Learn Japanese with Ponyo
We analyzed every line of Ponyo. It uses 667 unique words. The right 181 of them cover 70% of everything said, and this page shows the path to them.
- 667unique words
- 181words to 70%
- 474words to 90%
- 1,057lines analyzed
Why Ponyo works as a destination
Ponyo has the smallest unique vocabulary of any Ghibli film in our catalogue, and it shows why: the film orbits a five-year-old. Children's speech repeats itself and stays on visible things (food, sea, rain, names), which is what a learner's ear wants.
It is also a film of shouted simple sentences and long wordless spectacle, so the dialogue you do get arrives clearly and with pictures doing half the work.
崖の上のポニョ: the title in Japanese
Ponyo is 崖の上のポニョ (Gake no Ue no Ponyo): “Ponyo on the cliff”.
崖の上 (gake no ue) is “on top of the cliff”: 崖 (gake, cliff) plus の上 (no ue, atop), where Sōsuke's house sits.
ポニョ is katakana, the script for invented names. Sōsuke coins the name himself, and it is as bubbly as its owner.
The first words it teaches you
Katarineko teaches a film's vocabulary in the order the film introduces it, so your first words come from its first scenes. These are the opening entries of the Ponyo curriculum, with how often you'll hear each across the film:
| Word | Reading | Times heard |
|---|---|---|
| 海 | うみ | 19 |
| うち | うち | 4 |
| 青い | あおい | 4 |
| 泡 | あわ | 4 |
| 一緒 | いっしょ | 6 |
| さかな | さかな | 3 |
| みんな | みな | 18 |
| すぐ | すぐ | 4 |
How far the words take you
The curve is steep at the start: a film reuses its own vocabulary constantly, so the early words carry a lot of dialogue. Understanding 70% of the words is still short of enjoying the film. It is the point where following along stops being decoding and starts being watching, and it is the threshold we aim you at first.
How Katarineko turns this into a path
You answer a short calibration drawn from Ponyo's own vocabulary, so we know which of its words you already have. Then, each week, you read a story written from the film's vocabulary, pitched just above your level: the words you meet are the words you are about to hear. Phrase-by-phrase explanations and spaced review keep them. The film is the finish line.
Where these words take you next
Films share everyday vocabulary, so the words you learn here travel. After Ponyo's curriculum, here is how much of each next film you would already cover:
| Next film | Already covered |
|---|---|
| Spirited Away | 39% of its dialogue |
| The Idiot | 36% of its dialogue |
| Howl's Moving Castle | 35% of its dialogue |
See how many of Ponyo's words you already know.
Start learning with PonyoAll numbers on this page are computed from a full subtitle analysis of Ponyo, the same analysis the product plans from. Method: how we measure film difficulty.