The 2,968 most common Hindi 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 Hindi and you follow 88.5% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 96.9%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 58.9% | |
| 50 | 82.6% | |
| 100 | 88.5% | |
| 250 | 92.6% | |
| 500 | 95.0% | |
| 1,000 | 96.9% | |
| 2,000 | 98.6% |
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 Hindi
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1एक10.37%
- 2आप19.17%
- 3और27.29%
- 4यह35.31%
- 5कर40.9%
- 6हम46.18%
- 7वह50.56%
- 8पर54.47%
- 9इस56.98%
- 10अब58.85%
- 11तरह60.69%
- 12सब62.14%
- 13जब63.34%
- 14बस64.4%
- 15अगर65.4%
- 16तक66.34%
- 17समय67.27%
- 18ओह68.18%
- 19आ68.98%
- 20उस69.79%
- 21मत70.54%
- 22घर71.26%
- 23एम71.9%
- 24हर72.49%
- 25मतलब73.05%
- 26मदद73.62%
- 27आज74.15%
- 28आओ74.67%
- 29न75.17%
- 30इन75.64%
- 31सर76.09%
- 32जगह76.54%
- 33लग76.96%
- 34nder77.37%
- 35कम77.78%
- 36सच78.19%
- 37मर78.57%
- 38उन78.95%
- 39गए79.32%
- 40ऊपर79.67%
- 41कल80.02%
- 42rm80.34%
- 43कह80.66%
- 44आह80.97%
- 45उह81.27%
- 46चल81.56%
- 47nköö81.84%
- 48p82.11%
- 49आर82.38%
- 50ओर82.65%
- 51गई82.9%
- 52गलत83.13%
- 53समझ83.37%
- 54कई83.58%
- 55आग83.79%
- 56शहर84.0%
- 57डर84.2%
- 58नरक84.4%
- 59तब84.59%
- 60बदल84.77%
- 61औरत84.93%
- 62अलग85.09%
- 63नए85.24%
- 64मन85.39%
- 65कदम85.53%
- 66रह85.66%
- 67आए85.79%
- 68लगभग85.92%
- 69नफरत86.04%
- 70बन86.16%
- 71yacouba86.28%
- 72छह86.38%
- 73भर86.49%
- 74तरफ86.59%
- 75कब86.69%
- 76रख86.78%
- 77you86.88%
- 78i86.97%
- 79एन87.06%
- 80एलन87.16%
- 81पल87.25%
- 82kaiju87.34%
- 83दस87.42%
- 84बज87.51%
- 85नई87.59%
- 86एल87.66%
- 87वजह87.73%
- 88खबर87.8%
- 89l87.87%
- 90उम87.94%
- 91तय88.01%
- 92कवर88.07%
- 93बहन88.13%
- 94ओ88.19%
- 95छत88.25%
- 96जनरल88.31%
- 97hephaistion88.37%
- 98धन88.43%
- 99ll88.48%
- 100अप88.53%
Open all 2,968 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 Hindi comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Indo-Iranian › Indo-Aryan › Hindi
Hindi and Urdu are the same spoken language written in two alphabets, split by a border and a religion.
Words Hindi has that English never built
- जुगाड़ joo-GAARDA clever fix made from whatever is at hand
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 67,762 tokens of Hindi 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.