50 Common Japanese Words Every Beginner Should Know
A starter list of everyday Japanese words and their script forms, grouped by theme, to build a working vocabulary fast.
Japanese is spoken by around 125 million people, primarily in Japan, and uses a writing system combining three distinct scripts — building early vocabulary alongside basic script recognition sets a stronger foundation than romaji alone.
Greetings and courtesy
こんにちは konnichiwa (hello), ありがとう arigatou (thank you), お願いします onegaishimasu (please), さようなら sayounara (goodbye, fairly formal), すみません sumimasen (excuse me/sorry) — essential opening phrases.
Numbers
一 ichi (one), 二 ni (two), 三 san (three) through 十 juu (ten) — worth noting Japanese has different counting word sets depending on what's being counted, a genuinely distinctive feature covered in more detail elsewhere.
Family
母 haha (my mother) / お母さん okaasan (someone else's mother, or addressing your own respectfully), 父 chichi / お父さん otousan (father, same pattern), 友達 tomodachi (friend) — note Japanese often uses different terms depending on whether you're referring to your own family or someone else's, a real feature of the language's politeness system.
Everyday life
水 mizu (water), 家 ie (house), 仕事 shigoto (work), 学校 gakkou (school).
Why three scripts, not one
Japanese combines hiragana (a phonetic script for native Japanese words and grammar), katakana (a phonetic script mainly for foreign loanwords), and kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese, carrying meaning). This is genuinely unusual among world languages and deserves early, deliberate attention rather than relying on romaji indefinitely.
A simple way to build from this list
- Learn hiragana first — it's the foundational phonetic script most beginner material starts with.
- Look up each new word in its proper script form, not just romaji.
- Use each word in a short sentence of your own.
- Review yesterday's words before adding today's.
Look up any Japanese word instantly, in proper script, offline, with English Japanese Dictionary →
English Japanese Dictionary
Offline English–Japanese dictionary with kanji, hiragana and katakana support
More about English Japanese Dictionary
Hobbies and Sports in Japanese: Sumo, Judo and Baseball
Japanese words for hobbies and sports, how to talk about what you like to do, and an introduction to traditional martial arts and baseball.
Read article →Japanese Onomatopoeia: どきどき, ぴかぴか and ふわふわ
Japanese uses hundreds of sound and feeling words. Learn how they work, the most common ones, and why they are everywhere in manga and daily speech.
Read article →On'yomi and Kun'yomi: Why Kanji Have Multiple Readings
The two main ways to read a kanji, how to tell which to use, and how to learn readings without being overwhelmed.
Read article →Phones and Technology Vocabulary in Japanese
Japanese words for phones, computers and the internet, many written in katakana, with useful phrases for everyday tech situations.
Read article →