5 Strategies to Improve your Japanese Vocabulary

Every language, including Japanese, is built on its vocabulary that evolves over centuries with the language. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the greatest challenges of learning any language, especially Japanese; that requires a learner to possess knowledge of a minimum of 3,000 – 5,000 words most commonly used in Japanese conversations to fluently speak the language and a minimum of 20,000 – 30,000 words, just to be able to read a newspaper!  

Successful communication or “being able to articulate your thoughts and feelings clearly” is significantly dependent on the richness of vocabulary you build while learning the language. While using intelligible, comprehendible and coherent speech during conversations will make you a great communicator, eloquence in your oration will make you venerable and admirable. Since the entire idea is to convert complex thoughts and emotions into comprehensible and unambiguous speech using words that are convincing, appealing and understandable to a listener, a large vocabulary to tap in will be your greatest asset when building your first conversation in Japanese. 

Success in a career or business to a large extent depends on the impressive communication skills you demonstrate during presentations or the polite persuasion techniques you resort to when clinching deals!

Apart from this, having a good vocabulary to draw from can also help you write more effectively. 

Since comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading, the importance of vocabulary development cannot be underestimated. A rich vocabulary will empower you to improve all your areas of communication – listening, speaking, reading and writing!

1. Set attainable short and long term measurable goals to learn new words consciously is the best strategy you could start with!

Setting attainable goals is also an excellent way to keep yourself motivated while learning a new language. And while you do so, I recommend you dedicate at least 2 hours learning and 2 hours of practising the Japanese language. If you’re not sure what to do, I suggest following the below-mentioned recommendations: 

• Begin with a Single Goal
• Make a list of your long-term and short-term goals.
• Be Specific When Measuring Actions and Progress
• Set goals that you truly want to achieve.
• Be realistic 
• Do not be overzealous or overambitious and bring yourself to the misery if burnout.

2. Measure your progress by writing a relevant ‘Must Do’ or ‘Todo’ list that shall serve as a measure for your Japanese vocabulary progress.

Treat learning language as a part of a game where you closely track your progress as a level cleared! Readers must be aware that a native Japanese adult has a lexicon of about 40,000 words! That’s a lot! Setting these critical criteria would help you reach your goals faster without having to derail from your path. You could, for example,  mark yourself on goals such as:

The goal for a week: Learning 35 words Goal for a month: Learning 150 words Goal for three months: 500 words

The goal for six months: 1000 words

The goal for an year: 2000 words and so on and so forth.

Read a lot of relevant, error-free literature to add to the vocabulary. Look through Anki and Memrise kind of flashcard apps online to practice. Try mnemonics; it should accelerate your learning. 

3. Start adding commonly used words that you hear repeatedly in almost all conversations by different Japanese people 

Jot down any new commonly used words you come across in a journal or a diary and start to learn words based on how frequently you hear/read them. Alternatively, convert 20 of the 100 most common words in English, that you usually use, to learn and add to your Japanese vocabulary for fun. Keep a Japanese dictionary handy. And on a regular basis try avoiding translations of objects/situations from your native language or English into Japanese. A good way to improve your vocabulary is to identify and associate each object/ situation/ person/ animal directly with its respective Japanese name so that when you think of it in Japanese, you reach a Japanese word to recollect!

As an example : 

English Japanese

I – ji-bu-nn

Thank You – ari-ga-to

Me – wa-ta-shi (female) bo-ku (male)

Sorry – go-menn-na-sai

Hello – kon-ni-chi-wa

4. Do not try to learn sophisticated words that aren’t going to be a part of your day-to-day conversation. 

This is yet another proven method that will take your learning, your confidence, your motivation and your goals, all down the drain! This happens primarily because you didn’t focus on commonly used words that should ideally have been a part of your learning, and the ones that you spent effort with are seen somewhere once in a while, hence it’s only natural that you forgot them.

5. Learning through Kanji

Another great method of learning vocabulary is through the Kanji writing system. Kanji is a logograph and depending on the use of the kanji, it has numerous ways it could be read. Learning Kanji makes it easier to expand your vocabulary because you can associate the character with a group of words. When you see the Kanjiyou know, you can piece together which word it is. Typically, everyone begins with Hiragana, moves onto Katakana next. Katakana and then, the last thing people usually learn is Kanji. By the time Japanese students have graduated from compulsory education, they will have learned how to read and write 2,136 Kanji.

 

Practice a lot. It is downright unavoidable! 

The key to learning Japanese vocabulary is not only the number of hours spent studying but also the number of days spent practising. Make sentences, quiz yourself, write down your doubts; whatever it takes to become proficient in the language. Daily practice necessitates a great deal of self-control, but the end result is always worthwhile. Instead of focusing on what you haven’t learned, consider how much you have. Keep in mind that language learning is a marathon, not a sprint. To avoid burnout, begin with something at your level and work your way ahead gradually letting the learning sink in part by part. You may be dissatisfied with your short-term results, but let them not pull you down; eventually, you will realise that they will pay off in the long run.

There’s an amazing new way to learn Japanese! Want to see what everyone’s talking about!

Click here.