Quiz: Wanikani Pleasant vs KanKen level 1. Which is more common?

But why? Seems like misplaced confidence to me. Let’s say you read Murakami’s 1Q84. That’s 400,000 words.

Someone asks, “Did 女の人 appear in that novel?”

I think it would be insane to confidently say, “No.” Like, why would you remember something like that?

I also thought hesitation, despite the fact that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it. (I haven’t read enough.) But what I do know is that there are a lot of words for woman, and a lot of them more descriptive. So to me, it just didn’t seem that strange that a word for hesitation might be more common than 女の人.

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10/17

Incorrect

4 - Honestly, probably a silly mistake; I definitely know I see 女の子 or 女性 far more often than 女の人
5 - Recency bias? I see 呟く constantly. But to be fair, I’ve seen 相手 fairly regularly as well. It was a hard choice for me.
6 - Careless just felt right, but wasn’t. :stuck_out_tongue:
7 - Another “I see these both fairly often, but I’ve seen 囁く most recently”, so I went with my gut. That guy is an idiot. :stuck_out_tongue:
9 - I’ve actually not seen 終焉 in anything I’ve read yet, but that’s probably got more to do with what I have read so far. :laughing:
13 - I’ve seen 赤ちゃん at least once but somehow haven’t seen 朦朧 yet (that I remember), so I just went with the one I had seen
14 - Total guess. :laughing:

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Oh, it’s definitely not some “I know how often I’ve seen this” thing – it’s just, as others have said, thst I have plenty of memories of running into 躊躇 whereas 女の人 just felt “hmm, that’s not the usual way to express that meaning”.

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Got it maybe a little under half-right. At least I learned some new words.

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Incidentally, I just came across the sentence 海斗は躊躇いがちに呟く。and I almost laughed out loud :rofl:

Ok, this got me curious. I happen to own the ebook version and so I counted.
女の人: 12 times
躊躇: 20 times

:woman_shrugging:

Yes, absolutely. But the question was not whether it appears in one specific book but how frequent it is in general, in the books that jpdb analyzed. And I think that one can get a bit of an impression on how often a word appears in the books they read, no matter the language, just because one learns in which way authors tend to express things.

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Wut, no, I didn’t notice. There were 3 occurrences in the last volume of 本好き.
Well, that just shows how bad the human brain is at noticing those things. 助力 doesn’t feel special to me, so I don’t pay attention to it. The instance I thought I remembered was from a different series too :joy:
Meanwhile, 曰く feels nice, so I always notice it.

Edit:

I’m going to say that it appears 0 times in said volume of 本好き, though.

And after checking, it indeed appeared 0 times.
It’s probably just luck but, as I and others said, it just doesn’t feel that common… I was completely wrong about 助力, so that feeling is obviously strongly biased, though.

Edit2: I have just checked another 2 volumes, and still 0 occurrence. I think it just doesn’t match the writing style of the author.

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Well, we are dealing with overall frequency here. Looking at the frequency it appears in series, you could say 女の人 appears in a minority of books oj there most likely. So while you might not confidently be able to say whether or not it appeared in one book, people who have read a bit will probably subconsciously begin to notice that they aren’t seeing it too much.

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Answers and reasoning behind them
  1. I haven’t seen either of these more than a few times recently that I remember so I just guessed 毎度 which was wrong by a few percent. Wrong.

  2. This has to be 病気 - yep, it was. Correct.

  3. I’m thinking 儚い because it’s a more general adjective and fires don’t happen that often, at least not in the books I’ve read - yes, that checks out. Correct.

  4. This one is easily 躊躇 because I feel like I see it way way more - correct but I’m surprised at how close they are. Do I just read books featuring very hesitant people? Correct.

  5. Both of these are super common words so I don’t think I can reasonably figure out which is more common because they’re both literally everywhere, which is why I guessed and picked 呟く randomly which was wrong. I was right about both being really common though (at least that’s how I’m Interpreting the percentages). Wrong.

  6. I was thinking 迂闊 because there’s been very few doctors in things I’ve read but apparently that’s wrong. I guess I’m not reading the books that have doctors in them. Wrong.

  7. 囁く here because I was thinking it’s a common action I see happen often Vs stars which are more specific and I only remember coming up occasionally(at the moment I only remember stars from the first few sentences of Sao progressive and in occasional environmental descriptions in other books, also as a name in one Yuri ln), but I got this one wrong too. Wrong.

  8. 曰くbecause quite a few of the books I’ve read use it - yay for getting this one right after three wrong answers in a row Correct.

  9. 終焉 because I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen just 決 on its own(at least not often enough to remember it) - this is correct. Correct.

  10. 邂逅 because even the few times I’ve seen suicide brought up it’s often with other words for it - yes, that logic checks out. Correct.

  11. 中止 since I see it a lot more than the other one. correct.

  12. this one is hard. I’m guessing 戸 and narrowly got it right. Correct.

  13. I guessed 赤ちゃん which is wrong. I think I’m biased because of the book I’m currently reading. Wrong.

  14. 平ら and wrong again. Wrong.

  15. 投擲 and actually right this time. (I didn’t remember seeing many volcanoes in the books I’ve read). Correct.

  16. 魑魅魍魎! I’ve seen it like three or four times and that’s more than the other one. That’s also correct. Correct.

  17. 十月 since it’s not that uncommon for dates to be mentioned in things. Correct.

Overall that amounts to… 11/17, I think? I feel like the ones with two common words were by far the hardest. I also think most of my random guesses were wrong.

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11/17 That was definitely fun!

I learned 儚い from yosuga no sora so I just started going ham. Once I realized the context was novels, I tried getting a feel for which words I would see more in a literary context. I chose 呟く cause I saw it often in songs but 相手 was a surprise, should’ve never underestimate how many times a partner is mentioned in, say, a romance novel.

I’ve encountered 魑魅魍魎 multiple times but I can never remember the contexts.

Anyhoo, this somewhat gives me a reason to learn not just the jouyou and the jinmeiyou kanji. Nice work

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