Ridiculous words in N5 deck

[I-k-d]

So I’m getting to the end of the N5 vocab deck, and theres been some ridiculously difficult words in it. Like. Words I don’t know in English.

I refuse to believe this has ever been in the JLPT N5 exam. When I search it up on jisho it comes up as N1. It literally says it’s in the general top 16,500. Theres also others I’ve seen such as maternity and gynosidshfdjc department. (As you can tell I have no idea how to spell the other word or it’s meaning) Which, again, is N1 on jisho.
I made a little complaint about it in another topic, and someone said that it’s because they are in the genki books.
Couldn’t we just work off the jisho rankings or something? We have the Genki decks for the people who are going through Genki, for the rest of us, we don’t need to know how to say this stuff in Japanese at the N5 level.
Not to mention theres 1100 words in the N5 deck, when you only need 700 for N5. If you’re going to work off the JLPT system, please at least stick to it.

Sorry for the rant I know how hard you guys are working, and its still in beta, but please I’m going insane.

Also genuinly what the hell does ophthalmology mean. It sounds like something from Oppenheimer.

Maybe just hire me and I’ll go through all the words and sort them into the right decks

[Superpnut]

Yes I agree with you. The decks have some very strange additions. And when you get to N4 youll also start noticing words that should have been included in N5 because they’re the pieces of multi kanji words.
I personally think the N ranking system is a bad concept in general but that doesn’t really matter. The decks always give me a feeling like there wasn’t any thought or care when selecting words. Like a generated list pull. Which is stupid because they know what words are in there since they’ve made sentences for most of them. How you can make a sentence for a word and not think to go “hmm this word probably is better suited in a different area” is beyond me.

I think the frustration on my end is that the decks are so close to being just absolutely great rock stars of an asset. I mean all the hard work is basically done it looks like. Skimming through them and getting a good order should be the easy part. WHY

And I am not giving them any slack on it being in beta. It’s been in beta since before I started using this site. I will give them slack because this is a grammar site not a vocab site though.

[I-k-d]

Literally! I feel like I should give up on the N5 deck and go into N4 if its easier
Like genuinly hire me for like a week and I’ll sort them into better groups. And maybe add some other non-jlpt decks too, like a deck for all the words needed to navigate the site in japanese.

[Superpnut]

Exactly! I asked for a deck like that around six months ago. I mean it should be an obvious inclusion to the decks. A deck that literally teaches you all the kanji youll see if you use the site in japanese. WHY won’t they make one!

[CursedKitsune]

I don’t think 眼科 should be in the N5 deck as it does seem unlikely it has ever or will ever appear on that test however it is a fairly common word in Japan as people will go to the opthalmalogist to get their eyes tested etc rather than the opticians. If you wear glasses and live in Japan then you’ll probably want to know this word at some point.

Having said that, I personally dislike JLPT vocab lists exactly for the reasons you guys are talking about (seemingly random words etc).

[I-k-d]

Yeah but it’s probably one of the words that if you need it, you learn it, rather than specifically studying it. I wouldn’t mind learning it later in the N1 deck but N5 is a bit…

[rdennison7]

It took me a solid two and a half years of constant immersion to stumble across 眼科 lol

I don’t think bunpro should focus on vocab at all tbh. It muddies the waters from what their primary strength as a service should be.

[I-k-d]

While I do kinda like having my websites seperate, its cheaper for them all to be together, and I do really like Bunpro’s vocab tbh I havent really found any others I like as much

[rdennison7]

I personally use anki. It’s a huge pain in the butt to set up, but once you know how everything works, it’s an incredibly powerful tool. I have tried probably every resource under the sun, but when you get down to it, it’s hard to beat Anki.

You just need to put in some time to know how the tool works and in return it pays divdends.

[bunnypro]

There are some of us who like studying vocab though and wouldn’t want this service to be removed
Actually, staff seem to working on vocab a lot and improving the offering all the time.

[I-k-d]

The main problem is that I’m on a school Ipad, so I can’t download anything on it, and I also need to be able to type in the answer to remember it. Anki is too much work, and while I did try use it, I much prefer Bunpro

[rdennison7]

I’m not trying to be patronizing, but I am genuinely curious.

Why do you like using it? I’ve tried using it when it was first introduced then later after they made huge updates to it and didn’t find the use of it very beneficial.

For perspective’s sake. Here’s a partial screenshot of my anki deck with the famous 眼科.

Cutoff from the card is a screenshot of where I found it online, it was from a show on Netflix.

This card took half a second to make and I feel is pretty context complete to help with long-term acquisition.

[bunnypro]

@rdennison7

Why do you like using it?

I like it because I’m learning vocab, and I also like inputting the answer by typing it.

Sure, Anki works great for you for learning vocab.
Bunpro works great for me.

Seems to achieve pretty much the same thing to me.

[I-k-d]

Same for me, i need to type it to remember.

[CursedKitsune]

Do you live in Japan? I see this word literally daily when walking about (not that you need to be able to read it). I still agree with the point of this thread though that this word likely doesn’t belong in the N5 deck.

[I-k-d]

Maybe it is a useful word to know then I’ll keep an eye out hehe

[whisketown]

I am only using it right now for my Genki vocab but having said that it makes learning Genki 1 vocab easier so that’s a good thing

[crunchsixfoe]

I use Anki and Bunpro simultaneously for vocab. The fill in the blank feature that Anki lacks seems to help with retention rate significantly higher than Anki.

[Vl3x0083]

This. I find that Bunpro’s fill in the blank helps me with general retention and more specifically “spelling.” Although, for recognizing the kanji specifically, Anki gives me better results. Since I’ve already got Anki set up anyway, it’s pretty trivial to run both.

[Curnan2]

As someone who recently took (and passed) N5 and N4, I can attest that the “standard” vocab lists of roughly 700 N5 and N4 words does pretty much cover what’s on those tests. The extra words that Bunpro has in these decks, I think they’re (mostly) good and useful words to know…but they’re really not N5/N4 material.