語彙 · goi
The words that are really used, sorted by topic, by word class and by level of the official exam. Each one with its kana reading and, when needed, the note that heads off the usual mistake: the verb group, the counter or the word that sounds the same.
Everyday words by topic and level, with their reading, their meaning and the notes that head off the typical mistake.
It is vocabulary meant for speaking, not for passing exams by rote. It is split into topics from daily life —family, food, the home, transport, work, feelings— and every word carries its class: verb, noun, adjective, adverb, pronoun, connector, number or set expression. Adjectives come in two groups, i-adjectives and na-adjectives, because they conjugate differently and that is the first thing you need to know about a new one.
Every word is written the way it is written in Japan: with kanji if it normally has them, and in kana if it is normally written in kana, like ありがとう. The kanji all come from the official list of characters in common use. Next to the word goes the kana reading, and the romaji is worked out from it, so it can never contradict it. The meaning is in English and, when the word has several, they are separated by commas.
Many words carry a note, and that is where you find what a list of translations does not tell you. For verbs, their group and their polite form. For family, the difference between the word for your own relatives and the word for someone else's. For numbers, how the reading changes with the counter. And for the ones that get mixed up, the warning: 鼻 (nose) sounds the same as 花 (flower), and おばさん is not おばあさん.
Words that are read as a whole, without splitting the reading among their kanji, say so in their note: 今日 is read きょう and 大人, おとな. There are few of them and they are very common, and there is no way to work them out.
By level of the official exam, by word class and by topic. The figures come from the app's own data, so they are the same words you study inside.
| N5 · Beginner | 530 |
|---|---|
| N4 · Elementary | 351 |
| N3 · Intermediate | 172 |
| In total | 1,053 |
The level of each word is a guide, not official data: since 2010 the JLPT has not published vocabulary lists, and the ones going around do not agree with each other. It tells you where to start, not what is certain to come up in the exam.
| Verbs | 189 |
|---|---|
| Nouns | 572 |
| I-adjectives | 77 |
| Na-adjectives | 36 |
| Adverbs | 42 |
| Pronouns, demonstratives and question words | 28 |
| Conjunctions and connectors | 14 |
| Numbers and counters | 31 |
| Expressions | 64 |
| People and family | 50 |
|---|---|
| Body and health | 56 |
| Food and drink | 79 |
| Set phrases | 54 |
| The home | 62 |
| Town and transport | 71 |
| Work and studies | 63 |
| Time and calendar | 82 |
| Nature and weather | 57 |
| Clothes and shopping | 46 |
| Leisure and culture | 55 |
| Feelings and personality | 41 |
| Speaking and thinking | 58 |
| Society and paperwork | 46 |
| Everyday actions | 51 |
| Describing things | 65 |
| Place, quantity and time | 79 |
| Function words | 38 |
The first words of each topic, just as they are inside the course: the word, its reading, what it means and the note when it has one. Inside they are all there, with search, filters and audio.
Each card makes a claim, and you swipe it right if it is true or left if it is false; you can also answer with the buttons or the arrow keys. There are three kinds of card, played separately or mixed, and from the level you choose.
A vocabulary word with a meaning: its own, or that of another word of the same class, so you cannot get it right by elimination.
A phrase from the lessons with a meaning: its own, or that of another phrase from the same lesson or its level.
Statements about grammar, pronunciation, writing and culture, written by hand and each one with its reason.
Japanese adjectives conjugate, and they do it in two ways. The i-adjectives change their ending as if they were verbs: 高い (tall, expensive) becomes 高くない in the negative and 高かった in the past. The na-adjectives are left untouched and take です, じゃない or だった after them: 静かです, 静かじゃない, 静かだった. To go in front of a noun, the first kind go as they are, 高い山, and the second need な: 静かな町. Mixing up the two patterns is one of the most frequent mistakes at the start.
The trap is that the ending is misleading. きれい (pretty, clean) and 嫌い (disliked) end in い and are na-adjectives: きれいな花, きれいじゃない. And the most used adjective of all, いい (good), is irregular: it conjugates from よい, so its negative is よくない and its past, よかった. That is why the adjectives in Hanasuka's vocabulary are not lumped together: i-adjectives and na-adjectives each have their own filter, and can be studied and quizzed separately.
A Japanese verb is learned together with its group, because every form depends on it. Group 1 verbs change the final vowel (話す, 話します, 話さない); group 2 verbs end in -iru or -eru and drop the る (見る, 見ます, 見ない); and group 3 holds する and 来る, which are irregular. Many verbs are formed with する after a noun: 勉強する, to study; 電話する, to phone. In those cases, learning the noun also means learning the verb.
