Firstly, this is by no means a finished quiz. A definitive Japanese word frequency list is impossible to find, particularly in Romaji to allow it to be made into a Sporcle quiz. I am hoping that someone with better Japanese knowledge than me will play it and be able to explain any changes which need to be made.
The research is based on words in over 1200 novels and I have used the base aggregrate list which combines all forms of a word together in one base word. For more details on how the data was compiled, click on the source. The raw data can be downloaded from the base aggregates link. The most frequent words are at the bottom of the list and all are written in hiragana or kanji.
A lot of the words highest in the list are grammar particles and word modifiers. I debated whether they should be included but have left them all in for now. It makes what is an incredibly difficult quiz a little bit easier, although a lot of them don't really mean anything on their own. Let me know whether you think they should be left in or if I should make the quiz only include verbs, nouns, adjectives etc.
I have put all the hirigana and kanji through the http://nihongo.j-talk.com/kanji/ translator and Wiktionary to check their meaning (and hence their likelihood of being on a frequently used word list) and check the Romanisation. Unfortunately Japan's multiple writing systems means the same word can appear twice, once in kanji, once in hirigana, so I have tried to remove these duplicates. They also have many homophones so it is possible for two different words to be in the top 100 with different meanings but identical Romanisations. I have removed these to avoid confusion. The dictionary forms of verbs are displayed but the masu form should also be accepted for them.
Please feel free to check the source to look for errors and offer any advice you have regarding the method. It is a difficult quiz to put together when I only speak basic Japanese but I have been wanting to see this quiz for a while. |