The 5,000 most common Bengali 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 Bengali and you follow 42.1% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 71.1%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 17.7% | |
| 50 | 33.5% | |
| 100 | 42.1% | |
| 250 | 54.1% | |
| 500 | 62.9% | |
| 1,000 | 71.1% | |
| 2,000 | 78.7% | |
| 3,000 | 82.7% | |
| 5,000 | 87.2% | |
| 8,000 | 90.8% | |
| 10,000 | 92.3% | |
| 15,000 | 94.8% | |
| 20,000 | 96.3% |
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 Bengali
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1।6.08%
- 2আমি8.49%
- 3না10.64%
- 4তুমি11.98%
- 5আমার13.28%
- 6কি14.33%
- 7এটা15.26%
- 8আর16.13%
- 9তোমার16.95%
- 10আছে17.69%
- 11সে18.34%
- 12এই18.99%
- 13আমরা19.65%
- 14করে20.22%
- 15হবে20.76%
- 16জন্য21.3%
- 17আমাদের21.83%
- 18করতে22.35%
- 19একটা22.87%
- 20আমাকে23.36%
- 21ঠিক23.85%
- 22আপনি24.33%
- 23তো24.79%
- 24যে25.23%
- 25তার25.66%
- 26থেকে26.08%
- 27কিছু26.5%
- 28সাথে26.91%
- 29কিন্তু27.31%
- 30এখানে27.67%
- 31তোমাকে28.03%
- 32এখন28.39%
- 33কোন28.75%
- 34কথা29.1%
- 35মনে29.46%
- 36কী29.77%
- 37যদি30.06%
- 38এবং30.34%
- 39হয়30.62%
- 40আপনার30.9%
- 41নিয়ে31.18%
- 42ছিল31.45%
- 43তাকে31.71%
- 44তারা31.97%
- 45নেই32.22%
- 46হয়ে32.48%
- 47তাহলে32.74%
- 48অনেক32.99%
- 49কেন33.24%
- 50করা33.48%
- 51হ্যাঁ33.71%
- 52করো33.95%
- 53তাই34.17%
- 54সব34.4%
- 55এক34.61%
- 56এর34.82%
- 57হচ্ছে35.03%
- 58যাও35.24%
- 59কাজ35.44%
- 60হয়েছে35.64%
- 61ও35.84%
- 62কে36.04%
- 63কাছে36.23%
- 64শুধু36.43%
- 65একটি36.62%
- 66স্যার36.81%
- 67দাও37.0%
- 68তাদের37.18%
- 69ভালো37.37%
- 70যা37.54%
- 71একজন37.72%
- 72ভাল37.89%
- 73জানি38.06%
- 74যেতে38.24%
- 75দিয়ে38.4%
- 76খুব38.57%
- 77কোথায়38.73%
- 78করবে38.89%
- 79যাবে39.05%
- 80চাই39.21%
- 81পারে39.36%
- 82শেষ39.52%
- 83করার39.67%
- 84ধন্যবাদ39.82%
- 85যখন39.97%
- 86বলতে40.12%
- 87কেউ40.27%
- 88করি40.41%
- 89সময়40.56%
- 90তুই40.7%
- 91গেছে40.84%
- 92বাবা40.98%
- 93ওকে41.13%
- 94মত41.27%
- 95সেটা41.41%
- 96হতে41.55%
- 97চলে41.68%
- 98ওহ41.82%
- 99নয়41.95%
- 100হ্যা42.08%
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 Bengali comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Indo-Iranian › Indo-Aryan › Bengali
More than a billion speakers between them, almost all in South Asia.
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 2,590,965 tokens of Bengali 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.