I'm not sure if this question already has been ask, but I'm gonna give it a try:

I noticed that Core 6k is a lot more popular than Core 10k. Why is that the case? Doesn't Core 10k contain all vocab from 6k + an additional 3624 words? So why do so many people go of and do their own thing after 6k without doing the additional 4k? Are some the additional 3624 words from 10k overlapping with the original 6k words? Or are they just not 'common' enough?

I never actually studied Core before, I'm actually fairly new to SRS as well, but I'm planning to give it a try in 1 or 2 months from now after I finished some other things. I know I have to start with 6K anyway which will take me quite some time to finish, but I would like to know if the additional 4k are worth the effort or if I should switch to something else by then? Making the switch to solely studying vocab which are in my 'field of interest' right after 6K seems rather early to me.

It is probably a lot to do with the time investment involved which makes people prefer 6K to 10K. A lot of people opt for the RTK volume 1 Lite version for similar reasons.

That and maybe because the recent updated core 10 is rather new compared to core 6? I don't know.

Thank you, I never looked at it that way. Have you done or are you currently doing Core 10k? If so, do you have any comments on the additional 4k words?

kill4food Wrote:Thank you, I never looked at it that way. Have you done or are you currently doing Core 10k? If so, do you have any comments on the additional 4k words?

Not going Core 10k at the moment, although I have scoured through the words a while ago and noticed a fair few words in the additional selection of words which I've seen here and there in native media. So I would say that it is probably worth it if you are finishing up core 6 and don't mind that particular method of cramming vocab. I mean, you're going to need to get a lot more than 10 thousand words into your head and familiar, and if the core approach is workable for people then I'd say it's well worth the extra work after core 6.

I think the main reason is the 10k list wasn't even very accessible until recently, whereas for years people have been doing Core6k either through IKnow or Anki. So that kind of became the standard recommendation that people follow, so people would still do that without even knowing the 10k exists.

I've been through the full 10k list so would recommend it, but its best during alongside other things that interest you I think (plenty of TV and reading etc). That said I think its a great method for drilling vocab, so I'd say to do as much as you can before your brain turns to mush and you can't handle it anymore. I don't see any real reason to stop at 6k, I think its just as effective for the next 4k words as it was the previous 6k.

Its just very dull and boring after a while, that's all. I do think its very time efficient though so well worth doing.

Thank you, you guys have pretty much confirmed my suspicions. Stopping at 6000 seemed rather early to me and I don't see why you shouldn't continue with 10k unless there is something wrong with the additional 4k words, because even knowing 10k seems very basic to me.

I couldn't even find a core10k deck when I was looking around earlier on this year. You'd still hear people talk about it, but I don't know where they got it from. Probably some old link that had long since gone dead. So yeah, I think accessibility was a big part of the issue. Now we have a good deck going, though.

The "Core 10k" data was extracted from the Japanese Sensei Deluxe iPhone app by overture2112 in 2011, and it was originally posted in the japanese 先生 = core 10000? thread. The Core 10k name also comes from that thread. The data is not part of the Japanese Core series published by iKnow / Smart.fm, and there are actually only 9619 pairs of words and sentences. overture2112 posted the data as a Google Docs spreadsheet, but the spreadsheet is now set to private access. The Core10Kv4 (aka core10K (core 2k6k +4k more)) Anki deck includes MP3 versions of the audio files, but I haven't found the original AAC audio files anywhere.

When I compared the data from the spreadsheet uploaded by overture2112 with JSON files downloaded from iknow.jp, they included the exactly same versions of 5544 words and 3739 sentences, but about 1500 more sentences only had small differences.

The Core 6000 and Japanese Sensei Deluxe audio files are spoken by different people, but the Core 6000 audio files are better in my opinion.

The furigana in the Core10Kv4 Anki deck is auto-generated and has a lot of errors. Many versions of the Core 6000 data (like those based on http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9762 or https://sites.google.com/site/ankinihongo/home/kore) have perfect or almost perfect furigana though.

Ok so I dug around a bit and I found this thread http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9320

The thread isn't really related to my question but I found vix86 saying "I ran some searches and comparisions on the list and realized that a lot of the words in the deck were simply taking prior words in the Core2k+6k that were hiragana only and making them have kanji now. I stripped these cards out and simply kept the cards which were unique words. This left me with around 1200 cards vs the 4000 it should have added on."

Can someone verify this? If only 1200 cards out of 4000 which are added by the 10k deck are new words, I would say doing the additional 4k is definetely not worth it

I believe pmnox's 10k deck has 10k unique words, plus jlpt vocab that wasn't in the original 6k data, nor the extra 4k data. You should take a look at it.

The main reason I wouldn't recommend it is that it's boring. After 6k, it's more enjoyable, and possibly more effective, to just source words and phrases from books. At least, that's what I've found.
On a related note, I thought that the 10k list didn't have audio. It's not a really big deal, but it's good for holding concentration.

@ktcgx thanks a lot! That's exactly what I need.

@sholum 10k (at least the 10k deck which I found) has audio for both sentences and single vocab words. Also wether 6k words is enough to branch of to mine from native material is debatable and wether it's effective or boring differs per individual I think. Personally I think that 10k words is a better number to branch of.

Learning vocabulary is only part of learning Japanese. When you go through Core6k, even with the example sentences, you learn the meanings of the words in a superficial level. To really understand the words, you have to see them being used in different contexts over and over. That's when reading is a lot more effective then just learning word definitions. Before doing Core6k, trying to read books was really frustrating. Once I knew 6000 words(even at a superficial level), reading became a lot easier. Reading a lot was a better time investment than just doing more words at that point.

ktcgx Wrote:I believe pmnox's 10k deck has 10k unique words, plus jlpt vocab that wasn't in the original 6k data, nor the extra 4k data. You should take a look at it.

It's not true that there are only 1200 new vocabulary items or anything, but pmnox's deck or the original Core 10k data doesn't include exactly 10,000 words, and there are also a few words that are included multiple times.

pmnox's deck currently contains 9888 entries and 9784 unique words based on the literal word column. The non-Core 6000 data in pmnox's deck was based on the Core10Kv4 deck, which contains 9624 entries and 9410 unique words based on the literal word column. The jsensei spreadsheet uploaded by overture2112 contains 9619 entries and 9405 unique words based on the literal word column.