Yeah, I thought it was pretty common but they did look it up from the dictionary (the two of them) and were like, “oh”. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my pronunciation or anything. Could have tried to use it in a weird context, though. I don’t know.
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I haven’t chewed my way through the core 10K yet, so I’m not sure how I’d fair when picking up a book after completing that. But you’ll definitely be in a better place if you’re supplementing WK vocab with other stuff!
I know @jprspereira kept going much harder than me on SRSing vocab after 60, and is at 15.000+ words learned in total. A few months ago he mentioned that his vocab skill still feels under par. Unless I’m misremembering, but I’m sure he’d be willing to weigh in with his experience. ^^
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The day he isn’t I’d be concerned for him 
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This makes sense.
the average active vocabulary of an adult English speaker is around 20,000 words, while his passive vocabulary is around 40,000 words. ref
Wonder if this is similar for Japanese.
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I’d be wary of claims like that, because no one knows exactly how to define the term “word”. It gets especially confusing with inflection-rich and agglutinative languages like Japanese.
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I appreciate the comment.
I agree that compared with English there may be less applicability to Japanese due to kanji and it’s base meaning. That said, Japanese paper dictionaries are still quite thick last time I checked, and filled with clearly defined words. I can’t see why total active and passive vocabulary word count would not still be a valid metric.
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Every dictionary has to make an executive decision as to how to define a word. Is noun+付き considered a new word every time, or is 付き its own thing? Are 身体 and 体 (both pronounced as からだ) the same word or 2 different ones? Are nounified verbs considered their own word? What about こと? Is it one word with semantic differences, or many different words depending on what particle is attached to it? Are onomatopoeic voiced version adverbs considered their own words? What about onomatopoeic り adverbs that can have a doubled mora?
There’s a reason linguists haven’t been able to define what makes a word “a word” - it’s a difficult problem, and one that lexicographers have to struggle with every time they make a new dictionary.
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laughs in Finnish
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i did the core10k, twice actually. i wouldn’t rate it too high for various reasons… they’d been taken “from newspapers” (no details regarding the corpus) and were optimized for use with smart.fm (nowadays known as iknow).
the core10k sure has some useful vocab in it, but also lots of things irrelevant to most people.
what i’d recommend for vocab acquisition is reading, or rather any meaningful activity in written japanese, that’s centered around something relevant to you. this way, you won’t waste energy trying to memorize the japanese for “agriculture minister” or the 27th synonym of “production”, and forgetting them again because they never pop up in anything you actually read.
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To add another option to the list: Yomichan. One interesting feature it has is the ability to export words directly to Anki, if you use that.
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As good as a very intelligent kindergartner 
.
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Not sure if I would count those words “learned” if you’ve just burned them in an SRS software. Same thing with kanji. Really need to use/see them in the wild.
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Agreed. ^^ But JP has also never said that he’s only SRSing. I remember him commenting on his vocab number in a different thread, so that’s the only thing I can say about his learning routine.
He’d have to be putting his Japanese into practice to reach the conclusion that he’s not yet satisfied with the extent of his vocab.
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I’m sure there are many people here who know more words than me, but I was meaning to reply to this thread.
At the end of WaniKani, you’ll be able to read many words. That’s not nothing, but it’s not everything you need to know. For many words that are more abstract than “cat,” you’ll need to do your own research on exactly what the word means and how to use it.
So when you have completed WK, you won’t be able to say yet that you have mastered the 6000 words you learned how to read here, but it’s a good start at least.
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Well, since I have been summoned.
To OP, WK will give you exactly what it says on the tin: about 2000 kanji and 6000 words. That’s not much in terms of vocabulary, especially since you would indeed not have seen them in context.
I started feeling comfortable reading novels at around 13k words (although that’s a bit fuzzy since it’s hard to keep track) and a lot of practice. The more you read, the easier it becomes.
For that purpose, I did like floflo, since it gives you exactly the words you should learn to read a given novel. That also mean you get to see words in context if you choose to add them to the SRS as you go. (There are much more explanations on what is floflo and how it works in its specific thread; I would link it but it’s a bit annoying on phone).
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So what would you recommend that I could start now to get to that 13k vocab? Would the 10k anki or kitsun list be good and exclusive, for the most part, with wanikani, or should I just create decks in anki or kitsun or floflo as I go and add words as I see them to get up to that 13k level? I honestly am just trying to plan how I will tackle japanese, so that I stick with it to the end.
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Doing WK will go a long way towards that. Generally I wouldn’t worry about it until you feel the lack of vocabulary is holding you back - that’s when you should focus on acquiring new vocab. Until then, do WK and your grammar course of choice, and you’ll be fine.
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Active vocab, maybe not so much. Passive vocab, definitely.
I considered a learned word a word that I either started SRSing at one point or that I’ve seen frequently enough to know what it means, reading, etc.
Knowing how every word should be or should not be used comes with practice of the language. It’s something more subjective, so I don’t really take it into consideration. Of course, every word I learn I check its Japanese definition and look for example sentences. I think that really helps with still remembering the vocab in the long-term.
Life needs to be taken SRSly after all 
hahahaha…
I’ll see my way out…
To OP @facade, for now I’d worry about getting some kanji knowledge and grammar. Until JLPT N4 level, Wanikani’s vocab is decent enough. If you still wish to invest more on vocab, do the Genki deck available on Kitsun (or elsewhere).
I’m very supportive of doing Core 10k later on actually. 98% of the words you’ll see in different media. Just because it’s a list based on newspaper, it doesn’t mean you won’t see them elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I only have the last 1500 words of that deck left to do, but around 20% of the words I see from exposure and I still don’t know are in those last 1500.
The problem is how people study, not what. People might choose to spend all their study time doing SRS, ending up with no time to actually feel the language being used (reading, writing, listening, speaking). Having a balance is important 
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I’m still not on board with the idea that we can’t measure vocabulary strength by a simple metric like I originally posted. Passive vocabulary items vs Active vocabulary items.
To your comment of how words are defined, until our conversation just now I had thought that people considered “keep” (to retain) and “keep” (part of a medieval castle) as a single word. Now I’m not so sure. They might be a single entry in the dictionary, but for all intents and purposes (and especially across languages), I guess it would be considered two words.
For J-J, there seems to be a popular convention of listings words by reading (in hiragana) with subcategories for differing meanings. See the image below for からだ.
I am going to look at my Kodansha 和英辞典 and pocket J-J dictionary differently from today I don’t know whether to thank you or start crying.
PS. Relevant Quora post here.
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