Matt vs Japan

Yeah, if you want to take that route just don't sentence mine until you reach basic fluency

Ultimately, it's a waste of time and energy to get worked up over learning words in the "optimal order".

Frequency is already baked into the language. Learn words as you come across them and you'll be completely fine.

Sure, it might not help you much either. But who knows, you'll probably come across it again at some point and be glad you learned it.

If you have an efficient system set up, learning a new word should only take a minute. You can afford to learn a few "unnecessary" words here and there.

The other side of this is that many beginner language learners seem to have an irrational fear of learning rare words

"What if I end up making a card for a rare word I don't need to know?"

Then nothing. Knowing a rare word is never going to hurt you.

So, how the hell are you going to miss them?

You don't need some list to tell you what they are; just dive into the language and they'll be shoved in your face

But, if you're actually getting input and learning words as you come across them, it's completely inevitable that you'll quickly learn all the most common words

The reason the most common words are so valuable is that they're used exponentially more than every other word...

When learning a language, the order you learn words matters way less than people think

I mean, from an absolute perspective, of course the more frequently used a word is, the more worthwhile it is to learn

Honestly I'm not sure if this is a result of the crazy amount of Japanese input I've gotten, or just a quirk of the way my brain works (or some combination of both).

While speaking Japanese, I have to actively discipline myself to ignore all the 5-dollar words that are constantly popping into my head.

I literally have the opposite problem. My brain tries to get me to use every word I know, including rare words and expressions that natives rarely use in everyday conversation.

People often report being "able to understand words, but unable to use them themselves". In other words, difficultly turning passive vocab into active.

Explaining the play-on-words in the picture

It's an ad for a real estate company:

一(いち)から十(じゅう)まで = literally "from 1 to 10"; means "from A to Z"

住 means "live" and is pronounced じゅう

So, instead of "from 1 to 10" it's "from 1 to live"

Then you eventually realize that most natives just find them corny lol

When initially learning a language, plays-on-words feel very impressive.

They're so unique to the language, and could never be translated, so you get this "I can only understand this because I studied the language" feeling, which is rewarding...