The most common words in 53 languages
Ranked by how often each word is actually spoken, not by how often it is written. 407,063 words in all, each with its meaning in English.
Pick a language and work down from the top. The first few hundred words carry most of an ordinary conversation, which makes them the cheapest vocabulary you will ever learn — and every list here can be downloaded and kept.
Popular languages
- Spanish Español 10,000 words
- French français 10,000 words
- German Deutsch 10,000 words
- Italian Italiano 10,000 words
- Portuguese Português 10,000 words
- Russian Русский 10,000 words
- Chinese 中文 10,000 words
- Korean 한국어 5,927 words
- Turkish Türkçe 10,000 words
- Arabic العربية 7,589 words
- Dutch Nederlands 10,000 words
- Polish język polski 10,000 words
Every language
- Afrikaans Afrikaans 2,915
- Albanian Shqip 7,032
- Arabic العربية 7,589
- Armenian Հայերեն 1,825
- Basque euskara 2,924
- Bengali বাংলা 3,802
- Bosnian bosanski jezik 10,000
- Bulgarian български език 10,000
- Catalan català 10,000
- Chinese 中文 10,000
- Croatian hrvatski jezik 10,000
- Czech čeština 10,000
- Danish dansk 10,000
- Dutch Nederlands 10,000
- English English 10,000
- Esperanto Esperanto 10,000
- Estonian eesti 5,619
- Finnish suomi 10,000
- French français 10,000
- Galician Galego 10,000
- Georgian ქართული 1,550
- German Deutsch 10,000
- Greek Ελληνικά 10,000
- Hebrew עברית 6,856
- Hindi हिन्दी 8,906
- Hungarian magyar 10,000
- Icelandic Íslenska 7,439
- Indonesian Bahasa Indonesia 10,000
- Italian Italiano 10,000
- Korean 한국어 5,927
- Latvian latviešu valoda 10,000
- Lithuanian lietuvių kalba 5,942
- Macedonian македонски јазик 10,000
- Malay Bahasa Melayu 5,228
- Malayalam മലയാളം 3,457
- Norwegian Norsk 10,000
- Persian فارسی 7,118
- Polish język polski 10,000
- Portuguese Português 10,000
- Romanian Română 10,000
- Russian Русский 10,000
- Serbian српски језик 10,000
- Slovak slovenčina 5,106
- Slovenian slovenski jezik 3,076
- Spanish Español 10,000
- Swedish Svenska 10,000
- Tagalog Wikang Tagalog 3,068
- Tamil தமிழ் 2,201
- Telugu తెలుగు 1,994
- Turkish Türkçe 10,000
- Ukrainian Українська 10,000
- Urdu اردو 2,568
- Vietnamese Tiếng Việt 4,921
Questions
- Where do these lists come from?
- From the OpenSubtitles corpus — tens of millions of lines of film and television subtitles — counted and ranked by the FrequencyWords project. That is a record of speech rather than of writing, which is why the ranking suits people who want to talk.
- Why does the same verb appear more than once?
- Because these are word forms, not dictionary headwords. In Spanish, es, era and fue are all the verb ser, and all three are counted separately because all three are things you actually hear.
- How many words do I need?
- The first hundred carry a surprising share of ordinary conversation, and the first thousand carry most of it. After that each new word buys you less, which is the point at which talking to someone beats studying a list.
- Can I use these lists in my own project?
- Yes. They are derived from CC BY-SA 4.0 sources and are published under the same licence, so use them freely as long as you credit the sources and pass the same freedom on.