The 2,604 most common Malayalam 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 Malayalam and you follow 79.3% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 94.3%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 57.9% | |
| 50 | 73.8% | |
| 100 | 79.3% | |
| 250 | 85.8% | |
| 500 | 90.2% | |
| 1,000 | 94.3% | |
| 2,000 | 98.0% |
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 Malayalam
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1ഈ23.5%
- 2ആ41.71%
- 3ഓ45.56%
- 4അവർ48.54%
- 5അവൻ51.06%
- 6അവൾ53.02%
- 7പറ54.75%
- 8പഴയ55.98%
- 9player57.04%
- 10അവ57.92%
- 11തവണ58.73%
- 12കഥ59.52%
- 13subtitles60.29%
- 14തല61.01%
- 15malayalam61.7%
- 16സർ62.32%
- 17translation62.89%
- 18are63.44%
- 19the63.98%
- 20you64.52%
- 21media65.04%
- 22i65.54%
- 23best66.01%
- 24classic66.46%
- 25viewed66.9%
- 26in67.35%
- 27പല67.8%
- 28km68.22%
- 29മഴ68.58%
- 30for68.94%
- 31a69.3%
- 32ഇവ69.64%
- 33ആൾ69.93%
- 34ഐ70.22%
- 35to70.5%
- 36and70.78%
- 37ഇവൻ71.05%
- 38ദ71.32%
- 39it71.56%
- 40ഏക71.81%
- 41s72.05%
- 42everyone72.28%
- 43കട72.49%
- 44ഡ72.71%
- 45msone72.91%
- 46that73.11%
- 47ആയ73.29%
- 48ഹ73.48%
- 49മകൻ73.65%
- 50mac73.82%
- 51എ73.99%
- 52കള74.15%
- 53by74.31%
- 54മ74.47%
- 55of74.63%
- 56വക74.78%
- 57is74.93%
- 58സ75.08%
- 59ഇ75.22%
- 60t75.37%
- 61ല75.5%
- 62m75.63%
- 63മകൾ75.76%
- 64ദയ75.89%
- 65do76.01%
- 66roys76.13%
- 67മരണ76.24%
- 68your76.35%
- 69me76.47%
- 70sree76.58%
- 71dhar76.69%
- 72അര76.8%
- 73ൽ76.91%
- 74using77.02%
- 75എൽ77.12%
- 76kitai77.23%
- 77പണ77.33%
- 78ഏ77.43%
- 79സഫർ77.52%
- 80dad77.62%
- 81there77.71%
- 82back77.81%
- 83on77.9%
- 84can77.99%
- 85windows78.08%
- 86way78.17%
- 87ഇവർ78.26%
- 88ഇവൾ78.34%
- 89ജല78.43%
- 90വൻ78.51%
- 91have78.59%
- 92അ78.67%
- 93os78.75%
- 94ട78.83%
- 95this78.91%
- 96d78.99%
- 97x79.06%
- 98കഥകൾ79.14%
- 99b79.21%
- 100ക79.28%
Open all 2,604 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 Malayalam comes from
Dravidian › Malayalam
Older in India than the Indo-European languages that arrived later and took the north.
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 30,856 tokens of Malayalam 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.