2355 words to go for me, I’m just the deck that has 10k sentences, audio and what not I really like it. I do 45 a day and thanks to WK and other vocab I have learned I have thankfully deleted a ton.
I also told myself I would simply start the 10k deck in the year, I did not and jumped soon after I got it months before the year started so I happy with that.
I started back in November and I’m only 400 words in, although I disabled all N5 and N4 words, and most WK vocab so I only have about 4000 (minus whatever other words I’ve already learned, which is about another 15%) to go through. I’m hoping to be done with it by about August, but at the moment I’m doing about 30 a week on average so I need to pick up my pace.
If I’m not mistaken it’s the most common 10,000 used words in Japanese in an Anki deck. The one I use has sentences, audio and pictures for each vocab word.
I’ve tried the 10k decks a couple times, but every time I found myself unable to continue.
The main issue was usability. Most of the unknown words that I wanted to learn from news articles, conversations or essays, weren’t in the 10k deck at all. Useful things like 試行錯誤, 腰を上げる, 満ち足りる, 整理整頓, 渇望 etc. aren’t found in those decks.
Instead you learn random words without context that you will rarely encounter anywhere in articles, essays, conversations etc. and ultimately you’ll end up forgetting those words.
I much prefer to instead make my own deck, and add words little by little in the order that I find them. This way I know exactly what I’m learning and I remember where I found the words and how they were used.
Don’t get me wrong, there are useful words in the 10k decks, but if I have to learn 7 000 words before I learn ネタバレ, then I much prefer just adding it instantly to my own deck.
The first time I tried out the 10k a few years back, this was exactly my problem. But for me now, I consume so much Japanese material and I get so much practice, that it’s actually become justifiable for me to slog my way through the dozen or so ways to say the same thing (looking at you, “to get”).
There is definitely still room for improvement and I find myself adding more important words as I encounter them, but I’ve found over the past few months, it has begun to give me a really solid foundation, filling in holes that I had previously forgotten or missed.
I guess it all just comes down to where you are with Japanese and how much you’re doing outside of that, because I definitely wouldn’t recommend the 10k to someone who is around N5 as there’s much more pressing vocab to focus on first.
Is everyone avoiding directly naming the deck because of forum rules? If permitted, please link to the deck on ankiweb. There are a few decks in that size range and I am not sure which one everyone is talking about.
It’s just a popular vocab deck for people to use, since it’s so expansive. It’s really just called the “Core 10k” because it’s core vocabulary, and it’s the 10,000 most core (common) items. I was confused the first time I heard about it too, to be honest
10,000 most common vocabulary. We study them by SRS systems. There’s different apps ex. Tori, kamesame, kaniwani and anki etc…
p.s i love your pfp btw
Edit: welcome to wanikani @Holgi
Please don’t be afraid to ask questions.
This approach would save people hundeds of hours. It’s much faster to reach an acceptable level of comprehension this way.
doing 10k decks is the best way to either burn out or stay a “japanese student” forever instead of becoming a “japanese consumer”. It’s like learning a dictionary by heart instead of using it when you need it. Sure, it gives a sentiment of security, “if I learn 10k words before diving in, i’ll be alright”, then you discover you still don’t understand two thirds of whatever you read and that 10k security bubble was just preventing you from progressing efficiently.
EDIT : I don’t want to hijack this thread, big kudos to everyone managing a 10k because the effort is humongous and the rewards are significant. I just felt like people who haven’t should always be warned that the 10k method is archaic and sub-optimal.
I’m really liking the 10k, especially for the voiced sentence cards. Even when I already know the words, hearing sentences drives their usage home well and improves my listening ability. I can also shadow the sentences to improve my speaking.
Right now, I’ve hibernated everything but the first 1k, hibernated WK dupes, then went through and manually hibernated ones that I felt I already knew so well that I really don’t want any more reviews. With that much personal filtering, I’m left with a really useful set of stuff to learn right away and fill in holes from WK. When I finish these, I’ll move on to the 2k set the same way, and continue for as long as I continue to see the benefits.
Learning all 10k before doing any reading would be silly, but I don’t think anyone’s recommending that. I think it’s great to progress through it slowly as you continue other aspects of your training (WK, reading native material, grammar study etc.).
I also think it doesn’t need to be either/or between this and a personal deck made from words you find in your reading. You can do both!