Should You Learn The Most Common Words Of A Language?

When learning a new language you will often hear the advice that you should look up the most common words and learn them, but is this a sensible thing to do?

There is usually some statistics thrown around that the 1000 most common words make up the majority of the language that is used in daily conversation, so it seems logically that they should be a good place to start.

While this is can be true and these lists can be helpful, the reality is this is that they are not always the most effective way to learn a new language. 

What Are The Benefits Of Common Word Lists Of A Language You are Learning?

It’s probably sensible to look at why these common word lists are actually beneficial if you are trying to learn a language.

Immediate Exposure To The Language

If you are brand new to a language, you are going to quickly get an insight and a feel for what the language is like by scanning these lists.

Once you start listening and reading to content in your target language you are going to see these words repeatedly and having looked at them before is always helpful so you can start to pick them out and recognise them a little faster. You will actually be able to start comprehending some of the material you are studying.

(You can read more about – What Is Comprehensible Input In Language Learning?)

These Are Words You Will Need

You also can not deny that these common words are the words you will need to know. They are usually the small little words that act like the glue to hold the language together. These are words like the, a, and, it …they are not fancy, but try and communicate without these and you will struggle to sound good.

You are also going to see the main verbs or simple things like “hello” on these lists. They are common words for a reason, you will hear them and use them every day, and you just need to know these and the sooner you can remember them the better.

(You can read more about – How Does Our Brain Memorise New Vocabulary?)

Word Lists Can Give You Some Direction

Common words lists also give you some direction, or a sort of starting point. Languages are huge and it can be overwhelming to try and think about where you should start.

You can very easily start learning words that you are probably not really going to use a lot, basically meaning they are pointless (for now). You will want to make sure that the small pool of words you do learn is actually going to be helpful to you, and these lists offer exactly that.

I did this with Japanese. They have a proficiency test called the JLPT, which goes from level 5 to level 1 …level 5 is the easiest, so these are sort of the “basic” words you should know in a Japanese, especially if you are want to get this qualification.

I downloaded a JLTP N5 vocabulary list, it was maybe 650 words. I have no interest in doing the test and I know some of the words will be irrelevant to me, but it still gave me some direction with the language. I wasn’t so overwhelmed. I knew if I could learn most of these words I would have a good general foundation of vocabulary in the language.    

(You can read more about – Where Can You Get Pre-made Anki Flashcard Decks When Learning A Language?)

What Are The Negatives Of Common Word Lists Of A Language You are Learning?

Unfortunately common word lists are not perfect and they do have a few problems that I will discuss below.

There Is No Context To The Words

These list are often made up of very simple words, the top 5 might be “A, An, At, It, The”.  Definitely important words you need to know, but they are not really going to help you communicate right away. These words do not really have any meaning without other words to give them context.

Well, they obviously are going to help you and have some meaning, but they are also not completely helpful.

The words on this list are like the little words that glue sentences together to make them smooth and more natural sounding. It’s the other words in the sentence that give the “meaning” to what you are trying to say.

If you know Tarzan, The jungle man, he kind of lacks these common glue words. He might say “give drink” and point at a drink. He lacks the little joining words to say “Give me a Drink” but he can get away without using these. His message still gets across.

I would argue that if you went to a country where you didn’t know the language; you would get much further with a list of verbs and basic vocabulary, rather than just a list of the most commonly used words.

Saying “give drink” is probably going to get you a drink. While “me a” is just going to get you a look of confusion from a local. 

A Language Is More Than Words

Language is made up of words, but also grammar and context, which a word list does not have.

These lists become a problem when you try to directly translate sentences. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work because how we say things might be slightly different in the other language.

You are much better off learning common phrases. For example in French to say “I am 30 years old” they actually say “I have 30 years”.

It is a very common mistake for English speakers to directly translate “I am 30” into French, which is wrong, even if it makes more sense to us as English speakers.

Sometimes Different Words Mean The Same Thing

I’m not talking about synonyms here, they are different words that mean the same thing, but are actually helpful.

 I am not sure if we have this in English, but if we look at French it will make more sense.

In English the word “The” is just “The” in other languages, like French there may be a few different ways to say this depending on the context of the sentence.

There is LE, LA and LES. They all mean THE. Seeing these in a list form is not very helpful. It does not help us to understand where and when to use the word properly. The context is missing and its confusing how all these can mean the same thing.

This of course comes down to grammar rules and how sentences are formed and basically these lists will not teach us this

Make Your Own List Of Common Words

If you want a list of common words to study, make your own list.

This might sounds complicated, but it’s actually really simple. You just need to sit down and think about some of your recent conversations (that you’ve had in your native language) or think of conversations you are very likely to have (either in your native language or your new language).

Think about how you usually reply to questions or how you might ask for things. You will probably see you use a lot of similar words through your interactions, especially if you like talking about a certain topic a lot.

When I look at my own conversations I seem to say “want” and “hopefully “a lot.  Not the strangest words, but maybe they would not appear on a top 100 most common list.

For me, I would want to say these words in my conversations and so they are far more important than some of the words I am more likely to see on these lists.

Making your own list is a little more effort, but it will be actually tailored to your needs and just a better use of your time.    

Focus On Learning Verbs In Your New Language

If you really want to have a great list of words to learn, go through the common verbs and pick the ones you are likely to say and are likely to use a lot.

You will find that with 20 common verbs you can probably say hundreds of simple sentences and you can really start communicating.

Obviously this isn’t going to make you fluent, but it’s still going to get you talking a lot more than a list of simple common words.

As your skills develop you can start plugging in some of the common words and make your sentences more structured and natural sounding.

Conclusion

Common words may make up a large percent of the language that is used, but they do not make the language, there is much more to it if you want to actually communicate effectively.

I would not learn from a common word list. If you are starting out it would be better to make a list of verbs and vocabulary that you think you are going to want to say yourself.

Focus on some common basic phrases and try and get a grip with some basic grammar, especially the pronouns so you can use them along with the list of verbs you have made.

Making simple, even Tarzan like sentences will help you a lot more with a general conversation that just knowing 100 words that have no real relevance.

(You can read more about – The Only Study Plan You Need To learn A Language (For Complete Beginners))