The 5,000 most common Italian 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 Italian and you follow 48.0% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 76.4%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 18.9% | |
| 50 | 38.7% | |
| 100 | 48.0% | |
| 250 | 60.8% | |
| 500 | 69.2% | |
| 1,000 | 76.4% | |
| 2,000 | 82.6% | |
| 3,000 | 85.9% | |
| 5,000 | 89.6% | |
| 8,000 | 92.6% | |
| 10,000 | 93.9% | |
| 15,000 | 96.0% | |
| 20,000 | 97.2% |
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 Italian
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1e3.06%
- 2non5.65%
- 3che8.15%
- 4di10.59%
- 5la12.19%
- 6il13.74%
- 7un15.21%
- 8a16.64%
- 9per17.82%
- 10è18.88%
- 11in19.77%
- 12una20.66%
- 13mi21.5%
- 14sono22.33%
- 15ho23.08%
- 16l'23.83%
- 17si24.57%
- 18ha25.25%
- 19ma25.94%
- 20lo26.56%
- 21cosa27.16%
- 22con27.76%
- 23no28.35%
- 24le28.94%
- 25ti29.52%
- 26se30.07%
- 27da30.62%
- 28i31.15%
- 29come31.66%
- 30io32.14%
- 31ci32.61%
- 32hai33.03%
- 33questo33.45%
- 34bene33.86%
- 35qui34.24%
- 36sei34.62%
- 37del34.99%
- 38tu35.34%
- 39solo35.67%
- 40mio35.98%
- 41al36.29%
- 42me36.59%
- 43tutto36.89%
- 44c'37.17%
- 45te37.45%
- 46era37.72%
- 47della37.98%
- 48mia38.24%
- 49fatto38.48%
- 50fare38.73%
- 51essere38.97%
- 52so39.21%
- 53quando39.44%
- 54sì39.67%
- 55ora39.9%
- 56lei40.13%
- 57gli40.36%
- 58ne40.59%
- 59oh40.81%
- 60questa41.03%
- 61detto41.25%
- 62ok41.46%
- 63va41.67%
- 64perche41.87%
- 65quello42.07%
- 66mai42.27%
- 67alla42.47%
- 68o42.66%
- 69anche42.85%
- 70stato43.05%
- 71abbiamo43.23%
- 72tutti43.41%
- 73dei43.59%
- 74grazie43.77%
- 75chi43.95%
- 76sta44.13%
- 77molto44.31%
- 78più44.48%
- 79voglio44.66%
- 80perché44.83%
- 81tuo45.0%
- 82beh45.17%
- 83sia45.34%
- 84nel45.51%
- 85lui45.68%
- 86allora45.84%
- 87posso46.0%
- 88piu46.17%
- 89ehi46.33%
- 90prima46.49%
- 91tua46.65%
- 92suo46.8%
- 93niente46.96%
- 94qualcosa47.12%
- 95sai47.27%
- 96siamo47.43%
- 97un'47.58%
- 98cosi47.73%
- 99davvero47.88%
- 100ancora48.03%
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 Italian comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Italic › Latin › Romance › Eastern Romance › Italian
Standardised on the Florentine of Dante, three centuries before Italy existed as a country.
Words Italian has that English never built
- meriggiare me-ri-DJA-reTo rest in the shade during the hottest hour of the day
- culaccino ku-la-CHEE-noThe wet ring a cold glass leaves on a table
- abbiocco ab-BYOK-koThe heavy sleepiness that hits you right after a big meal
- struggimento strudj-djee-MEN-toA sweet, wearing ache of longing you do not want to end
- gattara gat-TA-raA woman who devotes herself to feeding street cats
- magari ma-GA-reeIf only, maybe, and I wish, all in one word
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 241,736,295 tokens of Italian 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.