Most Common Japanese Words: 50 From a Newspaper Count

The most common Japanese words are the ones that appeared most often in whatever texts someone counted. This note takes 50 of them from a count of the words in one newspaper, and how many you know shows where to start.

One morning habit sounds like this in Japanese:

朝ごはんの前に新聞を読みます。あさごはんのまえにしんぶんをよみます。 (asagohannomaenishinbunwoyomimasu.)

I read the newspaper before breakfast.

If you read hiragana without a chart, count the words you know here before choosing what to learn first. Do not count while reading hiragana still takes effort, and practice it with the hiragana field note before you return.

A frequency list puts words in order of how often they appeared in a set of texts. Change the texts and the order changes, so lists made from a newspaper, from film subtitles, and from textbooks disagree.

A newspaper keeps returning to politics and business, and film subtitles to everyday talk, so no single list suits every reader.

The count in this note comes from JMdict, a multilingual Japanese dictionary file kept by the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group (EDRDG). For many words, JMdict marks their place in a word-frequency file made from the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, in groups of 500. Group 1 is the first 500 words, group 2 is the next 500, and the mark gives no order inside a group.

This note used JMdict files from the EDRDG to pick its 50 words, and those files are released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

In this count, 選挙せんきょ (senkyo) (election), 内閣ないかく (naikaku) (cabinet), and 与党よとう (yotou) (ruling party) are all in group 1. Two everyday words, どこ (doko) (where) and 食べるたべる (taberu) (to eat), come after its first 5,000 words.

A count of anime subtitles puts other words first, as the field note comparing anime genres shows.

The table takes words in group 1 from the Ukiyoe Japanese app, in the app's own order, and stops at 50, skipping numbers. It lists the 29 N5 words before the 21 N4 words, so nothing in its order says which word is more frequent.

Numbers such as 二に (ni) and 十じゅう (juu) are in group 1 too, and the field note on Japanese numbers explains them. The level beside each word is the one the app gives it.

Table source: words picked with JMdict data from the EDRDG (CC BY-SA 4.0), with the app's own short English meanings.

Hide the meaning column with a sheet of paper, then say a meaning for each of the 50 words. The readings beside the words can stay visible, because you are counting meanings.

Count a word only when your meaning matches the table, as “phone” matches “telephone.” Guesses do not count, and neither do words you hesitated on, checked in the table first, or can read aloud without knowing their meaning.

This note sets two cutoffs, 25 and 45, as its own choice. Of the 50, 25 is one word in two, and 45 is nine words in ten. Neither number comes from the JLPT or from research.

With 0 to 24 meanings, start with the app's topic shelves of everyday words, such as food, places, and family, before any newspaper list. The beginner roadmap, a separate field note, explains how to choose those first few hundred words by how often they appear in conversation.

With 25 to 44, start at the beginning of the “Top 1,000” band, the app's words from the newspaper's first 1,000. With 45 to 50, use the “Top 2,000” band and skip the words you know. That band repeats the “Top 1,000” words and adds words from the newspaper's next 1,000.

Both bands are in the “Most common words” list of the app. What you read or watch does not change the step your count gives.

Say you knew 28 of the N5 words and four of the N4 words. That makes 32, between 25 and 44, so you start at the beginning of “Top 1,000.”

The list called “Most common words” sorts the app's words by the same newspaper groups into three bands: “Top 1,000,” “Top 2,000,” and “Top 5,000.” Each band shows how many of its words are “mastered,” “learning,” or “not started.” With a band open, “Flashcards” shows its words as cards in shuffled order, and these cards are not counted against the daily practice limit.

A band's name counts newspaper words, but a band lists only words the app teaches, so “Top 1,000” has fewer words than its name says. Inside each group of 500, the list keeps the app's order, which is not a frequency order.

Nothing in the list narrows a band to one topic, and newspaper words such as 内閣ないかく (naikaku) stay in the band. Words the newspaper count places after its first 5,000, such as どこ (doko) and 食べるたべる (taberu), are in no band. They are in the app's topic shelves instead.

If you want to read the news, follow the bands in order, because their words come from a newspaper. If conversation and shows are your goal, words such as 与党よとう (yotou) can wait.

Neither a list nor words collected from your own shows is right in every case. A list follows one count of one kind of text, and your shows give you the words of the Japanese you hear.

So use both. Each week, mark the words from your shows that also appear in your band or topic shelf, and study those first.

Open the topic shelf or band your count gave you today, and read its first 30 words you do not know.

From 45 known meanings, start at “Top 2,000,” from 25 at “Top 1,000,” and under 25 with topic words.

Count a meaning only if you can give it with the meaning column hidden.

A frequency list shows the texts it counted, so read it next to your own Japanese.

Use both, and let the Japanese you want to understand set which comes first. A newspaper list suits reading the news, and your shows suit the speech in them.

If shows are where you meet Japanese, the field note comparing anime genres gives the frequent words of each genre.

No. JMdict marks only the group of 500 a word is in, so the data here cannot say which word in group 1 comes first. The 50 here are words from group 1 in the app's order, without numbers.

It depends on what you want to read or hear, so no one number fits every goal. For the JLPT, no official word count exists to aim at.

The JLPT's organizers stopped releasing item lists with the test's 2010 revision. Their FAQ gives the reason: the exam checks both what you know and how well you can communicate with it. A list of items is not necessarily a good fit for that.