The exceptions are worth knowing early: 帰る (to go back), 入る (to enter), 走る (to run), 知る (to know) and 切る (to cut) end in -iru or -eru and belong to group 1, so they make 帰ります and not «帰ます». That is why every verb in the vocabulary carries its group and its polite form in its note, the polite form being the one used most at the start. And they are studied in the dictionary form, which is the one that appears in any dictionary and the base of the plain forms.
In Japanese, numbers do not go alone: they take a counter that depends on what is being counted. 人 for people, 冊 for books, 枚 for flat things like sheets of paper or shirts, 本 for long thin things like bottles or pencils, 匹 for small animals and 台 for machines and vehicles. And there is a wildcard, the Japanese numbers with つ (ひとつ, ふたつ, みっつ), which works for almost any object up to ten when you do not know which counter applies.
What is hard is not so much the counter as the sound changes. 一本 is read いっぽん, 三本 さんぼん and 六本 ろっぽん; 一人 is ひとり and 二人 ふたり, but 三人 is already さんにん. These changes are learned through use rather than rules, starting with the most frequent counters. Hanasuka's vocabulary puts numbers and counters in a class of their own, with notes like these, and the N5 theory devotes a whole unit to them.
Japanese has few possible syllables, so words that sound the same and are written differently abound. 鼻 (nose) and 花 (flower) are both はな; 橋 (bridge) and 箸 (chopsticks) are both はし; and 訪ねる (to visit) and 尋ねる (to ask) are both read たずねる. In writing, the kanji clear up the doubt; in speech, context does, and sometimes pitch accent. It is one of the reasons written Japanese cannot do without kanji.
And the other way round: a single Japanese word covers what in English are several. 高い is «tall» and also «expensive»; 聞く is «to hear», «to listen» and «to ask»; 青 is «blue», but also the green of a traffic light. That is why the meaning of each word in the vocabulary gives its main senses separated by commas, and when typing in the quiz any of them is accepted. And that is also why a word that shares a sense with the right one is never used as a decoy: there has to be only one correct answer.
First you search and filter; then you are quizzed on what is left.
Every word, searchable by meaning, reading, romaji or the word itself, and filterable by class, topic, level and what you have already mastered. Each one has its correct-answer counter and can be heard.
See the word and choose what it means, or see the meaning and give the word. Choosing from four, with decoys of the same class, or typing: the meaning, or the word in kanji, kana or romaji. Whatever comes up goes into the review.
The card game. The figure is the hand-written ideas; the word and phrase cards are built automatically from the vocabulary and the lessons, and each one is explained on the spot.
To get by in simple situations a few hundred well-learned words are enough, and with a couple of thousand you can follow a good part of an everyday conversation. More than the number, what matters is which ones: those of daily life and those that let you build sentences, like verbs, adjectives and connectors. That is why this vocabulary is organised by topics of use and not in alphabetical order.
There has been no official list since 2010, but the references in use put it at about eight hundred words for N5, about one thousand five hundred for N4 and around three thousand seven hundred for N3, cumulatively. They are approximate and vary from source to source. In Hanasuka each word has a level, also approximate, so you know where to start.
Because that is how they are written in real use. Some have a kanji outside the list of characters in common use, which hardly anyone uses; others are grammatical or very everyday words that are written in kana by custom, like ある or いる. Hanasuka's vocabulary writes each word the way you would normally see it written in Japan, not the way it could be written.
In small batches, and reviewed: a few new words a day, practised in both directions and seen again the next day and a few days later. It helps to learn them by topic, to say them out loud and to see them inside sentences. Long lists studied in one sitting are soon forgotten if they are not reviewed.
Because Japanese distinguishes your own family from other people's. When talking about your mother to others you say 母 (はは); for someone else's mother, or to address your own, お母さん. The same goes for father (父, お父さん), older siblings and husband or wife. The vocabulary has both forms, or the other one in the note, so you can see when each one is used.
Yes. Every word in the listing has its speaker button, with the device's Japanese voice. In the quiz the word can be heard when it is the question and, when it was the answer, it plays after you respond, so as not to give it away. When you get one wrong you can hear it again. The quality depends on the Japanese voices installed on the device.
A card game in Hanasuka. Each card makes a claim —that a word or a phrase means such-and-such, or an idea about grammar, pronunciation or culture— and you swipe it right if it is true or left if it is false. Each card is marked and explained on the spot, and at the end you go over the ones that got away.
Yes. When you finish a round of the quiz, or a game of «True or false», the words that came up are added to the daily review, whether you got them right or not. From then on they come back the next day and at intervals that keep getting longer, together with the phrases and the theory examples.
Five hundred phrases with their reading, their audio and the «when it is used» of each one.
The 2,136 in common use, with their readings, their school year and their frequency.
The verb at the end and the particles in charge. The full syllabus, unit by unit.
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