This sounds good on paper, but you are going to be unsatisfied with it. Those frequency lists don't mean you'll be able to understand 80% of everything. It's actually more like if there's 10 kanji in a sentence then you'll understand 8/10 of them. Or if there's 10 words in a sentence then you'll only be able to understand 8 of them.
You're confusing frequency with importance for understanding meaning. A kanji's frequency of appearing has little do with how important it is for understanding. In fact, you could make the case that frequency and importance have an inverse relationship. The less frequent kanji are probably more important because they are only used when they are necessary. The same goes for words.
Frequency and importance are always taken into account in all language learning materials. Most materials do go in some order of frequency or importance, and so does the JLPT2. They all tend to go roughly by the 常用 kanji list broken down by grade level as written by the Japanese Ministry of Education.
You can continue to fool yourself into thinking that if you just do 600 kanji then bang zoom wow you'll be able to understand so much, but I'm hear to tell you that you are dead wrong. I know about 1200-1500 kanji. I know about 3000 words.
It's damn tough for me to understand anything for anyone written above a 4th grade level. I can understand all sorts of unimportant mundane details about when and where stuff is happening, but a lot of times I haven't the foggiest the what, how, or why.
Look at the words on that list, and think about how important they are for you in imparting meaning in a sentence in English. How important is the word Monday in this sentence: Monday, my father died. -or- Yesterday, I started choking while eating an apple.
Those mundane words are the most common like Monday, my, father, apple, and eating. The less common words are where the true meaning of the sentence lies.
You're confusing frequency with importance for understanding meaning. A kanji's frequency of appearing has little do with how important it is for understanding. In fact, you could make the case that frequency and importance have an inverse relationship. The less frequent kanji are probably more important because they are only used when they are necessary. The same goes for words.
Frequency and importance are always taken into account in all language learning materials. Most materials do go in some order of frequency or importance, and so does the JLPT2. They all tend to go roughly by the 常用 kanji list broken down by grade level as written by the Japanese Ministry of Education.
You can continue to fool yourself into thinking that if you just do 600 kanji then bang zoom wow you'll be able to understand so much, but I'm hear to tell you that you are dead wrong. I know about 1200-1500 kanji. I know about 3000 words.
It's damn tough for me to understand anything for anyone written above a 4th grade level. I can understand all sorts of unimportant mundane details about when and where stuff is happening, but a lot of times I haven't the foggiest the what, how, or why.
Look at the words on that list, and think about how important they are for you in imparting meaning in a sentence in English. How important is the word Monday in this sentence: Monday, my father died. -or- Yesterday, I started choking while eating an apple.
Those mundane words are the most common like Monday, my, father, apple, and eating. The less common words are where the true meaning of the sentence lies.
Edited: 2009-06-19, 2:44 pm