[b]Update 6.18.16[/b]
About vocabulary words in general:
Because of the Japanese language and its words that serve a variety of different contexts, a lot of words don’t have perfect, simple translations. This vocab deck is to help you to make the connection between the Japanese word, and some familiar English metaphors, so that when you go on to read, you have something as a reference point.
Some words may not have audio for every reading, due to the lack of audio on Forvo for some readings. Hundreds of these words I actually had to request from Forvo while I was learning them.
How I obtained the words:
I did a 144,000 line text analysis across 8 VNs (18k lines from each VN).
The VNs: Aiyoku no Eustia, Angel Beats, Hatsuyuki Sakura, Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai, Irotoridori no Sekai, ISLAND, Sakura no Uta, Subarashiki Hibi.
I went through the commonly used words, stripped out grammatical words that were found in my text analysis (listed below in the pastebin) and names, some kanji used for names.
I’ve included some of the more simple grammatical words, like しかし、っぽい, ところで、ついで. I didn’t want to overload the deck with grammar, but I did include a lot of the simpler grammar with 1 or 2 primary meanings, that you can essentially learn as words/phrases.
I included some shortenings of words that appeared in the analysis, like ところ -> とこ, because of possible alternate meanings, and for clarity’s sake.
“What about words like 馬鹿、僕、駄目, and so on that are written in kanji but may often appear in Hiragana.”
For most of these cases, I put the kanji if it had a high usage across these VNs, alongside the furigana, so you may be exposed to the kanji for 「だめ」, which is 「駄目」, but you may have to make a separate card.*******
This is meant to be a beginner/fundamental deck, and I don’t want to overload beginners with the kanji for words like それ and これ. However, I do try to sneak some grammatical patterns into these vocabulary words, by including things like それだけ, それほど, and some others. You’ll find that you’ll be able to skip a handful of grammatical sections because you’ll have learned some concepts as words, and can quickly make the connections with the grammar.
Katakana words from English, and common “Anime” words:
I included a lot of these that appeared. Some were obvious words, but a lot may have semantically different meanings from the English. キャラ for example is in regards to one’s character or personality, but can also mean a fictional character. バイク refers to a motorcycle rather than a bicycle. Some obvious words were included because katakana practice is always useful. I’m also not making any assumptions about people knowing words like いいえ、とても、おいしい、ドキドキ、and so on, so they are in this deck.
Picture usage:
I used pictures sparingly. Some pictures are from my own vocab. Some just easily illustrate a difficult concept, and so I added them. (Check out the one for the word 御三家 for example). A few words have some dank memes or VN references, too.
Along with this vocabulary, I highly recommend that you read a supplementary Grammar source.
The sources I recommend for beginners are:
Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide and Japanese The Manga Way.
Followup sources I enjoyed:
Japanesetest4you.com, Maggie-sensei’s grammar,
JGram.org, Imabi (pretty in-depth)
I personally make Anki Cards for Grammar, and go through dozens of grammar concepts at a time, and then introduce the cards at 3-10 cards a day, or so, depending on how relevant the Grammar is. Once you have some fundamentals, the Grammar becomes easier to know.
Here is a list of the common Grammatical words I obtained while producing this VN Vocabulary List:
Grammar List Pastebin:
http://pastebin.com/n8TBhSLT
There is a lot of other common grammar used in VNs, and you’d be best off learning most/all the Grammar up to N3 before getting deep into a VN, and a lot of N2 and some N1 grammar is used.
Issues/Hiccups:
So, I’m not a god of Japanese yet, so there may be a few words with meanings or readings that aren’t used, but I’d say that the deck is about 99% good in that regard. I would need someone who’s more proficient in Japanese to check through the deck, but this has been a 1-man project.
Some audio pronunciations might not be how you would hear them in Japanese, but different people have different dialects and inflections, anyway. The audio is meant as an aid to be used in conjunction with the furigana and kanji.
Reading/Definitions:
These aren’t exhaustive. I’m not gonna teach the 1031031903291 meanings for かける. The goal is efficiency here, so I may have cut out an uncommon meaning so that you could learn the common meanings first. You’ll continue to revise the meanings and metaphors behind Japanese words as you progress on your journey. Some words like 面 I didn’t include by themselves, because they’re common combination kanjis with too many readings to make a concise card. It’s easier to just learn related words than to force down a word with a bunch of readings and meanings.
Anki Addons that are useful:
Japanese Support
F11 Fullscreen
Tldr; I think what I wrote above is pretty good and useful, but ah well. The deck isn’t perfect, but it should give you great fundamentals when combined with the Grammar pastebin and the grammar sources. You’ll learn words in the most common way they appear in VNs. When you want to learn the words by kanji, you can do so once you get past the Furigana1 cards. Some cards may not appear by their kanji-only form, so you may have to create new cards for this.
All in all, going through this deck, I feel like there are so many great, useful words, and your reading speed should improve more drastically than with any other deck. However, you do have to read often, learn grammar, and keep revising your understanding of the language, as you go through this deck. Don’t fall into the trap of grinding Anki without reading any Japanese.
If you have any suggestions for this deck, please leave them in the comments below.
I haven't added sentences to these (yet?) so you may need to check out some Core2k or other deck to get a grasp on some simple sentences.