The 5,000 most common Persian 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 Persian and you follow 41.5% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 71.9%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 17.8% | |
| 50 | 33.6% | |
| 100 | 41.5% | |
| 250 | 53.3% | |
| 500 | 62.9% | |
| 1,000 | 71.9% | |
| 2,000 | 80.1% | |
| 3,000 | 84.4% | |
| 5,000 | 89.0% | |
| 8,000 | 92.5% | |
| 10,000 | 93.9% | |
| 15,000 | 96.0% | |
| 20,000 | 97.3% |
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 Persian
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1،3.39%
- 2که5.61%
- 3رو7.63%
- 4من9.5%
- 5به11.21%
- 6و12.86%
- 7تو14.32%
- 8از15.75%
- 9اون16.83%
- 10اين17.83%
- 11يه18.81%
- 12مي19.73%
- 13با20.46%
- 14در21.13%
- 15نه21.81%
- 16ما22.39%
- 17هم22.88%
- 18بود23.35%
- 19کنم23.8%
- 20باشه24.23%
- 21تا24.65%
- 22ها25.08%
- 23چي25.45%
- 24بايد25.83%
- 25خيلي26.2%
- 26فکر26.57%
- 27آره26.92%
- 28یه27.27%
- 29این27.61%
- 30براي27.95%
- 31خب28.29%
- 32فقط28.62%
- 33کن28.95%
- 34می29.28%
- 35شما29.6%
- 36همه29.92%
- 37اگه30.23%
- 38داره30.53%
- 39ديگه30.82%
- 40شده31.1%
- 41دارم31.38%
- 42کار31.66%
- 43اينجا31.93%
- 44نيست32.18%
- 45چه32.43%
- 46پس32.67%
- 47اما32.91%
- 48ي33.14%
- 49نمي33.37%
- 50چرا33.59%
- 51خوب33.81%
- 52کنه34.03%
- 53کردم34.23%
- 54چيزي34.44%
- 55کني34.64%
- 56حالا34.84%
- 57ولي35.04%
- 58الان35.23%
- 59توي35.43%
- 60هر35.62%
- 61اونا35.81%
- 62اي36.0%
- 63هاي36.17%
- 64داري36.35%
- 65شد36.52%
- 66يک36.69%
- 67اوه36.86%
- 68منو37.02%
- 69ميشه37.19%
- 70بهت37.36%
- 71بچه37.52%
- 72هست37.68%
- 73بهم37.84%
- 74مثل38.0%
- 75بهش38.15%
- 76وقتي38.3%
- 77دوست38.45%
- 78دست38.6%
- 79ميکنم38.74%
- 80باید38.88%
- 81خیلی39.02%
- 82بده39.16%
- 83کرد39.3%
- 84حرف39.44%
- 85چی39.58%
- 86خونه39.71%
- 87يا39.85%
- 88کنيم39.98%
- 89واسه40.11%
- 90بله40.24%
- 91کرده40.37%
- 92سلام40.5%
- 93کردن40.62%
- 94خوبه40.75%
- 95برای40.87%
- 96چون40.99%
- 97برو41.11%
- 98را41.23%
- 99چيه41.35%
- 100اينکه41.47%
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 Persian comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Indo-Iranian › Iranian › Persian
Its grammar collapsed into something remarkably simple, while its vocabulary absorbed Arabic wholesale.
Words Persian has that English never built
- تعارف tah-AH-rofThe elaborate dance of refusing what you want and offering what you cannot spare
- دلبر del-BARThe one who carries your heart away
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 41,237,974 tokens of Persian 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.