Vocabulary List N5 and N4 Concern

Bunpro
#1

Why is it that even though I’m looking at N5 and N4 vocab list, some words that seem higher level can be found in the list? Like when you see the words, you’d ask yourself, who would ever talk about these in the JLPT exam for N5, N4 or N3?

Words like

  • OBGYN – how is OBGYN even a common word?

  • Antibiotic

  • IV Drop

And then vocabulary that are so specific that you’d wonder how they chose them.

1960年代 – why do they have to put 1960? Did something important happen that time that they expect 1960 will show up?

アジア研究 – So Asian Studies. Asia and study/research. Why include this in the vocabulary when you just combine two different words? And Asian Studies is too specific to warrant a place in the vocab list for N4

What about these words that just got the ‘o’ or ‘go’ in the beginning? Shouldn’t these just be the same words, so they don’t add up in count? It gives a false sense of knowing more words when they’re just the same word.

お祈り

お湯

What about all the loanwords from English? Some of them are so directly just in katakana form, like there would be no change in meaning even. Should I even count that as a word I know in Japanese?

A word like manshon is understandable to be included, as it doesn’t directly mean the same mansion in Japanese. But for words like ka-do, tsuin, inta-netto, fairu etc., there’s no other meaning.

My main concern is, I have a goal of knowing or be familiarized with at least 4500 words to prepare for N3, but by using the Bunpro vocab decks, I feel like some of these words are fillers. The deck summary will report I’ve studied 4500 words in the end, but it might actually just be 3500 words that are actually new, important, non-repeating and not just direct English adaptations. So what do I do? Do I end up adding the vocab from N2 as well to offset this other vocabs? Or do I use a different vocabulary list?

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#2

This topic has come up before and I believe that thread became quite long so it is safe to say this topic is not simple. In fact this debate comes up a lot for beginner word lists.

The short answer though is that these words are drawn from commonly accepted beginner lists. I can also address the logic for some of the words you’ve brought up:

If you live in Japan you will want to know basic medical words. I am not a woman but if I were I would probably want to know the word for OBGYN. Lots of these medical words come up in life here but you may not see them for a long time if you don’t live in Japan. The JLPT is aimed at people who live in Japan and need Japanese for life (edit: or rather it tests you on Japanese that is common for daily life in Japan - not necessarily aimed at people who live here).

Just filler to show how 年代 shows up normally.

To show how compound words work.

If you mean the word is duplicated in the Bunpro system then I would tend to agree with you but, again, it shows you how 御 works and how it attaches to words.

For speaking you need to know which words are actually loaned into Japanese. Equally, not everyone knows English (perhaps the Bunpro userbase does but in general). Most people taking the JLPT are not English speakers.

Where did you get the 4.5k number from and why do you think it doesn’t include the sorts of words and duplications the Bunpro lists have?

You are free to do what you like. If your goal is specifically to learn JLPT vocab then go and buy a JLPT vocab prep book and mine from it or something. Those books will suffer from the same problems you are seeing with Bunpro though. The issue here is if Bunpro makes a wide vocab list (like they have) they get complaints like “Why is this word even in N4?” and if they make a narrow list they would get complaints like “The Bunpro vocab list is only 2k but Google said I need 3.1K for N4” etc. I think they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

I do think your criticisms are fair but it is also a bit more complicated than it first appears and I am not sure there is an easy solution.

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#3

As someone who took and passed the N5 and N4 not too long ago, I can tell you that the old JLPT vocab lists floating around are still very accurate. People love to say that there are no vocab lists, which, technically, there aren’t, but…just study those old lists if you’re prepping for the tests. Really.

Regarding the Bunpro lists, I agree they’re somewhat misleading. There are terms on there that clearly have about a 0% chance of ending up on the N5 or N4. As the other user pointed out, though, they certainly are good words to know.

EDIT: I see you said you’re studying for N3 so the above advise maybe doesn’t completely apply, but regardless I can tell you the Bunpro vocab lists are beyond what’s actually needed for the test, at least for N5 and N4.

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#4

Thank you for the extensive reply. I get the points now for the inclusion. Though I do have some thoughts about how some words are just giving examples of how to use prefixes or combinations. Just maybe it could have been transmitted more clearly that this was the case for those specific examples.

Since I’ve already purchased Bunpro for the month and have scanned through the N5 and N4 vocabularies, marking all the words I’ve already mastered and putting into the reviews those I’m unfamiliar yet, and will do so for the N3 as well, I will stick with this through the final word of N3. Once June arrives and I start to focus on the mocks exams, I will be able to just note down the words I’m still missing when I encounter them in the mock exams. I just don’t think I’ll have enough time to go through another references list. It’s takes a lot of effort to scan that amount of words to find those you aren’t familiar yet.

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#5

Yes, I am indeed studying for N3. I passed N4 last July 2023 with a high score, but I took a break until December, then used Bunpro 1 month free trial and was only able to subscribe 2 or 3 weeks ago. I’m going through all the N5 and N4 vocab to make sure I don’t miss important stuff. As with my post, i still don’t understand how the vocab list were chosen but the first reply to the post explained it. I still have to go through the N3 vocab which I hope I can complete by the end of May because I’ll be allotting the entirety of June for practice exams. The N5, N4 and N3 grammar points that I haven’t mastered yet are all in the review list already. 50% of grammar mastered, 25% in the middle and 25% still beginner. Hope I can pace properly and pass this exam.

