N3 vocabulary: the essential words by topic
At N3 vocabulary suddenly widens: the most quoted estimates put it at about 3,750 words in total, more than twice what N4 needs.
Here are 148 of them, the most common in each topic: a taste of the whole level, from home to work, from health to the news.
148 N3 words in 19 topics
For each topic, the first words of our course among those the JMdict dictionary marks as common. Under each word, the kana reading where needed.
Daily life & home
Time, frequency & calendar
Nature, environment & weather
Work, school & study
Transport, city & travel
People, society & relationships
Health, body & life
Economy, shops & goods
Suffixes, counters & function words
Communication, media & tech
Abstract, opinions & states
Useful adverbs & connectors
Food, cooking & daily shopping
Culture, hobbies, arts & leisure
Formal words for texts & notices
Emotions, attitudes & evaluation
Vocabulary for problems & solutions
High-priority N3 verbs
Useful adjectives & descriptions
These are 148 of the 888 N3 words in Yukigo's course. The other 740, inside real sentences, with audio, handwriting and spaced review, are in the app.
Headwords attested against JMdict (© EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0) and the Jōyō list. Translations, thematic grouping and level classification are Yukigo's own.
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What changes compared with N4
At N4 words describe your day. At N3 come the words for reasoning and for notices: 影響, 条件, 基準, 対策. They're the words of announcements, instructions and the news, and almost all of them have a simpler synonym you already know.
Two kanji, one word
Much of N3 vocabulary is made of two-kanji compounds read with their on readings: 解決, 予防, 支援. That's why at this level words and kanji are studied together: if you know 予 and 防, you can read 予防 at first sight.
How not to lose them on the way
Nearly four thousand words won't stay in your head from a list. You need two things: to meet them inside sentences, because context is what fixes the meaning, and to see them again just as they're slipping away, not all at once the night before.
Four thousand words need a system
Yukigo takes you through all 888 N3 words of the course, one lesson at a time, inside real sentences, with audio and handwriting, and brings each one back just before it slips away. Free, no ads.
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Frequently asked questions
The most quoted estimates say about 3,750 words cumulatively. Since 2010 the JLPT has not published vocabulary lists, so every list is a reconstruction. Yukigo's N3 course has 888 words in its topics, plus the ones you learn inside the kanji and grammar lessons.
Because this page is a starting point, not the course. For each topic we took the most common words; the other 740 in the course are in the app, with spaced review.
It helps a lot, because almost all of them are built from kanji of this level or the ones before. If a kanji is missing, the reading under the word lets you keep going, but it pays to study them together.
At ten new words a day, the 888 words of our N3 course take about three months to see once each. At this level, though, reviewing what you already know takes more time than the new words.