How many words does it take to understand japanese

[RaimiiChan]

I tried searching this and i could not find anything adequate so i thought i would ask it here ^_^ how many words do you have to know to understand whats being said in japanese when watching tv and such?

[Kai13]

I know around 4000 + words (I'm not finishing 2kyuu vocab list, and also watch and read one or 2 news articles a day, and learn the vocab there, so yeah, I probably know more than 4000 words)and have been able to watch drama and Ayu ready with no problems. Of course there's stuff I don't understand, but since I have the japanese subtitles for it (dramas) if I don't know any word I just learn it.

Also, since past october that I've been listening to japanese all day (podcasts), in the beggining it was hard and understood close to zero. However, now I can understand most of it.

My listening skills (obviously) and my speaking skills got much better after this.

[RickOShay]

Originally Posted by Kai13

I know around 4000 + words (I'm not finishing 2kyuu vocab list, and also watch and read one or 2 news articles a day, and learn the vocab there, so yeah, I probably know more than 4000 words)and have been able to watch drama and Ayu ready with no problems. Of course there's stuff I don't understand, but since I have the japanese subtitles for it (dramas) if I don't know any word I just learn it.

Also, since past october that I've been listening to japanese all day (podcasts), in the beggining it was hard and understood close to zero. However, now I can understand most of it.

My listening skills (obviously) and my speaking skills got much better after this.

Naa, I would say 10,000 words is your bare minimum to be able to fully understand most of the news and some TV programs.

It is said if you have passed the level 1 JLPT you should know around 10,000 words. I have passed it and I still do not understand everything, all of the time. Honestly it is a hard question to answer, cause it will really come down to the topic, and who is talking about it.

But if you wanna just be able to converse with people though, you can get by on a lot less.

[Kai13]

I must say that I use anki software to study, and each sentence I have has 2, 3 or more words, so I might have way more than 4000 (I have almot 5905 - around 500 not yet seen, seeing 50 new a day, I also have grammar cards, don't know many, that's why I say my vocab is around 4k).

The news I study I understand fully, because I study the vocab in it. But the news I study are easy and small. http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/videonews/

As for dramas, what can I say, I understand and when there's words I don't know I study them. The dramas I watch are easy though and I watch the same episode 2/3 times.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Kai13

I must say that I use anki software to study, and each sentence I have has 2, 3 or more words, so I might have way more than 4000 (I have almot 5905 - around 500 not yet seen, seeing 50 new a day, I also have grammar cards, don't know many, that's why I say my vocab is around 4k).

The news I study I understand fully, because I study the vocab in it. But the news I study are easy and small. http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/videonews/

As for dramas, what can I say, I understand and when there's words I don't know I study them. The dramas I watch are easy though and I watch the same episode 2/3 times.

You can estimate your vocab size here: Estimating Japanese Vocabulary Size - Japan Forum There are three links to tests. They're put out by a Japanese university, IIRC, so they are not some weirdo Internet crap.

FWIW, the first two tests estimate my vocab as between 16000 and 25000 words. This is probably accurate. I'm translating a short story right now, and there are a number of kana words I don't know. When I come across a number of kanji words I don't know, I can at least read them since I know practically all the joyo kanji. But I still have to look them up.

For what it's worth, the most difficult level of the JLPT (N1) only tests knowledge of approximately 10000 words, so as you can see, the JLPT does not prove you are any better than about a third grader at speaking Japanese. (20000 words is about the cutoff for elementary school according to the previous link.)

Side note: when taking that test, knowing the joyo kanji really helps when you see a "more advanced" word like 陸半球 and can figure it out quickly by recognizing "continent" + "half" + "sphere/globe" = oh, HEMISPHERE.

[delacroix01]

My current vocab has around 3000 words, and I have to use dictionaries all the time when reading lol. At least now I don't have to use radical look-up so often like before, but I guess I'll need to reach 15000 in order to read well. I don't know about news, but there's already a huge amount of vocab in manga and novels since there are all kinds of stories.

Edit : Tried a test on KyleGoetz's link, and it says that my vocab is around 6100 words. Well, I can read about 1800 kanji, and I figured out some words through the kanji I know so far, so that's probably as Kyle said.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

You can estimate your vocab size here: Estimating Japanese Vocabulary Size - Japan Forum There are three links to tests. They're put out by a Japanese university, IIRC, so they are not some weirdo Internet crap.

Those were actually kind of neat.

I`ve never given much thought to or tried to calculate the number of words I know. I passed the JLPT 1, but not due to any specific effort or study in it`s direction. I think the last time I tried to figure out how much Japanese I actually knew was back when I was sub-50 kanji type level.

Depending on the test, they drop me between 64500 on the high end and 38400 on the low end. I`d guess I`m probably in the middle. I think the top one was pushed up by my luck at knowing the medical and historical terms in that one.

I was kind of surprised to see the placement of some of the words, as they seemed more common than those listed earlier... For example - I didn`t know some of the "simpler" words like 針供養 (Do people still use this word regularly?) but you see 身体装検器 pretty regularly... (maybe this is just if you travel by air)

It was kind of a neat set of tests though.
Reading will really push your vocabulary up.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

Those were actually kind of neat.

I`ve never given much thought to or tried to calculate the number of words I know. I passed the JLPT 1, but not due to any specific effort or study in it`s direction. I think the last time I tried to figure out how much Japanese I actually knew was back when I was sub-50 kanji type level.

Yeah, I think this is the kind of mindset of early JSLs. You strive to have a credential showing that you have some skill. By the time you get to an advanced level, you realize you don't have the skill you want, you know you have a good amount of skill, and you know a test won't help you in any way other than to show the Powers that Be (employer, university admissions) that you have the skill. For this reason and only this reason JLPT N1 is useful.

I used to be the same way. I think it's far more healthy to just cram kanji and vocab and do as much reading as possible. Translation is helpful, too, because it forces you to notice which words you don't know.

Like I said, I'm translating a short story for a competition. I can understand what's happening fairly easily, but there are so many words I am able to just gloss over because of context that I don't actually understand. A good example is the sentence 東京からこの年の四月に疎開してきた友人で、私は、こ の友人の細君と男女ふたりの子を村であずかっていた。

Now, the two words there I didn't know were 疎開 and 細君. 疎開 I recognized as dealing with a growing distance and an opening. That was enough to grasp the general meaning of the sentence and maintain a semblance of reading fluency. But when pressed for what it meant, I had to look it up (it means, with する, "to evacuate").

細君, on the other hand, I just ignored. I knew it was some sort of family member. I guess you can guess "spouse" judging by the fact that the people involved are a friend, his/her two kids, and someone else. Looking it up, I found it meant "wife" (and is used to refer to another's wife) (１他人に対して、自分の妻をいう語;２転じて、他人の� ��をいう語).