The 5,000 most common Greek 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 Greek and you follow 51.5% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 75.2%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 19.9% | |
| 50 | 43.0% | |
| 100 | 51.5% | |
| 250 | 61.9% | |
| 500 | 69.0% | |
| 1,000 | 75.2% | |
| 2,000 | 80.8% | |
| 3,000 | 84.0% | |
| 5,000 | 87.8% | |
| 8,000 | 91.0% | |
| 10,000 | 92.4% | |
| 15,000 | 94.8% | |
| 20,000 | 96.2% |
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 Greek
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1να3.8%
- 2το6.76%
- 3δεν8.89%
- 4είναι10.97%
- 5θα12.93%
- 6και14.81%
- 7μου16.22%
- 8με17.49%
- 9για18.71%
- 10την19.89%
- 11ο21.04%
- 12η22.07%
- 13τον23.07%
- 14τα24.05%
- 15που25.04%
- 16σου26.02%
- 17σε26.98%
- 18αυτό27.91%
- 19του28.83%
- 20τι29.74%
- 21ότι30.57%
- 22από31.32%
- 23στο32.04%
- 24της32.59%
- 25όχι33.13%
- 26ναι33.66%
- 27ένα34.17%
- 28τη34.65%
- 29αν35.12%
- 30αλλά35.59%
- 31εδώ36.05%
- 32μια36.51%
- 33σας36.96%
- 34τους37.41%
- 35ήταν37.85%
- 36μας38.28%
- 37πρέπει38.69%
- 38είσαι39.09%
- 39είμαι39.48%
- 40οι39.85%
- 41στην40.23%
- 42πολύ40.59%
- 43κι40.93%
- 44γιατί41.27%
- 45πως41.58%
- 46τώρα41.89%
- 47εγώ42.2%
- 48εντάξει42.5%
- 49κάτι42.77%
- 50έχει43.05%
- 51ξέρω43.32%
- 52τις43.58%
- 53έχω43.85%
- 54δε44.1%
- 55μην44.33%
- 56έτσι44.56%
- 57εσύ44.78%
- 58καλά44.99%
- 59αυτή45.2%
- 60θέλω45.41%
- 61όταν45.61%
- 62στον45.81%
- 63στη46.0%
- 64μπορώ46.19%
- 65ξέρεις46.38%
- 66έχεις46.56%
- 67κάνεις46.75%
- 68μόνο46.93%
- 69μαζί47.11%
- 70εκεί47.28%
- 71σαν47.46%
- 72όλα47.62%
- 73τίποτα47.79%
- 74σ47.95%
- 75ευχαριστώ48.11%
- 76ή48.27%
- 77πώς48.43%
- 78κάνω48.59%
- 79απ48.74%
- 80τόσο48.89%
- 81μπορεί49.04%
- 82κάνει49.19%
- 83ποτέ49.33%
- 84απλά49.47%
- 85αυτά49.61%
- 86των49.75%
- 87έλα49.89%
- 88λοιπόν50.02%
- 89στα50.15%
- 90υπάρχει50.28%
- 91ακόμα50.41%
- 92μπορείς50.54%
- 93μέσα50.67%
- 94πάμε50.8%
- 95σπίτι50.93%
- 96αυτός51.05%
- 97τότε51.18%
- 98ίσως51.3%
- 99έχουμε51.42%
- 100γι51.54%
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 Greek comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Greek
Three and a half thousand years of continuous written record, longer than any other European language.
Words Greek has that English never built
- μεράκι meh-RAH-keeDoing something with your soul left in it
- φιλότιμο fee-LO-tee-moDoing right by others because of who you are, not what you get
- φιλοξενία fee-lo-kse-NEE-aThe sacred duty to look after a stranger
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 251,785,885 tokens of Greek 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.