Hey guys, I was just wondering if anyone used and finished the core 2000 and 6000 decks and I would like to hear from you guys if it was enough to understand most of the Japanese that you encounter in novels, anime, manga, movies and videogames. Your input will greatly help everyone.

Even if you didn't completely finished the decks but gone through a big chuck of it your input is still important.

I have yes. The stuff you list though runs the gamut of difficulty. Manga will usually be easier to consume where as a novel by Murakami is likely to leave you dumb founded with just 6k words.

As an example, I started reading 俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない recently and marked almost every word I ran into. At page 30 (started page 12) I stopped, went back through and dropped the sentences into an excel sheet. Within those pages I logged nearly 120 new words I didn't know. Some pages are easier than others but I'd still say I know 80-90% of the words on the page.

So finishing the 6k will put you near a middle schooler in vocabulary probably, but you still won't be anywhere near an adult's vocabulary or whats needed for the N1.

I agree with you that novels are not easy, but for now I want to just read manga, play video games (mostly text heavy games like rpgs and visual novels), would that be enough to understand most of these media ?
I don't mind adding new words and sentences as I encounter them but I just thought that if I learn all these decks I'll have to spend a bit less time looking for sentences on the net to add to my decks and more time enjoying playing and reading.

Oh, and I also wanted to add that Murakami kicks ass, an awesome author, I'm so jealous you actually read his novel in Japanese

it depends on the game and the manga. you also have to be used to picking up styles of speaking, especially in entertainment.

keigo is a good example. there's lot of characters in anime/manga/rpg etc that speak in keigo to act highbrow, or from the old days, etc.
there's also a lot of genre-specific words to know. weapons, armor, etc. aren't common language in anywhere but games.

i haven't done core, but i did KO2001 and an N2 vocab book.
there are many times when i play a game and i have no idea what's going on, there are times when i play a game and i get the gist of it, and there are times when i know exactly what's going on. sometimes they are all in the same game. (gyakuten kenji 2 is a good example for me.)

similarly, sometimes i can enjoy the game even though i don't know the details, sometimes i can't. sometimes i get in study mode and look up every word i don't know, sometimes i get really annoyed with it. etc.

I've finished about 3500 words out of core6k. At this point I have enough vocab to be able to read very simple manga, but I still can't read most manga without lots of dictionary lookups. Maybe that kinda puts it into perspective a bit.

Core2k is probably good to get you started, and then actually pulling words from manga and stuff might be better than going with core6k, as it really has a lot of business related words and stuff.

If you are looking to only study the core 2000 and 6000 decks to understand anime, manga, and video games, I would say that you will be flat out of luck with comprehension.

Sure memorizing words can and will help you, but you need a better base than a memorized vocab list to understand the mechanics of Japanese necessary to put the pieces together. Core decks do not teach grammar, so you will be lacking in that area.

If you are just starting out, I would suggest you fiddle around with core 2k AND study a good book introducing Japanese (Genki 1+2, Minna no Nihongo).

俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない is written by Tsukasa Fushimi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_no_Im%C...ake_ga_Nai). I think vix wasn't referring to any specific novel by Murakami.

My situation is like this, I either search sentences for every word I encounter and put that into anki or I just read without searching every word, only those that seem to stand out or repeat a lot. I am not really just starting out as I have been studding Japanese on and off for a while now, I can't really do a total immersion but I do try to listen and read as much as I can.

Should I continue doing that or just concentrate on the core decks for now ?

Both of those strategies are fine strategies that have served me well. I think if you put every unfamiliar word you encounter into Anki you're probably memorizing a few rare or specialized words, but -- nothing wrong with that!

I don't think you need to concentrate on doing the core decks unless you know so few words that you end up getting really frustrated when you read.

If you read a lot of manga and video games or, well, anything besides newspapers and political/financial books and magazines, you're probably going to miss out on some of the political and business words that are included in Core 6K. I don't think that's a big deal; we're not in the bubble years anymore and unless you're planning on working for a Japanese corporation in the near future there's not much reason to make it a priority. Core 6K takes a lot of its word frequency data from newspapers so it's kind of slanted in that respect.

That's the thing, no matter how much I know it feels like it's never enough, at least once I want to read one whole chapter of a manga or one hour of gameplay where I understand everything, the way I am doing things feel really slow.

Ah. You have achieved enlightenment.

I've done JLPT 1kyuu, I've taken classes in Japanese universities with native students, I've read a couple dozen novels, and I still feel like it's never enough -- especially if my standard is that I'm able to understand everything. And I think part of getting good at Japanese is getting used to not understanding everything.

Core 6K may help, but so may reading easier stuff.

Fillanzea, that's amazing, after learning for so long are you more or less can read most things and understand them as a native ?

For easier stuff (most manga, most contemporary novels) I can read things with about 98% comprehension, but still much slower than a native speaker. With older novels and historical novels, and current events magazines that have more political/business vocabulary, I can still read with good global comprehension but with lots of individual words I don't know.

My listening comprehension sucks, but that's my own fault.

You know if you need to listen to some real japanese there is a program called keyhole that lets you stream japanese tv, you could get that running in the background while you do other things. Few hours of that baby and your hearing comprehension will be as good as your reading.

Oh, believe me, I've tried.

(I have some auditory processing issues even in English, so it may just be a little harder for me.)

The Core deck series include a lot of words used in politics, business and finance, which aren't necessarily the areas that most manga would be concerned with.

In terms of sheer volume, Core 6K also doesn't cover nearly enough to be able to read manga or light novels without quite frequent dictionary lookups, I would think. As a point of reference, my vocab decks total to about 14K words, yet I still need to lookup words fairly often when reading something like Harry Potter.

