Honestly, I learned 90% of the Japanese I know from conversation and I can tell you you need to know far less words than you would think to have a normal conversation about your day.
However, to have complicated discussions about politics, the book you read last week, a movie you think wasn’t so great, or your relationship, you might need more advanced vocabulary. But even then, you’re not going to use a word like “decorative lighting.” (You might use “atrocious” though, lol.)
For me, WaniKani is a foundation to help learn kanji I’m not exposed to during (written) conversations and to help cement kanji I already know/use occasionally. But I think using WaniKani solely for vocabulary can lead to issues since spoken Japanese is not the same as written Japanese, and it’s the same for English.
You have to supplement somewhere and fill in the gaps between conversational vocabulary you’ll use while speaking and academic vocabulary you’ll use while reading.
To me, I think it wouldn’t be that bad to be the random foreigner in Japan who uses crazy Jukugo words in everyday conversation, I feel like that would make me distinctive and memorable.
Still despite being level 5 I’m seeing a lot of WK vocab popup in VN’s, such as 本気 vs. しんけん to mean serious, so I know for my purposes having this expanded vocab is really helpful.
Haha so true! The other day I posted on HiNative (an app where people can correct your phrases, etc) a sentence and someone told me that even though it didn’t sound completely natural, it looked like something he/she would have read in a poem.
Guess we should all move to Japan to become poets ^^
Don’t be so embarrassed if you use a word that isn’t current. If anything, it gives your friends an opportunity to teach you, and it gives you an opportunity to learn something. Language acquisition isn’t always about being right, haha.
I remember trying to use 里心 for homesickness a while back, and being met with total confusion. But the Japanese people I was with were intrigued by the word nonetheless. (FYI it’s just ホムシック）
Also, kanji vocabulary, as others have mentioned, is much more common in writing, where you’ll need it the most! So, don’t be too let down. Keep using those wrong kanji words!
Another thing to take into consideration is that rather than interpreting “nobody uses/ or says this” to mean a word is rarely used, but instead the way/context you used that word is out of place and sounds unnatural. I highly agree to taking into consideration what native speakers consider to sound natural, but one also has to realize who they are talking to. Just because a word isn’t in the active vocabulary of the person you said it to, doesn’t mean it’s not in someone else’s active vocabulary (i.e., an interior designer). On the other hand, if you’re using a lot simplistic words and grammar and drop a word people learn in college into a conversation, it also sounds strange to people. I hope you can bulk up your vocabulary so that you’ll have fewer instances of this kind of awkwardness.
Yeah, matching the appropriate register is important. A word that your friend might tell you “no one ever uses” might be the right one when talking to your boss. Maybe your friend is a student and doesn’t have a boss yet, so instead of saying it depends on the context they just say no one uses it.
Regardless if it is not used in normal conversation, you can bet they will appear in novels, essays, newspaper articles, and all written text. You should learn them regardless! Always good to expand your knowledge anyways.
I have little to no experience in speaking, I focus just on reading and writing, but I feel like there are so many words with Japanese equivalents that just become loan words. It seems like you could just speak English in katakana and get 50% of your speech would be understood.
I knoooooow! I get so annoyed when I ask for the Japanese word for something, and they just say the word back to me in katakana. Like, ok, I KNOW you understand me, but what if someone randomly uses the actual Japanese word and I don’t understand?! Haha.
Well, it depends what the word is. Some katakana English loanwords genuinely are the right word all the time, unless you want to sound like a 90 year old or someone writing an academic paper. And there certainly are a lot of them in everyday use.
Of course, but sometimes a katakana word could also be considered academic or old-fashioned. I can’t think of any specific examples, but I’ve gotten the impression that using katakana eigo can give off the same impression as using French words (like rapport instead of relationship) for commonplace things in English.
It’s perfectly fine to learn obscure words, but if you don’t want to sound like Alex from Everything Is Illuminated, you have to learn how the words are used – either look up example sentences from places like here or just do a Google search to see how it’s used.
Also, I feel that it’s more useful to learn whole collocations, phrases and idioms. For example, in English you say “take a bath”, but in Japanese the same phrase has a different logic to it and you can’t just translate it word by word. You have to get used to the way Japanese is constructed and what words go together and learning the building blocks and how they fit together gets you there faster than learning it one brick at a time.
The really useful words are the ones you will encounter in real life and beyond Wanikani. As posters said, WK teaches kanji and how to remember them. Good luck getting to 50+!
