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Frequency List (US Letter)
Frequency List (US Letter)
Frequency List
The Top 5,000 Words in Spoken American English
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.
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Frequency List
I|fw I fw 267578 I
you|fw you fw 248266 you
to|fw to fw 151270 to
it|fw it fw 117091 it
of|fw of fw 70505 of
do|v do v 67643 do, did, does, doing, done
we|fw we fw 61381 we
in|fw in fw 58486 in
me|fw me fw 51927 me
go|v go v 51445 go, goes, going, gone, went
oh|u oh u 48348 oh
can|v can v 46947 can, could, cannot
no|fw no fw 43447 no
on|fw on fw 43007 on
us|fw us fw 10058 us
them|fw them fw 9857 them
or|fw or fw 9272 or
talk|v talk v 9197 talk, talked, talking, talks
hi|u hi u 5173 hi
life|n life n 5169 life, lives
aw|u aw u 1794 aw
dinner|n dinner n 1787 dinner, dinners
yo|u yo u 329 yo
focus|v focus v 169 focus, focused, focuses, focusing, focussed, focusses, focussing
illegal|j illegal j 169 illegal
whip|v whip v 149 whip, whipped, whipping, whips, whup, whupped, whupping, whups, whoop,
whoops, whooping, whooped
left|j left j 149 left
affair|n affair n 148 affair, affairs
off|r off r 66 off
pigeon|n pigeon n 66 pigeon, pigeons
HR|abbr HR abbr 36 HR
infinite|j infinite j 36 infinite
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).
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.
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.
American IPA Chart AmericanIPAchart.com All the sounds of American English, in one interactive infographic!
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