Known in English as Shogakukan’s Japanese Dictionary, the Nihon kokugo daijiten (often abbreviated as the Nikkoku) is the largest Japanese language dictionary. Its second and most recent edition was published in 2000-2001 and includes more than 500,000 words.
However, the answer isn’t as simple as that. Japanese can’t be compared to Western languages in this aspect because it uses three different alphabets: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Kanji, for instance, are logograms, so each character represents a different word. Knowing this, you won’t be surprised to learn that the Japanese language includes 50,000 kanji. Despite that, only 3,000 of them are in common use in Japan today, with 500 of the most common accounting for 80% of the entire kanji in regular text, such as one from a newspaper.
Luckily, Mondly makes everything easier and helps you learn Japanese in a fun, easy and effective way. The app focuses on teaching you the most frequently used Japanese words so you can build a practical vocabulary that allows you to speak the language fluently. Mondly will help you learn the most useful Japanese words fast because:
- ● Each Mondly lesson tackles a certain topic so you can deepen your understanding of it before moving forward;
- ● The app uses a unique spaced repetition system that improves your ability to memorize new words;
- ● Instead of endless Japanese word lists, Mondly uses gamification to boost your learning with picture quizzes;
- ● It focuses on practical topics so you can build hands-on language skills for real-life situations.
