Vocabulary tables with frequency, JLPT, WK level, and associated WK kanji

Japanese Language
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I was wondering whether there is a list, table, database, or Anki deck floating around that contains the 10,000 most frequent words (I don’t super care where the frequencies come from, some news corpus might be most suitable) and

  • Frequency/occurrences/rank in 10k core
  • JLPT level
  • WK level
  • if not in WK: which WK level the kanji occurs

I think it would looks something like this

Word Hiragana 10k Rank JLPT WK level WK kanji
警官 けいかん 5801 N5 19 19
から から 10 N5 0 0
増補 ぞうほ 8291 0 0 25
消防 しょうぼう 2266 N3 0 20

My aim is the following: I think on the lower end of learning (say <Level 30), it’s nice to learn from various word sources. Especially since I realized that we actually don’t learn so many vocabulary words through WK, my vocab-learning-eagerness got rekindled a bit. What a table like the one above would help you with is that you can achieve goals along multiple axes. These goals are usually:

  • Learn very frequent words that are not in WK (e.g. kana only words but also others)
  • Learn only the frequent non-WK words for which you already know the WK Kanji, so the extra step to learn the word is not so big
  • Study only the N4 vocab for the JLPT
  • Study N5 vocab starting with the words for which you already know the WK kanji

Fundamentally, I think it’s really two things we want: frequency (aka real life usefulness) vs. WK (kanji logistics) vs. JLPT (aka test usefulness). WK is the tool to achieve a test fluency and real life fluency.

I’m aware that at some point, all of these converge. But again, in the lower levels, thinking in these terms makes at least to me a lot of sense.

EDIT: This is nice.

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one of the core 10k decks is what you want :wink: I’d recommend torii but many alternatives exist.

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I looked into torii a while a go, but probably worthwhile to revisit. What I found a bother last time is that it is inside this app. I think it’d rather have a file so I can use it in my own learning environment (aka Anki), but it’s a good start, thanks!

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There are core10k anki decks around too if that’s your preference…

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Including WK levels for both WK and non-WK words as well as JLPT levels? I’ve never seen one.

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WK-levels for non-WK words? Can you explain what you mean here?

Other than that, Jisho has the WK and JLPT information afaik so I wouldn’t be surprised if such anki decks existed.

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As I tried to outline in the original post, a word like 消防 is in N3 but does not occur in WK (aka non-WK word) but the two kanji occur separately on level 12 and 20. When learning non-WK words, it’s nice to still sort them according to their WK level, because knowing the kanji already helps the learning process.

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Ah you mean sort them by the WK level(s) of the contained kanji, then. I see, that would be nice indeed. I haven’t seen such information anywhere, though…

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How do existing platforms match to WK levels? I think they use individual kanji and/or words pulled from WaniKani, correct?

@akira70000 I think you might’ve seen it, but there’s been a Aozora Bunko initiative in the past which I believe might give you a head-start.

EDIT: the thread mentioned above: Here, Have a List of Aozora Books by WK Level

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There are lists of WK kanji with their associated levels. I suppose it’s no insurmountable challenge to write a script that returns all the levels for any given word. If nothing shows up here, I guess that’s what I’ll do.

I know the Aozora Buko, which I am always reluctant to use, as it goes quite a bit outside everyday Japanese. Didn’t know the the Aozora stat, that’s interesting, thanks!

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