Update for December 2, 2016
Today, we’re moving beyond the Genki textbooks and introducing a new deck with the top 1000 highest frequency words in Japanese. We aim to build this deck up to 5000 words before the end of the year, adding around 1000 words per week.
We used Routledge’s A Frequency Dictionary of Japanese as the foundation for this list. It’s not quite identical since we’ve made some adjustments to make it more compatible with the リピート style of flashcards. It’s also a great resource for anyone else learning Japanese - and includes lists by word type and additional thematic lists in addition to the core 5000 words.
Try it out by adding it to your curriculum.
Why did you release a frequency-based list?
Gabriel Wyner and many other language-learning experts advocate the use of a frequency dictionary in order to accelerate language learning. In Fluent Forever, Gabriel quotes the following statistics:
625 words = 75% reading comprehension
2,000 words = 80% reading comprehension
5,500 words = 90% reading comprehension
12,500 words = 95% reading comprehension
Acquiring this core vocabulary helps you understand more quickly - and doing it in a prioritized way means that you won’t spend time learning words that you’ll rarely see. I encourage you to read more about this on Gabriel Wyner’s website.
How will this work with the existing decks?
You’ll also find that there may be a bit of overlap between the GENKI decks and the frequency decks. This is because the GENKI textbooks have done a really great job at incorporating high frequency words in their vocabulary lists. There’s still 600 or so new words in first 1000 words though.
We’ve integrated the decks together somewhat. If you’ve already learned or practiced a word from GENKI, we made sure not to test you on the words from Level 1. However, you may see some changes in the definitions (we’ve added, not subtracted) to the cards. GENKI’s definitions are a bit more limited, and we wanted to include a more fulsome definition.
As usual, please let us know your feedback, and especially if you encounter and problems with the new functionality. Please feel free to leave a comment, email us at hello@ripiito.com or message me at /u/explour on reddit.
