I was looking at two frequency lists, one for kanji and one for words.
From wikipedia kanji frequency list http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3216:
80% coverage from 555 kanji
85% coverage from 688 kanji
90% coverage from 874 kanji
95% coverage from 1214 kanji
96% coverage from 1327 kanji
97% coverage from 1473 kanji
98% coverage from 1684 kanji
99% coverage from 2058 kanji
From newspaper word frequency list http://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/ (wordfreq_ck):
80% coverage from 2164 words
85% coverage from 3364 words
90% coverage from 5578 words
95% coverage from 10958 words
98% coverage from 20748 words
These frequency lists may have some biases, however I think they are useful for thinking about our approach to learning Japanese quickly. Main thing that stands out for me is that there are a lot more words to memorize than kanji. Getting to 99% kanji is relatively easy compared to getting to 80% words.
It probably takes the same amount of time overall to learn a word as it takes to learn a kanji character. Provided of course that the kana & kanji components of the word are already understood.
Even though it is so much easier to get to 99% kanji, is it worth doing so before studying words? Going from 95% to 99% coverage in kanji is 844 kanjis. That could have been 844 words that resulted in 68.75% coverage in words. What is better, a 4% gain in kanji or a 68.75% gain in words?
Maybe it would be a lot more efficient to switch from kanjis to studying words after 80% or 90% coverage in kanjis. Then when we get to 80% or 90% words, we can go back and pick up the more uncommon kanjis.
It seems that to quickly get to 80% coverage of kanji and words, it would only require memorizing 555 of the most common kanjis and 2164 of the most common words. At a rate of 30 items/day, would result in 80% coverage of the Japanese language in a mere 90 days, or 3 months.
Conversely, getting to 90% coverage would be 874 kanji and 5578 words, and take another 125 days, or 4 months.
Thoughts?
BTW, does anyone know if there is a stripped down RTK list that avoids uncommon kanjis? RTK lite is aimed at JLPT, and I don't think JLPT is based on frequencies either.
From wikipedia kanji frequency list http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3216:
80% coverage from 555 kanji
85% coverage from 688 kanji
90% coverage from 874 kanji
95% coverage from 1214 kanji
96% coverage from 1327 kanji
97% coverage from 1473 kanji
98% coverage from 1684 kanji
99% coverage from 2058 kanji
From newspaper word frequency list http://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/ (wordfreq_ck):
80% coverage from 2164 words
85% coverage from 3364 words
90% coverage from 5578 words
95% coverage from 10958 words
98% coverage from 20748 words
These frequency lists may have some biases, however I think they are useful for thinking about our approach to learning Japanese quickly. Main thing that stands out for me is that there are a lot more words to memorize than kanji. Getting to 99% kanji is relatively easy compared to getting to 80% words.
It probably takes the same amount of time overall to learn a word as it takes to learn a kanji character. Provided of course that the kana & kanji components of the word are already understood.
Even though it is so much easier to get to 99% kanji, is it worth doing so before studying words? Going from 95% to 99% coverage in kanji is 844 kanjis. That could have been 844 words that resulted in 68.75% coverage in words. What is better, a 4% gain in kanji or a 68.75% gain in words?
Maybe it would be a lot more efficient to switch from kanjis to studying words after 80% or 90% coverage in kanjis. Then when we get to 80% or 90% words, we can go back and pick up the more uncommon kanjis.
It seems that to quickly get to 80% coverage of kanji and words, it would only require memorizing 555 of the most common kanjis and 2164 of the most common words. At a rate of 30 items/day, would result in 80% coverage of the Japanese language in a mere 90 days, or 3 months.
Conversely, getting to 90% coverage would be 874 kanji and 5578 words, and take another 125 days, or 4 months.
Thoughts?
BTW, does anyone know if there is a stripped down RTK list that avoids uncommon kanjis? RTK lite is aimed at JLPT, and I don't think JLPT is based on frequencies either.