How then did some people use the AJATT method like katz' and do it in only 18 to 24 months ? Because from what I get it's just impossible.

I myself tend to think that anyone who claims to achieve that kind of proficiency in that short an amount of time is either
(a) lying
(b) deceiving themselves
© REALLY good at memorizing things
or
(d) has the sort of environment and free time where they can devote themselves whole-heartedly to language study.

On the other hand, if you learn 20 words a day you can learn 14000 words in 2 years. That's not wholly unreasonable, though it doesn't mean you'll be proficient unless you're doing a fair amount of reading and listening along with that, and you have a decent enough grasp of grammar to understand what you're reading and listening to.

I have learned other languages this way too, I just wasn't aware that I am learning, all I did was having fun and without anyone explaining anything to me I began to understand the language and then one day there was this kind of a switch in my brain that suddenly I understood almost everything 100%, so I do know it works but with Japanese I am forcing myself to learn and that's where much of the pain comes.

I didn't have anki then, heck I didn't have a computer, all I did have are some magazines and a TV.

I am currently working through the core plus deck. Core2000 done, Core6000 about halfway, most of the JLPT vocabulary done except 2 and 1 still 2800 cards. Though I did other things before, Kanji Odyssey for instance and that one helped immensely. As far as websites are concerned, and because I am mining constantly from both the web, as well as books, I got way more but still far less than needed to fully comprehend books, or on a very high level and without constantly marking new words. The same with videogames, though I get better. I can't comment on Manga, as I haven't read any, they are not my genre I guess. Websites, News, Fashion and such are no problem, some Anime I can watch and understand almost everything, http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x98r38_...shortfilms 笑ゥせぇるすまん for instance. Or things like this

some Podcasts and Daily talk on radio are relatively easy, too.

But there is yet so much more to learn, to fully comprehend things thrown in my direction or things discovered at random. And this will take even more effort on my side, and a Core or whatever deck, is by far not enough to reach it. It is what else one does besides it that lets you progress. So read while you are doing any of those decks, even if you don't understand, listen and get used to the language, this is what will get you far in the long run.

I finished core6k and have learnt additionally about 4200 vocabularies I added with Rikai-chan up until now ever since January 2011. I cannot say I understand "almost everything" and what do you mean by understanding? Grasping single words, grammar and making sense of some sentences? Or understanding the whole plot line?

@Nagareboshi: It is greatly dependant on the type of anime you watch I think! Watch something like 'Arakawa under the Bridge' and you will be surprised how "bad" your Japanese is. The same counts for anime's that have a great amount of their own language like Naruto, Bleach or where there are longer dialogues (e.g. Detective Conan). I could understand 90% on the fly with the transcript, but not more. I hear occassional words, phrasings now, but that's about it. Anyway, just wondering how other users define their "understanding" or "not-understanding" when watching anime or shows. I guess the problem I face when watching/listening to native sources does not apply to such a great extent when I'm reading. I'm reading ノルウェイの森 by 村上春樹 right now and yeah, there are words (e.g. onomatopoeias, I do not give a damn about right now as I cannot remember them anyway lolz) I leave out and still get the sense and my reading speed increases the more I learn words with Anki (@Zorlee, you were absolutely right about that )

Tori-kun, by understanding I mean actually know what the details of the plot are, not in general (usually I can understand whats happening in general) but the actual details of the conversations between characters, lets say you are playing some rpg and you talk to each person in town, what I mean by understand means to exactly know what they are saying, not just getting a clue from a few words that you do understand.

But there's a wide gap between "understanding a few words, guessing the rest" and "understanding everything."

I just started a book called カラフル　by 森絵都. I expected it to be fairly easy for me to read, and it is, but in the first two pages I found seven words I didn't know (although in some cases that's "I know what it means but I'm not totally sure how to read it"). Which is pretty typical for me even for an easy-ish book.

For most of those words, the context plus knowing the general meaning of the kanji was enough for me to know the meaning of the word. For the rest it was a really small detail with enough context around it that I could move on with a slightly fuzzy understanding. It still felt like enjoyable, quick reading, not guessing or decoding.

There's been research done that if you can understand 98% of what you read, then you can read with sufficient understanding and enjoyment, and learn new words from context. Think 98%, not 100%.

I do agree that each person defines "understanding" differently and I want to add that even those who know English don't know all the words but know the 98% (those 98% are even smaller if you take it in the context of every English word in existance ) of what they read, watch, play and so on... and the thing is that even if you don't understand a few words that does not hinder your enjoyment, how many people here are concerned with each and every technobable in any sci-fi novel, those who read don't understand all these words but they still enjoy the story, they don't stop and open a dictionary to check words like space delapitaded dysfunctional reality or whatever because those words don't stop you from enjoying the rest of the story, and that is what I mean by complete understanding

Native speakers and people good at a language gain an ability to judge which words are important within a particular context. In a sci-fi novel you could probably ignore dysfunctional reality or some other jargony word because you understand that its not really important within the frame of things--its merely a flowery word that the author threw in to spice things up.

One other thing to keep in mind too is that a lot of L1 speakers may not actually "know" what a word means yet they know. That sounds a bit paradoxical, but a lot of big words in English for instance, if you were to quiz people on the street by reading them a passage and then asking them to paraphrase the meaning; they'd get it. But if you then go back and define some word like "antipathy" they might go "erm um...its like.." Yet they just paraphrased a passage where it was used. People know the meaning of words from context they hear them in and gain a "feeling" of the meaning of the word but not a dictionary definition of it. Probably the most frustrating part though is that it doesn't take a heck of a lot of repetition of a new word, for it to stick for an L1. Where as I'm sitting here doing 100's of reps on Japanese words to get just an inkling of it to stick...annoying.