Learning Japanese fast - Why not use frequency lists for 80% coverage?

scuda Wrote:I assumed JLPT2 would have a poor kanji list because of its standardized and conventional nature. Maybe I should take another look, perhaps RevTK lite would be equivalent to basically 93% coverage or so.

I thought the same thing when I first started studying Japanese. I was highly skeptical of the 常用 kanji list because it was created in the days before computers. How could they have possible known which kanji to include and which not to?

The answer is that they were smart. In the research I did on the list(it was quite exhaustive), with the exception of a few kanji here and there the 常用 kanji list pretty much lines precisely up with the frequency data I was able to generate. All of the places it deviates are places that you could easily say, "Yeah, but this kanji is more important despite being less frequent."

drivers99 Wrote:Statistics error... knowing 80% of the words that appear in a large collection of newspapers does NOT mean that you only know know 4 out of 5 words per sentence, because the words within that list are NOT randomly used. I don't know what the figures would be though, and my google-fu isn't finding it.

I think everyone in this discussion knows this. We're just making a point about how recognizing 80% of all the words doesn't mean you'll get 80% of the meaning. We're actually making this point for you, but in a different way.