The 5,000 most common Icelandic 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 Icelandic and you follow 51.7% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 76.0%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 24.0% | |
| 50 | 43.3% | |
| 100 | 51.7% | |
| 250 | 62.3% | |
| 500 | 69.4% | |
| 1,000 | 76.0% | |
| 2,000 | 81.8% | |
| 3,000 | 84.9% | |
| 5,000 | 88.6% | |
| 8,000 | 91.5% | |
| 10,000 | 92.8% | |
| 15,000 | 95.0% | |
| 20,000 | 96.4% |
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 Icelandic
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1ég4.08%
- 2ađ7.61%
- 3er10.87%
- 4Ã13.15%
- 5ekki15.42%
- 6ūađ17.52%
- 7og19.36%
- 8á20.95%
- 9ūú22.53%
- 10viđ23.95%
- 11hann25.2%
- 12Å«etta26.37%
- 13hvađ27.2%
- 14sem27.97%
- 15mér28.74%
- 16til29.47%
- 17en30.19%
- 18međ30.89%
- 19ūér31.55%
- 20fyrir32.2%
- 21af32.82%
- 22um33.43%
- 23var34.03%
- 24mig34.57%
- 25Å«ig35.11%
- 26að35.63%
- 27já36.14%
- 28hún36.6%
- 29nei37.04%
- 30Å«vÃ37.45%
- 31allt37.86%
- 32bara38.22%
- 33svo38.58%
- 34eru38.94%
- 35ef39.28%
- 36ert39.61%
- 37ūá39.93%
- 38það40.22%
- 39ertu40.5%
- 40eins40.77%
- 41okkur41.05%
- 42vera41.31%
- 43lagi41.58%
- 44eftir41.84%
- 45gera42.1%
- 46veit42.36%
- 47ūiđ42.6%
- 48hefur42.85%
- 49hér43.1%
- 50Å«eir43.34%
- 51nú43.58%
- 52frá43.81%
- 53fara44.04%
- 54þú44.26%
- 55hvernig44.48%
- 56við44.69%
- 57út44.9%
- 58Å«egar45.11%
- 59hef45.31%
- 60upp45.51%
- 61aftur45.7%
- 62honum45.9%
- 63svona46.09%
- 64minn46.28%
- 65ekkert46.47%
- 66vel46.65%
- 67sé46.83%
- 68hana47.01%
- 69verđur47.19%
- 70hver47.37%
- 71þetta47.54%
- 72ykkur47.7%
- 73Å«essu47.87%
- 74vil48.03%
- 75veriđ48.19%
- 76komdu48.35%
- 77segja48.5%
- 78erum48.66%
- 79eđa48.82%
- 80hérna48.97%
- 81úr49.12%
- 82get49.27%
- 83hverju49.42%
- 84aldrei49.57%
- 85gott49.72%
- 86hvar49.86%
- 87hafa50.0%
- 88hjá50.14%
- 89getur50.28%
- 90koma50.41%
- 91okkar50.54%
- 92viltu50.68%
- 93inn50.81%
- 94fá50.94%
- 95núna51.07%
- 96mađur51.2%
- 97takk51.33%
- 98eitthvađ51.46%
- 99kannski51.58%
- 100hvað51.7%
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 Icelandic comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Germanic › North Germanic › Icelandic
Isolated on an island and barely changed.
Icelanders can still read texts from the year 1200.
Words Icelandic has that English never built
- gluggaveður GLUG-ga-veh-thurWeather that looks lovely from indoors and is not
- þetta reddast THET-ta RED-dastIt will work out somehow
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 8,259,626 tokens of Icelandic 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.