab down on paper but it was far from anything easy and chill, SRS just meshes better with me since I can just push buttons on my keyboard and learn words because I’m lazy as hell. I could see paper and pencil working for leeches though.

1 Like

Seconding drops as a easy and free way to fill in common vocab, especially stuff off WK

Here’s my full review. Drops, Extensive Review after 1 Year of Use

What makes you say that? There are so many different categories and so many of them don’t relate much to tourism.

This I agree with though. I feel drops in combo with WK gives pretty good coverage vocab-wise.

SRS is still worthwhile, but I might recommend a few resources that you could use to guide your notetaking…

  • There are a few vocabulary books, including N5, N4, N3, N2, and N1 books. These can be hit/miss, but they are a resource

  • There are also textbooks. Minna no Nihongo, Genki, and Tobira each have vocab sets, with grammar (usage) and thematic organization. The intermediate books also have vocabulary, obviously.

  • Then there are graded readers that come with footnoted vocabulary built into the reading, which is easier to your reading process than mining.

  • Then there’s always listening practice, which can be a great way to notice new vocabulary.

My approach is not systematic, but it does seem to work (slowly) in an accumulative effect…

2 Likes

After reading your review on drops and thinking about it a little more, I agree with you. WK + Drops does seem like a pretty good option :+1:

1 Like

6000 words is not very many. You probably know 20,000 or more in your native language.

Learning the kanji is a good bootstrap to a bigger vocabulary in itself, since you’ll often be able to deduce the meaning of a new compound by looking at its components. But you’re still going to need a LOT more words than you’ll get from WK alone.

I’m one of those people who thinks SRSes are boring. I don’t know how many decks I’ve abandoned in various systems. WK has the advantage of clearly defined steps, so you can see yourself making progress. And it still gets boring sometimes. Learning vocabulary by immersing yourself in native content and looking up words as you go is in some ways more interesting, but it can also be frustrating because you have so little knowledge at the beginning. Textbooks, graded readers, and similar materials can help make that initial hump more manageable.

When to start? What’s your frustration tolerance? For myself, attempting to learn vocabulary when I don’t yet know the underlying kanji is pointless. So I might look up anything I don’t understand, but I’ll only actively attempt to learn kana-only words and words that use kanji at my WK level or below. I’m just now getting to the point where I can kind of read middle school-ish level materials without constant lookups.

1 Like

Thank ya’ll for the helpful answers already! Guess I’ll take a look into your ideas.

However I am wondering on how to go about vocab that uses Kanji I don’t know yet? Just learn it anyway or more accurate: try to learn it anyway?

Also I’ve just found the ios app Benkyo, an app to study vocab, grammar and kanji with SRS if one is interested. Has anyone tried the app? It seems like a good one for me to us it for vocab.

If it’s a kanji that’s on WK, you can choose to wait until you’ve learned it on here first, but WK doesn’t even have all the jouyou kanji, and there are plenty more that you’ll come across that aren’t jouyou, and those you’ll have to learn on your own

You also don’t technically have to know a kanji to learn a word that it’s used in. I learned 冷蔵庫 was “refrigerator” and read “れいぞうこ” ages ago when I only knew the first kanji, and between that and 在庫 (ざいこ, “stock; inventory,” seen on Kinokuniya JP and other sites when looking into buying books etc.), when I finally learned 庫 as “storage; warehouse” on here on lv 28, I was like, “Oh, yeah, makes sense,” and that was one fewer kanji I had to worry about. It’s only that knowing the kanji makes it easier to guess and learn the meanings and readings of unknown words that use them, but you can learn the meanings and readings of kanji through the words they make up, too.

4 Likes

You could just look up the Kanji on WaniKani anyway and learn it already.
When I first started with vocab-decks I just added everything to the SRS anyway, looked at the WaniKani-Mnemonic to help me a bit and sometimes it would stick really well, despite not having learned the Kanji “properly” and other times I struggled with it.
Now that I have a decent number of Kanji under my belt, I started skipping vocab in my decks when I haven´t learned the Kanji yet and instead learning it later. If is something very common and WK has it at a high level, then I add it to my reviews. Of course you can also just learn the word wthout the Kanji first, but I personally prefer learning both at the same time.

When reading I usually look up unknown vocab with Takoboto on my phone. If it´s Kana-only or uses only Kanji that I know already I add them to a list and when I have time I add all of that vocab to my SRS, leaving out words that would soon show up on WK anyway.

1 Like

You resumed my feeling towards ‘minig while reading’. For me it takes the pleasure out of it (and I do love reading…).

As for those obscure words, there are words in my natively language that I have never heard of. One doesn’t need to become a dictionary in order to enjoy native content… And we can always pick new words while just ‘leaving’.

I do wonder if the people who complain about mining while reading are aware of the systems people have in place to mine. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I mine my cards in less than a second, so I’ve never felt like the flow is broken.

4 Likes

Agreed. But then you also have to review what you mine. If you have enough exposure, some things are probably not worth mining since you will see them again soon. If I didn’t know “wizard” and I were reading Harry Potter, I wouldn’t mine “wizard” (high frequency, every book), but I would mine “webbed” (low frequency, mainly in book 4).
Further, for those of us who don’t use Anki (Kitsun users), there is no streamlined process that I am aware of, on mobile.

I’m not making the blanket claim that mining is bad. I’m making the claim that it isn’t for me, and perhaps not as beneficial for high frequency items, and that it is probably more enjoyable to read when there are way fewer things you need to mine in the first place.

Yeah but I mean not while you read. That’s just a product of making flashcards and not something specific to mining.

I mean yeah I can get behind these two claims

Probably for most people. I never personally experienced that. If anything my enjoyment has dropped as I have less to mine because I lose out on the joy of learning more.

1 Like

Reading. That’s how. Once you build up enough vocab for the most frequent 2500~ words or so you can kind of just go and get vocab as it comes.

2 Likes

Ah, that’s an interesting perspective. I can see how that might happen.

1 Like

Apps and tools are great, and they are demonstrably fast ways to build vocabulary.

But there is a lot to be said for actually, you know, using the language.

“Immersion” to me means immersing yourself, surrounding yourself with the language as much as possible: conversation and written.

It takes a lot more effort to surround yourself with the language if you don’t live in Japan, but between things like Netflix, social media, internet videos, etc., and even paid online conversation services, it’s easier than ever.

It’s not the most efficient way, but it’s how we learned our native languages. We understand little at first, mostly just letting it wash over us. Eventually, though, we understand more and more. Especially if we learn how to read (kanji) at the same time.

3 Likes

I started out trying to learn everything. As I’ve gotten deeper into WK, though, I’ve decided that (1) the WK method for learning kanji works better if I embrace it, and don’t confuse the issue by adding random out-of-sequence kanji through other sources, and (2) trying to learn vocabulary without the kanji is harder, because it skips a step. I’ve also reached the point where (3) my current kanji +vocabulary is (finally!) big enough to give me access to a decent amount of reading material, making it easier (and more fun) to learn organically instead of obsessively building SRS decks.

2 Likes