Questions & Tips: Japanese Core 6000
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top comment
As far as I know, the Core items have been licensed from the CJK institute (which is probably best known for "The Kanji Learner's Dictionary"). There are 10000 items in total, which can be found in the "Japanese Sensei" iphone app. There is no further information on the pages of the CJK institute, so you can only guess where it comes from.
I think that neither selection nor order of words make sense for any kind of source. For the newspaper hypothesis: One of the surprising omissions is the word "日本" (Japan), which you could easily find in any newspaper. In contrast, the Core items contain the weird word "日ソ" (Japanese-Soviet, this was later edited out by Cerego). This points back to the 80s - maybe the Core set was compiled without the help of computers, which could explain some of its shortcomings.
Some notable omissions that I remember right now: Almost all expressions, interjections, greetings (did you know that はい means yes?). Everyday words like コンビニ (kombini, convenience store), 上履き (uwabaki, indoor shoes/slippers). Place names like Tokyo, America, Mount Fuji. Japanese-culture specific things like okonomiyaki (pancake-like food), 剣道 (kendou, hit others with a wooden stick). Very common words like 小さな/大きな (small/big). Language learners also would want to see grammar patterns like "～や～など" (and so on) or "しか～ない" (only), nothing like that is in the lists. Another problem is that many example sentences are unnecessarily abstract and do not show a typical use of the word in question. I personally would prefer an order of items first by topic and secondary by frequency. That automatically gives some context and makes learning easier.
I agree with Russ that you should ignore the prescribed order and just pick the words that make sense to you and ignore the others. "The final step of the Core 6000" (if that is meant literally) actually contains many useful words. The rare words are spread all over the place.
If I was Cerego I would simply add missing words. They have a mixed Japanese-American team, so what's the problem? All it takes is some common sense and a microphone. Competitor japanesepod does that all the time.
Past the core 2000, the study order doesn't seem to matter anymore. If you read a lot of books and watch tv regulary, you'll probably know a good 25-30% of every core step.
We have also tried to push all the most archaic words into the final step of the Core 6000. That final course has admittedly low usefulness for most learners.
We recommend that you customize your courses as you go, removing items that you don't think will be useful for you. This is easy to do now in the study flow with the "remove" button.
As far as I know, the Core items have been licensed from the CJK institute (which is probably best known for "The Kanji Learner's Dictionary"). There are 10000 items in total, which can be found in the "Japanese Sensei" iphone app. There is no further information on the pages of the CJK institute, so you can only guess where it comes from.
I think that neither selection nor order of words make sense for any kind of source. For the newspaper hypothesis: One of the surprising omissions is the word "日本" (Japan), which you could easily find in any newspaper. In contrast, the Core items contain the weird word "日ソ" (Japanese-Soviet, this was later edited out by Cerego). This points back to the 80s - maybe the Core set was compiled without the help of computers, which could explain some of its shortcomings.
Some notable omissions that I remember right now: Almost all expressions, interjections, greetings (did you know that はい means yes?). Everyday words like コンビニ (kombini, convenience store), 上履き (uwabaki, indoor shoes/slippers). Place names like Tokyo, America, Mount Fuji. Japanese-culture specific things like okonomiyaki (pancake-like food), 剣道 (kendou, hit others with a wooden stick). Very common words like 小さな/大きな (small/big). Language learners also would want to see grammar patterns like "～や～など" (and so on) or "しか～ない" (only), nothing like that is in the lists. Another problem is that many example sentences are unnecessarily abstract and do not show a typical use of the word in question. I personally would prefer an order of items first by topic and secondary by frequency. That automatically gives some context and makes learning easier.
I agree with Russ that you should ignore the prescribed order and just pick the words that make sense to you and ignore the others. "The final step of the Core 6000" (if that is meant literally) actually contains many useful words. The rare words are spread all over the place.
If I was Cerego I would simply add missing words. They have a mixed Japanese-American team, so what's the problem? All it takes is some common sense and a microphone. Competitor japanesepod does that all the time.
I hope you continue beyond it.
I also hope you add some grammar.
A simple 'basic words' course of 50 words might be useful prior to the core. This could teach stuff like はい、いいえ、こんにちは、etc.
http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt1/
I only checked the N5 vocab but it matches the core 1000 steps pretty much exactly.
As far as I know, there is no official JLPT vocabulary list. There are only guesses compiled from previous tests and textbooks. These are often very old and from before the reform, so you typically see plenty of weird and outdated items. The lists I am aware of differ from Core.