The 5,000 most common French 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 French and you follow 57.7% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 80.8%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 18.5% | |
| 50 | 46.6% | |
| 100 | 57.7% | |
| 250 | 68.4% | |
| 500 | 75.0% | |
| 1,000 | 80.8% | |
| 2,000 | 85.9% | |
| 3,000 | 88.6% | |
| 5,000 | 91.6% | |
| 8,000 | 94.2% | |
| 10,000 | 95.2% | |
| 15,000 | 96.9% | |
| 20,000 | 97.9% |
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 French
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1de2.7%
- 2je5.35%
- 3est7.57%
- 4pas9.43%
- 5le11.13%
- 6que12.75%
- 7la14.29%
- 8vous15.73%
- 9tu17.15%
- 10un18.54%
- 11c'19.88%
- 12Ã 21.19%
- 13et22.51%
- 14il23.79%
- 15a24.97%
- 16l'26.14%
- 17ne27.21%
- 18les28.18%
- 19j'29.14%
- 20en30.07%
- 21on30.95%
- 22ça31.83%
- 23une32.7%
- 24d'33.53%
- 25ce34.34%
- 26qu'35.14%
- 27pour35.93%
- 28ai36.71%
- 29n'37.45%
- 30des38.06%
- 31qui38.59%
- 32mais39.11%
- 33dans39.59%
- 34nous40.07%
- 35elle40.55%
- 36me41.01%
- 37bien41.47%
- 38si41.92%
- 39du42.35%
- 40y42.77%
- 41suis43.18%
- 42non43.6%
- 43t'44.0%
- 44avec44.4%
- 45tout44.8%
- 46plus45.19%
- 47mon45.57%
- 48m'45.93%
- 49te46.29%
- 50au46.65%
- 51fait46.98%
- 52moi47.32%
- 53s'47.65%
- 54oui47.97%
- 55va48.29%
- 56était48.6%
- 57as48.91%
- 58faire49.22%
- 59ils49.52%
- 60sur49.82%
- 61quoi50.11%
- 62se50.39%
- 63comme50.66%
- 64sais50.94%
- 65être51.17%
- 66veux51.41%
- 67ici51.64%
- 68ma51.87%
- 69toi52.1%
- 70est-ce52.32%
- 71dit52.55%
- 72lui52.77%
- 73votre52.98%
- 74es53.19%
- 75pourquoi53.4%
- 76où53.61%
- 77là 53.81%
- 78rien54.02%
- 79cette54.22%
- 80sont54.41%
- 81quand54.6%
- 82peux54.79%
- 83dire54.98%
- 84son55.17%
- 85avez55.35%
- 86vais55.52%
- 87alors55.69%
- 88ton55.86%
- 89comment56.03%
- 90par56.2%
- 91ou56.36%
- 92chose56.52%
- 93bon56.67%
- 94ont56.82%
- 95merci56.97%
- 96juste57.12%
- 97très57.27%
- 98jamais57.41%
- 99été57.55%
- 100aussi57.68%
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 French comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Italic › Latin › Romance › Western Romance › French
Latin filtered through Gaulish mouths and then Frankish ones.
That is where the strange vowels come from.
Words French has that English never built
- dépaysement de-pei-z-MANThe unsettled feeling of not being in your own country
- flâner fla-NETo wander a city with no destination, watching it happen
- retrouvailles re-troo-VAIThe joy of meeting again after a long time apart
- l'esprit de l'escalier les-PREE de les-ka-lyeThe perfect reply that arrives only once you have left
- râler ra-LETo grumble as a way of life, not as a complaint
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 312,994,233 tokens of French 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.