Basically Question on how you choose to memorize vocab when when you are at a very high vocab level.

My spirit just collapsed today, hoping someone that is Further along then me can help cheer me up.

So I passively memorized, the entire JLPT vocab list, I did all of RTK 1 and almost all of RTK3, using Japanese keywords. I've done a 250 Advanced Vocab Adverb book, along with a 250 word Advanced Vocab onomatopoeia book. I've read over 3,000 pages of mainly high-level academic Japanese books, countless websites(with thousands of words in wordpad files that I looked up/didn't know)

I find that unless something is an essay written for the lowest-common denominator General public, I still always need a dictionary. (this could just me being ocd, wanting to be 100 percent sure of the definition of everything though).

I got a book that that claimed to be the top most 2000　commonly used kun-yomi verbs, But After realizing that 呻く　which has 50,000 Google hits is on the list, and 煽る which has more then a 1 million isn't. I realized I was memorizing stuff I'd never see and gave up on that.

This book looks interesting in terms of picking out most used Adjectives:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E7%8F%BE%E4%BB%...IHWQVRLMLT

But it's 5000 yen, and not sure of it's quality.

My goal is to really not need a dictionary to be able to recognize the words in 99% of most modern day books. At this stage what in the world do I choose to memorize? What did you do once you were at my level?　I've looked exhaustively, but anyone know of any books that have Non-Low frequency list of words organized in a nice way?

If I just threw every word I didn't know Into SRS, I would quickly be doing Reviews all day long, with words I quite possibly might never see again(although I think 20% of th the JLPT1 Kun Yomi Verbs, I've never actually seen in the wild.).

Let me give you an example here of the back of a book description that is what crushed me:　 Tell me what would you choose to memorize from here, what would you leave to the dictionary?
____________________________________________________________
鈴木孝夫と田中克彦。真っ向から対立するかのごとく目されてきた言語学界の二大巨峰。しかし、ともに半世紀以上にわたって、真剣に、文字通り「身体を張って」言語学という学問に挑んできた、という共通項がある。この二人がはじめてがっぷり四つに組んだら何が起こるか?二人の学者の師であった井筒俊彦、亀井孝、さらにともに親しく知っていた服部四郎など大言語学者たちの在りし日の姿、凄さ、変人ぶりがまざまざと眼前によみがえり、歯に衣着せぬチョムスキー批判、日本の学界批判が続く。そしてアメリカの記述言語学、ヨーロッパ意味論の学術的系譜、ソシュール学などに截然たる評価が下され、さらには漢字論や英語教育、エスペラントについても熱論、膝を打つような名言が次々に飛び出す。まさに「言語学が輝いていた」時代だった二〇世紀。そして言語学のみならず、学問そのものの灯が消えぬよう、二人の言語学者の闘いは続く。

Words I didn't Know/Reading off)・　Don't Believe I've ever seen before(I have a vocab of more then 10,000 passive words and this is 8 words in a single paragraph!) ：
真っ向　ー　Obvious from context, Had the wrong Reading In my head for some reason。
目する　－　Became Obvious When I looked it up、　However not a common word, Worth memorizing?
がっぷり四つに組んだら　－　Really Threw me,　Some strange Sumo Term　Used as a metephor Certainly not worth memorizing.
在りし日
歯に衣着せぬ　－　Are idioms worth bothering memorizing?
系譜　-　Seems Really Common, Added it to my srs Memorize it!
截然　－　Added this in as new Japanese Keyword for 截。　Memorize It!
灯　-　Know both readings, Have no clue is this is あかり　Or　ひ　Though

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Even simple stuff: today I was just glossing over stuff with RinkaiChan and realized due to me never actually looking it up, I had wrong reading for 門戸　in my head, had to add it to anki to get the wrong reading out of my head.

I think your problem is perfectionism, not dictionaries

I think when you use a 2nd language, you pay more attention to the fact that there are words you don't know. I'm willing to bet that, in a relatively literary/dense passage written in English there would be quite a few words you didn't know the exact meaning of. You mentioned a few words that were obvious or that you could guess. That's exactly what we do in our native languages; you just pay attention to it less. Try going through a dense piece of (English) text sometime and look up every word you're not 100% sure of. It will probably be an eye opener....or exacerbate your OCD

I still look up English words when I read academic papers, at least 3 words per page in some cases.

At my low level, I do two things: I memorize systematically and I do what I do with English, which is keep a word list of cool/interesting words that I look up and then use--these have become rare over the years because my English skill is just that badass. With English I don't SRS those words because I know they'll be familiar to me purely by interest/usage. Stuff that seems kind of bleh to me but functional that I come across in purely academic contexts I do memorize via SRS, however, as I imagine interest or usage won't make them stick.

For Japanese it's a bit different--I keep a word list as I do with English, but I SRS that list because until I'm fluent or very high level of proficiency I won't have an easy framework to fit them into. In the future for myself and I would say for you if you have a high vocabulary level, you should continue to read a lot, and when you come across a word that you're unfamiliar with a quarter of the time or so, then memorize via SRS the ones that don't resonate with you somehow, and set aside the others that you like for a list so you can mentally caress them like the Abominable Snowman did in the Bugs Bunny cartoon. "I will hug him and pet him and call him George." (Something like that. ;p)

There's also the ones where you might just look them up and move on, or just ignore, I'm sure a lot of the non-OCD Krashen followers would recommend that. Personally I don't consider myself to be 'reading' unless I'm able to understand and accurately subvocalise sentences and even read them aloud in realtime w/ few problems.

I would say 'active recall' in the SRS for individual words is almost as good if you don't intend to 'use' new words in your output. Same memory mechanics but different workflow. Or do both but if you're sick of memorizing words...

koyota Wrote:Basically Question on how you choose to memorize vocab when when you are at a very high vocab level.

specialize in something. focus on one particular topic and go from there. having "general knowledge" and a specialization will probably help you decrease your stress. maybe something job related?

it sounds like you're around JLPT 1 level, so it's probably time to specialize anyway.

According to statistics, you should know about 97,5% or so percent of all words in all common works if you know 15 000 words. If you want 99%, you're going to have to do A LOT better than that that, more like... 30 000+ words.

You really don't have any choice than to learn the words you encounter (which is the point of mining anyway). In all probability, you've relied too much on lists which don't fit too well with the stuff you're interested in, so you know tons of words which don't show up in the texts you read. If you learn the words you encounter instead, it should probably clear up, eventually.

But if I were you, I wouldn't aim for 99%, that's probably more than most natives.

blackmacros Wrote:Try going through a dense piece of (English) text sometime and look up every word you're not 100% sure of. It will probably be an eye opener....or exacerbate your OCD

I feel the pain of the OP. When I read anything in English, I understand almost every single word. I have probably only looked up 3-5 words in the last year, and I'm a little OCD about knowing what words mean. Those 'improve your vocabulary' things for English are always 'ho-hum' for me.

Japanese... Ugh, I have to look up words in even the easiest of mangas. I'm currently doing a pretty good job of just skipping over them, guessing what they mean, etc. I only look up a word now when I see it used more than once, or if it seems to be something that defines the whole conversation.

But to answer the OP: Yes, you'll eventually get there if you keep practicing.

Stop trying to pre-learn all your vocab with lists, and learn the words that appear in your reading. Like others have said, specialize. Use your own discretion to decide which words you know want to learn. Books are always using words that not everyone knows, it's okay to miss a word here and there.