The 5,000 most common Spanish 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 Spanish and you follow 51.9% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 76.7%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 22.9% | |
| 50 | 43.2% | |
| 100 | 51.9% | |
| 250 | 63.1% | |
| 500 | 70.3% | |
| 1,000 | 76.7% | |
| 2,000 | 82.6% | |
| 3,000 | 85.8% | |
| 5,000 | 89.5% | |
| 8,000 | 92.5% | |
| 10,000 | 93.8% | |
| 15,000 | 95.9% | |
| 20,000 | 97.1% |
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 Spanish
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1de3.5%
- 2que6.99%
- 3no9.98%
- 4a12.29%
- 5la14.5%
- 6el16.33%
- 7y18.05%
- 8es19.74%
- 9en21.39%
- 10lo22.85%
- 11un24.21%
- 12por25.29%
- 13qué26.3%
- 14me27.25%
- 15una28.18%
- 16los28.92%
- 17se29.66%
- 18te30.39%
- 19con31.13%
- 20para31.81%
- 21está32.4%
- 22mi32.98%
- 23pero33.56%
- 24sÃ34.13%
- 25si34.69%
- 26bien35.19%
- 27eso35.68%
- 28su36.16%
- 29las36.65%
- 30yo37.11%
- 31del37.51%
- 32como37.91%
- 33aquÃ38.3%
- 34tu38.69%
- 35al39.07%
- 36más39.43%
- 37le39.78%
- 38esto40.09%
- 39todo40.4%
- 40ya40.67%
- 41estoy40.94%
- 42ahora41.2%
- 43muy41.46%
- 44ha41.72%
- 45esta41.98%
- 46asÃ42.23%
- 47vamos42.49%
- 48algo42.74%
- 49hay42.98%
- 50bueno43.23%
- 51tengo43.46%
- 52él43.68%
- 53cuando43.91%
- 54estás44.13%
- 55sé44.35%
- 56tú44.57%
- 57nos44.78%
- 58nada44.99%
- 59cómo45.2%
- 60este45.41%
- 61o45.61%
- 62he45.81%
- 63ser46.01%
- 64tiene46.2%
- 65puedo46.4%
- 66ella46.59%
- 67quiero46.79%
- 68hacer46.98%
- 69fue47.17%
- 70gracias47.36%
- 71vez47.54%
- 72era47.73%
- 73soy47.91%
- 74sólo48.09%
- 75todos48.25%
- 76porque48.42%
- 77son48.58%
- 78tienes48.74%
- 79creo48.9%
- 80voy49.06%
- 81sabes49.21%
- 82estaba49.36%
- 83puede49.52%
- 84eres49.67%
- 85ese49.82%
- 86usted49.97%
- 87entonces50.12%
- 88hola50.26%
- 89solo50.41%
- 90verdad50.55%
- 91casa50.69%
- 92tan50.83%
- 93quién50.97%
- 94sus51.1%
- 95tiempo51.24%
- 96dos51.37%
- 97esa51.51%
- 98nunca51.64%
- 99dónde51.77%
- 100va51.9%
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 Spanish comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Italic › Latin › Romance › Western Romance › Spanish
Castilian, pushed south by the Reconquista and then across an ocean.
Words Spanish has that English never built
- sobremesa so-bre-ME-saThe talk that keeps the table going after the food is gone
- duende DWEN-deThe dark magnetic power a performer has when something real breaks through
- vergüenza ajena ver-GWEN-sa a-HE-naEmbarrassment felt on behalf of someone else
- estrenar es-tre-NARTo use or wear something for the very first time
- friolero fryo-LE-roA person who feels the cold much more than everyone else
- empalagoso em-pa-la-GO-soSo sweet it becomes unpleasant, of food or of people
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 413,264,052 tokens of Spanish 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.