Learn Japanese with Princess Mononoke
We analyzed every line of Princess Mononoke. It uses 1,206 unique words. The right 294 of them cover 70% of everything said, and this page shows the path to them.
- 1,206unique words
- 294words to 70%
- 815words to 90%
- 1,403lines analyzed
Why Princess Mononoke works as a destination
Mononoke sits near the hard end of our Ghibli ranking, and it earns it: a historical setting, war, forest gods, iron-making. The vocabulary ranges far beyond daily life. This is a film to work toward.
Pick it anyway if it is the film that made you care. The climb is bounded (the gap is measured below), and the reward is following, in Japanese, the film everyone calls untranslatable.
もののけ姫: the title in Japanese
Princess Mononoke is もののけ姫 (Mononoke-hime): “The spirit princess”.
もののけ (mononoke) is an old word for a vengeful spirit, here the wronged gods of the forest. 姫 (hime) is princess: San, the girl the wolves raised.
The title is an outsider's name for her: “the mononoke princess” is what the humans call a girl who sides with the spirits.
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 Princess Mononoke curriculum, with how often you'll hear each across the film:
| Word | Reading | Times heard |
|---|---|---|
| ヤックル | やっくる | 14 |
| 兄 | あに | 5 |
| いい | いい | 33 |
| みんな | みな | 31 |
| 戻る | もどれる | 17 |
| 村 | むら | 10 |
| そう | そう | 18 |
| 言う | いう | 28 |
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 Princess Mononoke'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 Princess Mononoke's curriculum, here is how much of each next film you would already cover:
| Next film | Already covered |
|---|---|
| Rashomon | 47% of its dialogue |
| Spirited Away | 43% of its dialogue |
| Tales from Earthsea | 43% of its dialogue |
See how many of Princess Mononoke's words you already know.
Start learning with Princess MononokeAll numbers on this page are computed from a full subtitle analysis of Princess Mononoke, the same analysis the product plans from. Method: how we measure film difficulty.