The 5,000 most common Urdu 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 Urdu and you follow 61.5% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 87.1%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 24.8% | |
| 50 | 52.0% | |
| 100 | 61.5% | |
| 250 | 72.8% | |
| 500 | 80.4% | |
| 1,000 | 87.1% | |
| 2,000 | 92.8% | |
| 3,000 | 95.5% | |
| 5,000 | 97.9% | |
| 8,000 | 99.4% |
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 Urdu
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1ہے4.03%
- 2میں7.56%
- 3،11.1%
- 4کے14.52%
- 5۔16.32%
- 6نہیں18.13%
- 7آپ19.93%
- 8کی21.59%
- 9ایک23.2%
- 10سے24.79%
- 11ہیں26.31%
- 12کو27.73%
- 13اس29.11%
- 14نے30.38%
- 15یہ31.64%
- 16کیا32.89%
- 17تم34.02%
- 18اور35.12%
- 19وہ36.06%
- 20ہو36.97%
- 21کر37.87%
- 22ہم38.76%
- 23کہ39.62%
- 24لئے40.44%
- 25پر41.17%
- 26تھا41.88%
- 27ہوں42.59%
- 28کا43.29%
- 29مجھے43.94%
- 30بھی44.42%
- 31تو44.89%
- 32کرنے45.34%
- 33رہے45.78%
- 34ٹھیک46.2%
- 35گا46.63%
- 36کچھ47.05%
- 37کوئی47.47%
- 38رہا47.87%
- 39سب48.27%
- 40یہاں48.64%
- 41ساتھ49.01%
- 42ہاں49.37%
- 43ان49.72%
- 44گیا50.06%
- 45اسے50.4%
- 46اب50.73%
- 47طرح51.06%
- 48لیکن51.38%
- 49سکتے51.7%
- 50صرف52.0%
- 51میرے52.28%
- 52بہت52.54%
- 53گے52.81%
- 54؛53.07%
- 55بات53.32%
- 56سکتا53.58%
- 57اپنے53.83%
- 58زیادہ54.08%
- 59جی54.32%
- 60کسی54.55%
- 61دیا54.77%
- 62جاؤ54.98%
- 63بارے55.19%
- 64دو55.4%
- 65کرنا55.6%
- 66چلو55.8%
- 67تھے56.0%
- 68جا56.2%
- 69میری56.39%
- 70باہر56.58%
- 71تمہیں56.77%
- 72ضرورت56.96%
- 73کہا57.15%
- 74ہی57.33%
- 75حاصل57.51%
- 76کریں57.7%
- 77جو57.88%
- 78طور58.06%
- 79جانتے58.24%
- 80وہاں58.41%
- 81چاہتے58.59%
- 82وقت58.77%
- 83جائے58.94%
- 84پھر59.11%
- 85اچھا59.27%
- 86کام59.43%
- 87کرتے59.59%
- 88اگر59.75%
- 89کیوں59.91%
- 90یا60.07%
- 91کرو60.23%
- 92آ60.38%
- 93تک60.53%
- 94کس60.68%
- 95چاہتا60.84%
- 96کبھی60.98%
- 97لے61.12%
- 98انہوں61.26%
- 99پہلے61.4%
- 100جب61.54%
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 Urdu comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Indo-Iranian › Indo-Aryan › Urdu
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, 262,138 tokens of Urdu 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.