The 5,000 most common Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese and you follow 52.6% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 88.4%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 15.7% | |
| 50 | 39.9% | |
| 100 | 52.6% | |
| 250 | 68.3% | |
| 500 | 79.3% | |
| 1,000 | 88.4% | |
| 2,000 | 94.2% | |
| 3,000 | 96.1% | |
| 5,000 | 97.6% | |
| 8,000 | 98.5% | |
| 10,000 | 98.8% | |
| 15,000 | 99.3% | |
| 20,000 | 99.5% |
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 Vietnamese
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1tôi2.69%
- 2không5.22%
- 3là7.02%
- 4anh8.8%
- 5có10.57%
- 6ta11.86%
- 7của12.85%
- 8đi13.81%
- 9đã14.75%
- 10đó15.67%
- 11sẽ16.58%
- 12chúng17.48%
- 13gì18.37%
- 14một19.26%
- 15được20.13%
- 16và20.97%
- 17cô21.78%
- 18làm22.57%
- 19phải23.34%
- 20rồi24.1%
- 21người24.84%
- 22này25.57%
- 23cho26.27%
- 24em26.94%
- 25đây27.6%
- 26con28.24%
- 27sao28.85%
- 28biết29.44%
- 29ông30.03%
- 30nói30.62%
- 31nó31.2%
- 32thể31.78%
- 33với32.32%
- 34cậu32.86%
- 35thế33.38%
- 36lại33.89%
- 37ra34.4%
- 38vậy34.9%
- 39để35.36%
- 40nào35.82%
- 41ấy36.26%
- 42cái36.71%
- 43đang37.14%
- 44muốn37.55%
- 45trong37.96%
- 46mà38.36%
- 47như38.76%
- 48nhưng39.15%
- 49khi39.52%
- 50những39.88%
- 51đến40.24%
- 52đâu40.6%
- 53chuyện40.96%
- 54chỉ41.3%
- 55cả41.63%
- 56về41.95%
- 57thì42.28%
- 58họ42.6%
- 59giờ42.91%
- 60thôi43.23%
- 61thấy43.53%
- 62còn43.84%
- 63cũng44.14%
- 64vào44.43%
- 65các44.72%
- 66bị45.0%
- 67nghĩ45.28%
- 68đấy45.56%
- 69ai45.83%
- 70thật46.11%
- 71hắn46.38%
- 72nếu46.65%
- 73mình46.91%
- 74việc47.16%
- 75nữa47.41%
- 76rất47.66%
- 77vì47.91%
- 78cần48.15%
- 79chứ48.39%
- 80à48.62%
- 81điều48.85%
- 82sự49.07%
- 83tới49.28%
- 84xin49.49%
- 85thứ49.69%
- 86chưa49.9%
- 87nhà50.1%
- 88lên50.31%
- 89đúng50.51%
- 90từ50.71%
- 91mẹ50.9%
- 92nghe51.1%
- 93hơn51.29%
- 94mọi51.48%
- 95bạn51.67%
- 96tớ51.86%
- 97nên52.04%
- 98chết52.22%
- 99mày52.41%
- 100ơn52.59%
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 Vietnamese comes from
Austroasiatic › Vietnamese
Vietnamese looks Chinese from the outside and is not related to it at all.
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 26,438,203 tokens of Vietnamese 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.