The 5,000 most common Esperanto 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 Esperanto and you follow 51.8% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 74.0%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 25.1% | |
| 50 | 43.8% | |
| 100 | 51.8% | |
| 250 | 61.8% | |
| 500 | 68.1% | |
| 1,000 | 74.0% | |
| 2,000 | 79.7% | |
| 3,000 | 83.1% | |
| 5,000 | 87.2% | |
| 8,000 | 90.8% | |
| 10,000 | 92.4% | |
| 15,000 | 95.2% | |
| 20,000 | 96.6% |
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 Esperanto
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1la4.59%
- 2mi8.72%
- 3vi12.25%
- 4ne15.04%
- 5estas17.73%
- 6kaj19.48%
- 7ĉu21.0%
- 8de22.48%
- 9al23.86%
- 10ni25.15%
- 11en26.21%
- 12ke27.17%
- 13li28.1%
- 14por28.87%
- 15ĉi29.6%
- 16tio30.31%
- 17sed30.92%
- 18ili31.49%
- 19tie32.03%
- 20kiel32.56%
- 21vin33.09%
- 22min33.6%
- 23pri34.09%
- 24jes34.56%
- 25kio35.01%
- 26kun35.46%
- 27estis35.9%
- 28mia36.34%
- 29kion36.78%
- 30povas37.2%
- 31ĝi37.61%
- 32tiu37.99%
- 33kiu38.38%
- 34via38.76%
- 35tion39.13%
- 36bone39.5%
- 37ŝi39.87%
- 38se40.23%
- 39volas40.58%
- 40havas40.92%
- 41pli41.24%
- 42do41.56%
- 43oni41.88%
- 44nur42.19%
- 45ĝin42.5%
- 46nun42.8%
- 47scias43.09%
- 48kial43.34%
- 49devas43.59%
- 50kiam43.82%
- 51lin44.05%
- 52el44.27%
- 53ja44.49%
- 54unu44.71%
- 55nu44.92%
- 56jam45.13%
- 57kie45.33%
- 58tiel45.53%
- 59da45.73%
- 60tre45.93%
- 61ankaŭ46.12%
- 62pro46.31%
- 63sur46.5%
- 64jen46.69%
- 65diris46.87%
- 66ĉiuj47.04%
- 67estos47.21%
- 68ilin47.38%
- 69per47.55%
- 70je47.71%
- 71vian47.87%
- 72aŭ48.03%
- 73sinjoro48.18%
- 74ho48.33%
- 75tiun48.48%
- 76nia48.63%
- 77iru48.78%
- 78nin48.92%
- 79ĉio49.07%
- 80ĉar49.21%
- 81ankoraŭ49.35%
- 82vere49.49%
- 83mian49.63%
- 84dum49.77%
- 85plu49.9%
- 86esti50.04%
- 87neniam50.17%
- 88dio50.3%
- 89diras50.42%
- 90eĉ50.55%
- 91venu50.68%
- 92ĝis50.8%
- 93dankon50.93%
- 94eble51.05%
- 95ion51.18%
- 96ol51.3%
- 97antaŭ51.42%
- 98du51.53%
- 99tiuj51.65%
- 100ĉiam51.77%
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 Esperanto comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Esperanto
Built on purpose in 1887 out of Romance, Germanic and Slavic pieces.
The only invented language with native speakers.
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 343,906 tokens of Esperanto 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.