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I'm genuinely confused.
So I'm trying to understand Japanese learning communities these days. My main quirk right now is how pretty much everyone says they know 6000words, 1823 Kanji, etc. This also confused me when I was reading JLPT requirements for the first time, since I've never encountered a language where anyone counts the number of words they know(beyond say, 1-30 known words).
I mean, how do you even go about counting it? o.O. Do you guys keep a list? And by "knowing Kanji", what do you mean? Readings? Meanings? General use? Writing? Combination? All 27 readings of 上?
I'm not dissin', just extremely curious.
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counting kanji is pretty useless I agree, except in the sense that one should eventually cover the jouyou (general use) list of 2000 or so.
Words on the other hand are a reasonably useful metric in my opinion, and is satisfying to track. Getting an accurate estimate of known words is pretty difficult (especially at advanced stages) but can be tracked somewhat if you keep word lists or have an srs deck of vocabulary items. The reason I think known (or even just studied) words is meaningful, is that it does correlate somewhat to general level. It can also help you be more material focused rather than method focused. What I mean by that, is that in order to be as good as a native speaker, you need to bridge the knowledge gap between you and the native speakers which will involve learning, among other things, a huge number of words. If you aren't conscious of what it is you're actually learning when you're studying, it's easy to fall into ineffective study.
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In Japan there's a ton of books for learning X000 English words, so I don't think this is peculiar to learning Japanese...
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yudantaiteki: I know that. I just find it weird how many people list the number of words/kanji they know.
Then again, Japanese is unlike anything I've studied before so I guess a progress tracking method unlike anything I've seen before makes sense.
caivano: I've never heard of such books=/, aside from conversation guides or phrasal guides or stuff like that.
Edited: 2011-10-26, 6:54 am
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@zgarbas. I think the number of Kanji or words you know is a hard metric to measure, and generally not that useful. Keeping track of the number of Kanji you have completed, or the level in your Kanji studying is useful if your learning is systematic. Doing practice test for the JLPT is another good way to check your strengths and weaknesses.
Most people learn Japanese either systematically through RTK or other method, so it is easy to keep track of the Kanji. Vocabulary and grammar is learned through books like Genki or Anki (if I am correct on the later). So, by what you complete will be a good indicator on ones approximate knowledge.
I believe other language tests have metrics on how much you should know, or what you must have learned. That is what is on the JLPT. 改訂版日本語能力試験漢字ハンドブック is a good book that lists the Kanji that needs to be know for each level.
With languages like French and Spanish there is a small number of characters to learn, but with Japanese and Chinese there are hundreds to learn. My view on keeping track of words and Kanji known is used as positive re-enforcement for learning Japanese.
No matter you level of adventurousness you will know more that whatever level you have completed.
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A lot of people probably go by their SRS decks and maybe add an estimate for what they feel they know outside of them. Like you say, it's not really possible to be accurate. If you take a 6000 card SRS deck as an example, you can't say you know 6000 words unless your retention is 100%. Even then, does "know" include being able to produce them, or even recognise them while listening? There may also be a lot of words you've picked up and managed to memorise purely through exposure that you wouldn't take account of. Still, it can be interesting to try to estimate how much you know when discussing your level/progress.
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It's just from the nature of study materials that are popular lately. If you primarily learn through flashcards, and you use electronic flashcards, it's fairly easily to estimate the number of words/kanji you know with a reasonable accuracy. This is especially true in the earlier phases of learning(when, for example, even if you're using a traditional textbook it's easy to guess how many kanji you have covered, because they are numbered in the textbook and you do them in order).
If you study with a whole bunch of different methods, ones that aren't so organized, which is what I do, you'll have no idea how many words or kanji you know. I know I know thousands of words, but if you asked me if I know more or less than 10,000 words I wouldn't know what to tell you. I know I did 2042 kanji in RTK, but I have no idea how many of those I can actually read in context with the majority of their readings, I don't know how many I've forgotten, and I don't know how many I know that weren't covered in the 2042.
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Also the better you get at Japanese, the more you can use context to figure out what words and kanji are, and that decreases the value of how many kanji you "know" also.
For instance, yesterday in an article I encountered 淵源 -- I could tell from the context and the second character that it meant "source" but I didn't know the on-yomi of 淵, so I don't know whether I can count that as "knowing" that kanji or not. There was also 常套表現; I've seen that enough that plus the context I knew it meant "cliche" or "standard phrase" but I couldn't read 常套. (On the other hand, the same article had 顰蹙を買う and I had no idea how to read that or what the meaning was, even from the context. So learning new kanji is always good, I guess...)
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In my experience, I made the fastest progress in Japanese, after I started to focus on listening and reading and boosting my known vocabulary. And by known, I'm really talking about recognition, more specifically visual recognition, i.e. I can read it and attach some meaning to it even if that meaning is slightly vague (for example L1 definition). With the reading and listening practice, came deeper understanding of usage, and with listening practice comes greater recognition of known words and comprehension of japanese audio. If all you do is read and listen, you'll still be learning vocabulary (provided you do so in such a way that the meaning is apparent to you (dictionaries/translations/etc)) but it will be pretty impossible to estimate how much. If you're attempting to learn at faster speeds than natural osmosis based on frequency, via some form of systematic approach then you may be able to estimate your vocabulary somewhat based on number of total words studied (In your srs or wordlists etc).
