Best frequency list?

Best frequency list?

3 comments
  1. BCCWJ is a broad-sample general-purpose frequency list. It’s a bit dated, though, so new words and generational colloquialisms may not be ranked accurately.

  2. Practice. Frequency lists are extremely subjective. We can encompass it all, but then it won’t be a perfect fit for anything specific either. We usually have some goals, what we want to do, so by doing that we get the best frequency for us, because we are naturally learning faster things that appear more often.

    If we look at frequency generally, then the core that appears almost everywhere is extremely small. It’s mostly grammar with some vocabulary like pronouns. Such list is usually only 1-2k words. Everything else is more specific and can be anywhere from 2k to 80k frequency. Like look at some very common verb as “eat”. In cooking such word would appear very often, it will appear in some everyday areas, but what about programming? Would word “eat” often appear in programming? I’m not sure about that. Similarly there are words that are extremely rare, but nonetheless almost all natives know it. Such example can be 親知らず (wisdom tooth), which usually has frequency somewhere between 65k and 80k depending on a dictionary.

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