if
- all words are in order of frequency list
- understanding = 85% of total words recognized or understood

how many words would you have to know to understand
the average anime?

not counting grammar/listening ability etc
not counting words that are common but only for that anime, names/places/etc


estimate away.

my guess is around 6000 but that's completely unfounded.

Depends what kind of series you like...I tend to go for seinen/dark/thought-provoking series, which tend to have a more complex vocabulary, and character driven dramatic series, which are usually simpler vocabulary-wise.

6000 seems about right to me for slice of life series with not a lot of specialised words (business, medical, etc).

I've always wondered what exact number would someone need to understand games,animes,etc. My gut tells me that most of the time, you will probably understand 90-100% of what you listen to, when you get fluent. That 10% or less is just there for any unknown words you encounter. That's how I like to look at it but maybe something like 10,000? (Or maybe that's too big).

Depends on the game and anime. I can read most games pretty well but when I play 空の軌跡 I run into a bunch of unknown words and kanji, so you never know 100%.

There is no restrictions as to what vocab they use in what anime. Any kind of vocab can pop up in any kind of anime.

As for me, I can understand around 80-100% of any anime I watch.

I don't know really recognize a lot of the kanji but it's getting considerably better and there are a lot of ones used repeatedly so I'm getting better at recognizing.

But my absolute favorite was when I was watching an old episode of DBZ and I recognized the insignia on Gokus back as turtle and it explained sooo much. All my childhood I was wondering what that said and now it feels like a piece has been put into place.

Quote:- understanding = 85% of total words recognized or understood

This is a very poor metric. In every sentence there'd be a word you don't know and likely miss the whole meaning of it.

Don't worry about numbers, just keep learning as fast as you can until you understand everything. However, assuming perfect grammar and listening comprehension, you could probably get away with just a few thousand (3k or so) to understand the vast majority of what's being said in every day conversation.

After that there's a long heavy tail of vocabulary stretching up to about 20-25k words I think without any clear milestones along the way.

Just for fun I ran ~2200 subtitle files from kitsunekko through the cb's Japanese Word Frequency List Generator and after a bit of cleaning (particles, verb endings, garbage and other stuff that mecab messed up) I got these numbers (coverage - words needed):

50% 275
60% 576
70% 1187
80% 2433
85% 3612
90% 5662
93% 7828
95% 10150
96% 11797
97% 14006
98% 17174
99% 22451

Link to the full list here

I agree with dizmox though, even assuming these numbers meant anything, a theoretical 85% coverage is not as good as it sounds, heck even 95% could be as bad as 2-3 unknown words per minute.

The point of a number like 85% is not that you'll be able to understand everything. You need to get to a point where looking up words you don't know doesn't slow you down so much that it bores you.

I guess aiming for 30,000 in 3-5 years doesn't sound that off when I look at the list above. If I ever do make it to that number of cards, I doubt I would continue learning in a serious fashion.

You shouldn't wait until you have 6000 or even 3000 words before attempting to listen to or read authentic material. Just watch stuff and/or listen while doing other things and read stuff using tools like rikaichan or use materials that contain translations in some form until you have a good base level. Invest in a decent electronic dictionary and you can easily enjoy stuff even if you only know 75% of the words. You don't have to look everything up. You don't need to understand everything.

nadiatims Wrote:You shouldn't wait until you have 6000 or even 3000 words before attempting to listen to or read authentic material. Just watch stuff and/or listen while doing other things and read stuff using tools like rikaichan or use materials that contain translations in some form until you have a good base level. Invest in a decent electronic dictionary and you can easily enjoy stuff even if you only know 75% of the words. You don't have to look everything up. You don't need to understand everything.

I'm not sure how I got so good at listening, it's kinda scary but maybe that's not a bad thing? I believe one should just go into territory your not familiar with, it's pretty much the only way to get better. You can prepare before hand but only over time you will see how far you've come. I can understand anime,dramas,talk-shows,news,movies and now I'm even starting to understand traditional japanese (ancient japan like: samurai stuff, ninja stuff,cultural stuff). As long as you keep the mindset of "I won't stop learning" you will reach every single one of your goals.