The 5,000 most common Arabic words
Ranked by how often they actually turn up in spoken dialogue, not by how useful somebody guessed they would be.
Every number below is counted from a corpus, and the corpus is named at the bottom.
What each step buys you
Learn the first 100 words of Arabic and you follow 38.1% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 62.4%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 15.6% | |
| 50 | 30.9% | |
| 100 | 38.1% | |
| 250 | 47.7% | |
| 500 | 55.0% | |
| 1,000 | 62.4% | |
| 2,000 | 70.0% | |
| 3,000 | 74.3% | |
| 5,000 | 79.8% | |
| 8,000 | 84.7% | |
| 10,000 | 86.9% | |
| 15,000 | 90.7% | |
| 20,000 | 93.2% |
Comfortable reading starts around 98%. Everything before that is still worth doing, but the first hundred words buy you a foothold, not comprehension.
The first 100 words of Arabic
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1،3.57%
- 2لا5.57%
- 3من7.48%
- 4في9.04%
- 5أن10.54%
- 6هذا11.94%
- 7على12.98%
- 8ما13.93%
- 9أنا14.81%
- 10هل15.64%
- 11و16.4%
- 12يا17.14%
- 13ذلك17.88%
- 14لقد18.59%
- 15لم19.22%
- 16ماذا19.8%
- 17كان20.34%
- 18هنا20.87%
- 19إلى21.38%
- 20أنت21.89%
- 21هو22.35%
- 22هذه22.79%
- 23عن23.21%
- 24نعم23.61%
- 25ان24.0%
- 26هناك24.37%
- 27كل24.73%
- 28حسناً25.09%
- 29ليس25.44%
- 30كنت25.78%
- 31فقط26.1%
- 32شيء26.42%
- 33الآن26.73%
- 34مع27.04%
- 35الذي27.35%
- 36لكن27.64%
- 37أجل27.92%
- 38لك28.18%
- 39يجب28.44%
- 40لن28.7%
- 41كيف28.95%
- 42حسنا29.17%
- 43انا29.4%
- 44لي29.61%
- 45إنه29.83%
- 46سوف30.04%
- 47نحن30.25%
- 48إذا30.46%
- 49كانت30.66%
- 50عندما30.86%
- 51أي31.06%
- 52قد31.25%
- 53لماذا31.45%
- 54هي31.64%
- 55الأمر31.83%
- 56أنه32.02%
- 57فى32.21%
- 58حتى32.4%
- 59بعد32.58%
- 60كذلك32.76%
- 61أو32.93%
- 62ولكن33.09%
- 63قبل33.25%
- 64التي33.41%
- 65انه33.57%
- 66إنها33.73%
- 67ـ33.88%
- 68لو34.04%
- 69ربما34.19%
- 70أين34.34%
- 71هيا34.5%
- 72تلك34.65%
- 73أعرف34.79%
- 74الى34.94%
- 75إن35.08%
- 76يكون35.23%
- 77بعض35.37%
- 78أريد35.51%
- 79أعتقد35.64%
- 80انت35.77%
- 81عليك35.9%
- 82مثل36.03%
- 83صحيح36.16%
- 84به36.28%
- 85أنك36.41%
- 86الوقت36.53%
- 87بخير36.65%
- 88أعلم36.76%
- 89أحد36.88%
- 90شخص36.99%
- 91جداً37.11%
- 92رجل37.22%
- 93شكراً37.33%
- 94لذا37.44%
- 95يمكن37.55%
- 96كما37.66%
- 97كلا37.77%
- 98أكثر37.88%
- 99يبدو37.99%
- 100جيد38.09%
Open all 5,000 words in the codex →
In the codex you tap the ones you already know and the number moves. It stays in your browser, no account.
Where Arabic comes from
Afro-Asiatic › Arabic
Words are built from a skeleton of three consonants, and the vowels poured in between change the meaning.
Words Arabic has that English never built
- طرب TA-rabThe trance a listener falls into when music takes over
- مكتوب mak-TOOBIt is written
- توكل ta-WAK-kulTrusting the outcome after doing everything you could
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 154,992,400 tokens of Arabic in total. Lists compiled by Hermit Dave, released under CC BY-SA 3.0. Subtitles skew towards conversation, which is the point: this is the language people speak, not the language people publish.