Today I looked into various tools to learn Japanese vocabulary. I started off checking out Memrise a couple weeks back, but found that it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Since then, after some more research I've hit across a free program called Anki It's basically a multi-media flashcard program, but it seems to be very popular and has a lot (and I mean ALOT) of Japanese decks built for it.
I'm going to start using one that comes highly recommended by people looking to improve their Japanese vocabulary, called the Core 10k.
Now, I'm a little hesitant about this for a couple of reasons. First - It's going to take me a long time to memorize not just the words, the meanings and the characters for each word, but even at a fair clip of about 10 new words per day, it'll take me a bit under three years to memorize 10k words!
That may sound like a lot of words, but when I compare that figure to my estimated English vocabulary of 35k words, I start to get more than a little concerned that even after years of studying I may still effectively sound like an ignoramus when I open my mouth to speak Japanese.
Anyway, I'm going to get cracking on to this as soon as I can. Hopefully I can break this down into decent sized chunks based on some semblance of Japanese literacy averages, with the aim towards conversation more so than writing. I reckon that even though I may know tens of thousands of words in English, my usage of them in day to day conversation is actually sparse. Hopefully the same holds true for Japanese and if I focus more on verbs and adjectives rather than nouns, I may be able to explain what I mean even if I don't know specific words.
Wish me luck.
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