The 5,000 most common Turkish 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 Turkish and you follow 34.6% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 62.3%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 12.0% | |
| 50 | 27.4% | |
| 100 | 34.6% | |
| 250 | 45.6% | |
| 500 | 54.1% | |
| 1,000 | 62.3% | |
| 2,000 | 70.1% | |
| 3,000 | 74.7% | |
| 5,000 | 80.2% | |
| 8,000 | 85.1% | |
| 10,000 | 87.3% | |
| 15,000 | 91.0% | |
| 20,000 | 93.4% |
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 Turkish
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1bir2.94%
- 2bu4.66%
- 3ne5.91%
- 4ve7.15%
- 5için8.02%
- 6mi8.86%
- 7de9.66%
- 8o10.46%
- 9ben11.24%
- 10çok12.0%
- 11ama12.76%
- 12evet13.45%
- 13var14.12%
- 14da14.76%
- 15mı15.38%
- 16değil15.99%
- 17şey16.56%
- 18hayır17.1%
- 19daha17.62%
- 20sen18.12%
- 21kadar18.54%
- 22bana18.95%
- 23gibi19.34%
- 24yok19.72%
- 25bunu20.1%
- 26onu20.48%
- 27iyi20.86%
- 28tamam21.23%
- 29beni21.6%
- 30seni21.97%
- 31her22.33%
- 32benim22.68%
- 33sana23.0%
- 34ki23.31%
- 35ya23.61%
- 36neden23.9%
- 37zaman24.19%
- 38sadece24.48%
- 39senin24.76%
- 40burada25.04%
- 41olduğunu25.3%
- 42nasıl25.56%
- 43hiç25.81%
- 44sonra26.05%
- 45şimdi26.29%
- 46en26.52%
- 47öyle26.75%
- 48mu26.97%
- 49şu27.18%
- 50misin27.38%
- 51önce27.59%
- 52biraz27.79%
- 53hadi27.99%
- 54güzel28.18%
- 55musun28.36%
- 56oldu28.54%
- 57yani28.72%
- 58böyle28.9%
- 59ona29.08%
- 60İyi29.24%
- 61lütfen29.41%
- 62onun29.57%
- 63bile29.74%
- 64bak29.89%
- 65çünkü30.05%
- 66peki30.21%
- 67eğer30.36%
- 68artık30.52%
- 69gerçekten30.67%
- 70geri30.83%
- 71biliyorum30.98%
- 72istiyorum31.12%
- 73kim31.27%
- 74olarak31.42%
- 75başka31.56%
- 76belki31.71%
- 77tek31.84%
- 78doğru31.98%
- 79büyük32.11%
- 80olan32.24%
- 81biri32.38%
- 82olur32.5%
- 83buraya32.63%
- 84bay32.76%
- 85in32.88%
- 86olacak33.01%
- 87adam33.13%
- 88ile33.25%
- 89hiçbir33.37%
- 90biz33.49%
- 91yardım33.6%
- 92demek33.72%
- 93hey33.84%
- 94sanırım33.95%
- 95ın34.06%
- 96bilmiyorum34.18%
- 97bunun34.29%
- 98tüm34.4%
- 99teşekkürler34.51%
- 100fazla34.61%
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 Turkish comes from
Turkic › Turkish
Everything is a suffix.
You can build a whole sentence by stacking endings onto one word.
Words Turkish has that English never built
- yakamoz YAH-kah-mozThe reflection of the moon on water
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 205,153,285 tokens of Turkish 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.