Most common English words
April 24, 2006 9:57 AM   Subscribe

What are the 500 most commonly used words in the English language ? Where can I get such a list ?

I am trying to learn a new regional language. And this list of 500 most common English words will help me get up to speed in my learning effort by finding out their equivalent in the regional language.
posted by inquisitive to Writing & Language (14 answers total)
 
Googling for "most commonly used words" gives you several pages of lists to choose from.
posted by CunningLinguist at 9:59 AM on April 24, 2006


WordCount.
posted by Gyan at 10:13 AM on April 24, 2006




Response by poster: And is there a similar list of most-commonly used sentences ?
posted by inquisitive at 10:35 AM on April 24, 2006


why do you assume that the 500 most common English words will also be the 500 most common words of the regional language that you are seeking to learn? Is that regional language also English, or is it another language entirely?

these 500 words might not be as common in that language as they are in English.

which regional language are you seeking to learn?
posted by seawallrunner at 10:49 AM on April 24, 2006


why do you assume that the 500 most common English words will also be the 500 most common words of the regional language that you are seeking to learn?

The poster doesn't assume that.
posted by malp at 11:37 AM on April 24, 2006


I'm surprised at how much higher "he" is than "she" on the list provided by ND¢. Definitely is a male-centric world, I guess.
posted by educatedslacker at 12:38 PM on April 24, 2006


>The poster doesn't assume that

I believe that yes inquisitive does: "And this list of 500 most common English words will help me get up to speed in my learning effort by finding out their equivalent in the regional language otherwise inquisitive would be wasting his/her time learning perhaps-not-as-common words translated into another language

@inquisitive, would you mind shedding some light as to which language you are wishing to learn, is it a regional version of English, or is it a regional variant of another idiom?
posted by seawallrunner at 12:43 PM on April 24, 2006


I'm surprised at how much higher "he" is than "she" on the list provided by ND¢. Definitely is a male-centric world, I guess.

Well, "king" apears before "money", which amazes me.
posted by delmoi at 1:01 PM on April 24, 2006


Some problems: some languages don't have articles, some have more than one pronoun to correspond to the English ones, prepositions don't often translate directly, etc., etc. You might be better off searching for the 500 most common words in the language you're studying.
posted by dmo at 1:04 PM on April 24, 2006


You might be better off searching for the 500 most common words in the language you're studying.

Change "might be" to "would definitely be."
posted by languagehat at 3:02 PM on April 24, 2006


The Moby Project

You may be interested in this list of words.
posted by tumble at 4:10 PM on April 24, 2006


Odd how ND¢'s source's top 500 includes no profanity. You don't have to be a Soprano to know that's some fucked-up shit!
posted by rob511 at 6:49 PM on April 24, 2006


As other posters have pointed out, the most-used words might not be the best thing for what you want. Try Basic English instead (wikipedia entry).
posted by sennoma at 9:31 PM on April 24, 2006


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