Hello everyone, I recently installed a frequency dictionary and noticed that a lot of the vocabulary ranks very high on the list (15,000+). Do you guys think it would be a good idea if I skip those less frequently used words for now and learn the alternate readings for those kanji using Anki when the appropriate time comes?
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At the end of the day what really determines what you would or would not learn regardless of what apps you use is the native material you engage with, be it reading, watching, speaking, listening, you name it. So whatever criteria you use to optimize your learning it canât tell you what word youâll encounter next in your individual journey, it tells what people write not what people read.
As for the number - 15000 looks high but it really depends on the number of words and which kind of words the frequency list lists. lets say the list contains 150000 words from books and novels, common words would still be placed between 10000-20000. So itâs hard to tell. What would be the number of words in a frequency list thatâs based on the entire www japanese text?
I know that some users mention diminishing return after reaching level 30 and that they donât need wanikani anymore, they can learn using anki or simply by reading and reading and reading and learning new words while reading. So itâs up to you to decide what works for you.
I have a lifetime so itâs not an issue for me and I gell well with the way wanikani presents their material. I donât care about frequency, and I encounter words from wanikaniâs higher levels all the time. 6000 is such a small number in the grand scheme of things and anything you are able to learn when you learn a new language benefits you in the long run. But thatâs just my personal opinion and personal preference.
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arguably you should skip the high frequency words because you should (in theory) be seeing them very often, the low frequency words you wonât see in as often in native media and those are the ones you want to add to SRS
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The average Japanese adult knows between 25,000 and 30,000 words, so 15,000 isnât really far down the list enough to be ridiculously rare - itâs something that youâd certainly expect most people to know.
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My honest opinion? I think all of us non-experts in the Japanese language and Japanese language teaching methods should stop trying to be clever and just do what the program says to do. By the time we know enough to know if something else would be better or not, it will be moot.
On the other hand, by the same reasoning, I canât say your way wouldnât be better. 
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I think vocabularies via Kanji learning might not follow well with vocab frequency. Say, for the sake of recalling by Kanji, or âstanding-out-nessâ, it could be worthy to learn rare vocab too. (Maybe up to 30k or something.)
Vocab frequencies may be higher or lower in some media, as well as vocab usage might be different, so grammar and collocations. So, immersion matters a lot, rather than just discrete vocabularies.
Still, if there are more common vocab bearing the same Kanji reading, it might be good to learn those too (first?). So, Anki, and also not over-trusting that WaniKani is enough.
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In addition to what has already been said in this thread, I remind you that the vocabulary in wanikani does not try to teach you the most important words. Wanikani is a tool for learning kanji, so it teaches words that use those kanji, often with its various pronunciations to show you the kanji âin actionâ. (An exception are the recently introduced kana words, but there arenât too many compared to the rest of the vocabulary.)
However I confess that I skipped the vocabulary concerning the military ranks and the baseball terms as I donât know the English equivalents either so it was useless to try to remember pairs of Japanese/English terms without knowing the meaning of either.
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The military ranks are the absolute worst. Especially because thereâs two different triples of them on WK, adding even more confusion and random guessing.
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For me WaniKani is all about learning kanji so yeah, I do skip/pass failed vocab reviews all the time if I consider that I donât care about a specific word, especially if I did manage to get the individual kanji reading/meaning right. Vocab is always easier to learn with a meaningful context anyway.
At level 27 you should probably already be reading Japanese regularly, use that to orient your studies and decide what is and isnât worth learning. Youâve basically extracted 90% of WaniKaniâs value by this point.
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Thereâs three different triples in the real world, but for some reason WaniKani decided not to cover ĺ°ĺ° or ä¸ĺ°.
Basically, the summary is that ĺ° outranks ä˝ outranks ĺ°, and each is subdivided into 大, ä¸ and ĺ°.
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I think by now you probably know better than anyone else what might work best for you.
I personally wouldnât do it because even though sometimes vocab is a long grind to learn, they do reinforce the kanjis much better than kanji alone. So for me any vocab is good to learn and I really donât care so much about frequency and such.
But ultimately 300-400 words less wonât matter that much - as long as you keep learning forward.
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