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#6

Just thought I would chime in that we are looking at making scaled down lists for people who are focused 100% on the JLPT.

We will keep our general Nx decks as they will include words we use in the grammar sentences in our lists at the same level.

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#7

The fact that you think this points to their necessity.

#8

That’s a little bit of music to my ears particularly with the N3 deck being 2000+ in size and my hopes of sitting in N3 in December haha!

But I would like to say that the decks that are currently available are great. I use a lot of those words in casual conversation and it’s also drastically increased my reading ability using an extended deck.

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#9

I think this is the thread @CursedKitsune is referring to: Ridiculous words in N5 deck - #36 by Jake

The discussion always devolves into “well actually that word is useful” but it’s frankly besides the point. To take 産婦人科 for instance, it objectively just doesn’t make sense to put that into the N5 decks by itself.

How can I make such a strong claim, you ask? Because 婦人 is in the N3 deck. Surely we can all at least agree that it makes a lot of sense to learn 婦人 first and then 産婦人科?

I think that’s a reasonable compromise but I also want to point out that while I personally don’t care at all about the JLPT, I found those “difficult” words distracting and counter productive while going through the N5 deck and it’s actually one of the big reasons I haven’t started N4 yet. Those words just got in my way as I was mostly going fast through the deck to refresh my memory and plug any hole in ultra-basic vocab. Obviously I could just have removed these words manually but the whole point of using pre-made decks for me is not having to make these types of judgement calls!

That being said the rationale that you want the vocab used in example sentences to be present in the vocab decks is also very reasonable, although that feels like a pretty strong constraint.

I’ll definitely give these new decks at try when they’re ready.

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#10

Caveat- I haven’t gone through the bunpro N4/5 vocab decks, but a few random thoughts from me:

I still remember, at pretty much my first Japanese lessons, being taught
電波 (でんぱ Radio Wave）
水牛 (すいぎゅう Water Buffalo）

These weren’t useful day to day, nor at all required for N4/N5, however in hindsight I think they were good to get used to connecting kanji in my head.

For お / ご - being exposed to this (in my head), has some similarities with la/le in french.
E.g.
if I learnt 500 french nouns ignoring le/la - is probably missing something
if I learnt 500 french nouns focused on every le/la pair - is probably overdoing it

Le/La is obviously much more frequent, but I guess I’m trying to say, I think it’s good to be exposed o/go at least a bit, to get a rough feel for them.
(probably you could pass N1 with no understanding of o/go - but this IMO is more a fault of JLPT)

Lastly, loanwords-
Often - take the wins where you can
(note: many people taking JLPT come from non-english language backgrounds - e.g. Vietnam, Thailand, China, …)

Occasionally - there’s a slightly different Japanese definition - I find these quick to remember, but I still need to have had that exposure.

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#11

This is the pedagogical reason for being taught these things.

#12

I agree that having “hard” words in lessons is not necessarily a bad thing, and even arguably a good way to prepare yourself for the plunge into native content later on. Knowing how to deal with unknown words is a useful skill on its own!

But it’s one thing to have a complicated word in a specific context where it makes sense and it’s an other to have it sprung of you out of nowhere during a vocab deck lesson.

After all the Bunpro lessons and reviews always give you access to a full English translation of the sentences, so not recognizing a complicated word like 産婦人科 in a specific N5 example sentence is not a massive problem IMO. I personally don’t think it warrants including it in the N5 vocab deck just for that.

But I also definitely understand the argument that it can be more comfortable for some people to have the peace of mind of getting 100% vocab coverage before getting into the grammar. It’s certainly easier to focus on the grammar if the vocab doesn’t get in the way.

Overall it’s just very difficult to make one-size-fits-all vocab decks I think, people have vastly different needs and wants for those (as is very well illustrated in these threads). So just having several sets of decks may well be the best approach.

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#13

I do also remember Kanji readings more when used in compounds. So I appreciate them. It’s just that sometimes the words slotted in a low level just don’t make sense to me as to applicability. I’ve already went through all the N5 and N4 vocab, and it’s in the N4 that I find these words that don’t seem to be what you would generally make use of. I’ve only went through 800 words fromthe N3 deck and yet I’ve managed to mark 165/700 of those words as words I already mastered. And like 30% of those not mark mastered are words i know in meaning, just not solid in the kanji writing. The N3 list for some reason has a lot of words that I hear more frequently in anime.

#14

as someone who is halfway through N4 vocab and 10% thrugh n3 vocab and having signed up for the JLPT N3 in july, I’d say the lists are fine. I think people are far too focused on the idea of a certain vocabulary list as a term of “completion” rather than their actual comprehenson of the language. (Not saying that I am a master of the japanese way of speaking.) a proper vocab list is nice, but actual experience via writing or messagng in the target language and looking up words you need is probably more beneficial.
In terms of redundant terms, the terms that are redundant are redundant for a reason. the terms are redundant because they help hammer in the terms. In other terms, they are important words for redundancy.

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