How Many Japanese Words Do You Need to Understand Anime?
About 210. I counted every word spoken in the first 12 episodes of 120 anime, and the 210 most common make up 67% of the dialogue. The 50 most common make up half. That's a small, countable goal, and every word on the way pays off in the next episode you watch.
The curve
| Most common words | Share of the dialogue |
|---|---|
| 10 | 28% |
| 20 | 40% |
| 50 | 52% |
| 100 | 60% |
| 210 | 67% (68% counting character names) |
| 300 | 70% |
| 1,000 | 79% |
Source: Watch Anime, Learn Japanese, Chapter 3. 1,432 episodes, 3,313,663 spoken words.
The curve climbs fast and then flattens. The first 20 words get you to 40%. Going from 300 to 1,000 adds only nine points. That's why the order you learn words in matters so much: the early ones do most of the work.
What that means for one episode
An episode averages about 2,300 spoken words. The 50 most common words cover about 1,200 of them. Most of those 50 are grammar: particles like の, は, and が, and endings like だ, です, and ない that you've heard a thousand times without knowing it.
The 20 most common words in anime
| Rank | Word | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | の | no | possessive, "of" |
| 2 | だ | da | is, are, am |
| 3 | は | wa | topic marker |
| 4 | た | ta | past tense (did) |
| 5 | て | te | te-form |
| 6 | に | ni | to, at, in |
| 7 | が | ga | subject marker |
| 8 | ない | nai | not, there isn't |
| 9 | か | ka | question marker |
| 10 | する | suru | to do |
| 11 | を | o | object marker |
| 12 | も | mo | also, too |
| 13 | と | to | and, with |
| 14 | よ | yo | emphasis |
| 15 | で | de | at, by, with |
| 16 | です | desu | to be (polite) |
| 17 | てる | teru | is doing (-ing) |
| 18 | な | na | don't (〜な), casual ending |
| 19 | 何 | nani | what |
| 20 | から | kara | from, because |
Source: Watch Anime, Learn Japanese. The full top 1,000 is in the book.
Verbs follow the same curve
Out of more than 6,000 different verbs in those shows, the top 10 make up 43% of the verbs you'll hear. The top 50 make up 64%, and the top 200 reach 80%. In order, the top 10 are する (to do), いる (to be), 言う (to say), ある (to be, to have), なる (to become), 来る (to come), 行く (to go), やる (to do), 見る (to see), and しまう (to end up doing).
Source: Top 200 Japanese Verbs in Anime, "Why These 200". See the top 20 verbs.
See the Top 10 Verbs with furigana in Yomikit →Where to go from here
- Watch Anime, Learn Japanese: the 210 words as word cards, the top 1,000 list, and the data behind this page.
- Top 200 Japanese Verbs in Anime: the 200 verbs that reach 80% of the verbs you'll hear, one page each.
- Learning Japanese with anime: every method compared, including the free tools I use alongside these.
Questions
- How many Japanese words do you need to understand anime?
- About 210. They make up 67% of the dialogue in the 1,432 episodes I counted. The 50 most common make up half, and the 20 most common make up 40%.
- What is the most common word in anime?
- の (no), the particle for possession, like "of" or an apostrophe s. It's about one in every 20 words spoken.
- How many words are in an episode of anime?
- About 2,300 spoken words on average. The 50 most common words cover about 1,200 of them.
How I counted
I used the Japanese subtitles for the first 12 episodes of 120 anime: 1,432 episodes in all, with 20 shows from each of six genres (action, fantasy, isekai, everyday, romance, and mystery). Every line was split into words with the MeCab analyzer, and every word was counted and ranked by how often it's spoken: 3,313,663 words in total. Character names, sound effects, and numbers are tracked separately, so they don't crowd the list; counting names, the top 210 reach 68%. For the verb ranking, verbs were counted by dictionary form (言った and 言います both count as 言う), and every show counts the same, so one talkative series can't push its favorite verb up the list.