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Frequency List (A4)
Frequency List (A4)
Frequency List (A4)
Frequency List
The Top 5,000 Words in Spoken American English
This is a list of the top 5,000 words used in spoken American To get started with this document, simply head to the next tab: A good frequency list is a great asset that will save you a lot of
English. The List. Browse it and start exploring the English language! time in learning vocabulary. But it's not enough on its own:
you'll want to learn the correct pronunciation of those words
The most frequent words in a language are also the most Use filters to focus on the type of words you're most interested from the start, and to learn words in context.
important ones. We need to know them in order to speak in (e.g.: browse nouns first, then adjectives…).
fluently. Starting with the most common words first also makes If you have one installed on your computer/phone/tablet, use a
sure we learn efficiently: they are words we can actually use Create an extra column and add your own notes to the dictionary to look up the words you don't know. A good
and recall! spreadsheet as you see fit. dictionary will give you the pronunciation and examples of how
to use the word in context. This will let you use the list as a
frequency dictionary of English.
As a teacher, you can use this list inside the classroom to
teach the most important vocabulary first, and cover the gap in See our official website as well, frequencylist.com, for an
your students' knowledge. interactive version of the list, with phonetics, audio and more.
Source
Those 5,000 words cover 96% of the English language! Official Website The top 5,062 lemmas in the corpus amount to a total of
Once you know them, you can do everything in English without 5,796,570 words. Places (toponyms) and character names
the need for translations. have been excluded from the list for practical reasons, but are
Visit our website
easy to understand and covered a total of 177,952 words.
frequencylist.com Bottom-line: (5796570 + 177952) / 6192659 = 96% coverage.
to see an interactive version of the list,
with the pronunciation and some cool extras! In other words, understanding the top 5,000 words given in
this list will let you, in practice, understand 96% of the
By Fabien Snauwaert and Guillaume Voisin
corpus and, by extension, 96% of spoken American
English.
Licence (FYI, the 12 shows used for the corpus are: Friends, How I Met
Your Mother, Sex And The City, South Park, Community, The
This document is distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. In Office, Modern Family, Family Guy, The Simpsons, The Big
other words, feel free to redistribute it as long as you credit the author, Bang Theory, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld.)
do not charge for it, and keep the work intact.
See the full licence for details.
Version / Edition Number: 20190219 Distributed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence Downloaded from https://frequencylist.com
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Frequency List
LEMMA|POS LEMMA POS FREQUENCY INFLECTIONS
be|v be v 318018 be, am, are, been, being, is, was, were
I|fw I fw 267578 I
a|fw a fw 152598 a, an
to|fw to fw 151270 to
it|fw it fw 117091 it
me|fw me fw 51927 me
oh|u oh u 48348 oh
no|fw no fw 43447 no
on|fw on fw 43007 on
up|r up r 22171 up
at|fw at fw 21243 at
us|fw us fw 10058 us
or|fw or fw 9272 or
talk|v talk v 9197 talk, talked, talking, talks
okay|j okay j 9098 okay, OK
something|fw something fw 9075 something
where|r where r 8941 where
great|j great j 8778 great, greater, greatest
way|n way n 8759 way, ways
never|r never r 8620 never
call|v call v 8413 call, called, calling, calls
too|r too r 8300 too
by|fw by fw 8133 by
fault|n fault n 745 fault, faulted, faulting, faultless, faultlessly, faultlessness, faults
yo|u yo u 329 yo
e-mail|v e-mail v 171 e-mail, e-mails, e-mailing, e-mailed, email, emails, emailing, emailed
focus|v focus v 169 focus, focused, focuses, focusing, focussed, focusses, focussing
wind|v wind v 158 wind, winds, winding, winded ; wind, winds, winding, wound
oy|u oy u 81 oy
off|r off r 66 off
one thousand one hundred|m one thousand one m 49 one thousand one hundred
hundred
pose|v pose v 49 pose, posed, poses, posing
psychiatrist|n psychiatrist n 49 psychiatrist, psychiatrists
HR|abbr HR abbr 36 HR
lemma lemma A lemma is the canonical form of a word, i.e.: a word as typically found in the dictionary. For example, be
for the verb "to be" and all its inflections: be, am, are, been, being, is, was, were. A single word may exist
as different lemmas; for example, book will be found as two lemmas, once as the noun (book, books),
once as the verb (book, booked, booking, books).
POS part of speech The grammatical category a word belongs to.
frequency frequency How many times we found a given lemma inside of our corpus.
inflection inflection The different forms a verb can take. For example, singular or plural (person, people); the conjugations of
verbs; the regular, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives (good, better, best).
fw function word A word that carries little meaning on its own, but is used to structure and organize the sentence. You can
think of function words as the cement that glues the other words together (the other words are called
content words and can be thought of as the bricks of the language.) e.g.: I, that, and.
v verb A word used to describe an action, occurence, or state. e.g.: to do, to happen, to be.
n noun A common noun. e.g.: thing, people, night.
r adverb Adverbs modify the meaning of verbs and sentences. e.g.: well, really, down.
j adjective Adjectives modify the meaning of nouns. e.g.: good, wrong, crazy.
u interjection A type of exclamation, expressing an emotion or reaction. e.g.: oh! hey! hmm…
m numerals Numbers. e.g.: one, sixth, two hundred.
K proper noun Only proper nouns used as common words (e.g.: the days of the week) have been kept. People's names
were removed from the list. e.g.: God, Saturday, English.
abbr abbreviation A shortened word of a form or phrase. e.g.: ID, DVD, FYI. A common type of abbreviation is the acronym,
which is formed by the initial letters of other words.
Click & Speak™ English ClickandSpeak.com Learn 96% of American English, with fun modern content, including phonetics, vocab’ and grammar.
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