The 5,000 most common Sinhala 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 Sinhala and you follow 80.7% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 95.8%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 52.3% | |
| 50 | 72.6% | |
| 100 | 80.7% | |
| 250 | 88.8% | |
| 500 | 93.0% | |
| 1,000 | 95.8% | |
| 2,000 | 97.7% | |
| 3,000 | 98.5% | |
| 5,000 | 99.2% |
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 Sinhala
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1මම17.24%
- 2මට27.87%
- 3ඒක35.98%
- 4ඒ41.44%
- 5එක46.13%
- 6ඕන48.08%
- 7ඇය49.18%
- 8ඔබ50.24%
- 9ය51.3%
- 10අර52.29%
- 11සහ53.24%
- 12à¶à·€54.19%
- 13කරන55.09%
- 14වලට55.98%
- 15එකට56.88%
- 16වල57.74%
- 17ඒකට58.6%
- 18ඔය59.44%
- 19උඹ60.24%
- 20අද61.02%
- 21ද61.7%
- 22අය62.34%
- 23නම62.95%
- 24ඔබට63.5%
- 25එකම63.99%
- 26යන64.43%
- 27ට64.86%
- 28ම65.26%
- 29බය65.64%
- 30බව66.02%
- 31කර66.39%
- 32ඊට66.76%
- 33ආ67.12%
- 34à·€67.48%
- 35න67.84%
- 36ර68.19%
- 37අමà¶à¶š68.55%
- 38ඇයට68.9%
- 39ආදරය69.24%
- 40එà¶à¶±69.59%
- 41ඕක69.92%
- 42සමහර70.24%
- 43අà¶70.55%
- 44කට70.86%
- 45ඇයව71.16%
- 46උඹට71.46%
- 47නරක71.74%
- 48ඌ72.02%
- 49කරල72.29%
- 50කරනවද72.56%
- 51කරනව72.83%
- 52ඉවර73.09%
- 53උබ73.36%
- 54එය73.62%
- 55ක73.88%
- 56ඉඩ74.13%
- 57මà¶à¶š74.37%
- 58ලග74.58%
- 59උඩ74.78%
- 60අà¶à¶»74.97%
- 61එන75.17%
- 62කල75.36%
- 63අ75.53%
- 64කරදර75.71%
- 65අයට75.88%
- 66නà¶à¶»76.05%
- 67ආව76.22%
- 68අපට76.38%
- 69ඔබව76.54%
- 70මහ76.7%
- 71ඕනද76.86%
- 72කළ77.02%
- 73යනව77.17%
- 74පහර77.33%
- 75පරණ77.48%
- 76ඔන77.63%
- 77ඒව77.77%
- 78උන77.92%
- 79උඩට78.06%
- 80à¶à·€à¶¸78.2%
- 81සමග78.34%
- 82දවස78.47%
- 83එ78.61%
- 84ගà¶78.74%
- 85ඕ78.87%
- 86à¶79.0%
- 87එනව79.12%
- 88උබට79.25%
- 89ල79.37%
- 90වද79.5%
- 91වන79.62%
- 92බවට79.74%
- 93යට79.86%
- 94රය79.97%
- 95ළඟ80.09%
- 96මà¶80.21%
- 97මà¶à¶šà¶¯80.32%
- 98ලගට80.43%
- 99කලබල80.54%
- 100යනවද80.65%
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 Sinhala comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Indo-Iranian › Indo-Aryan › Sinhala
More than a billion speakers between them, almost all in South Asia.
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 332,219 tokens of Sinhala 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.