What is the most spoken english word

Modern English is a conglomerate of vocabulary from many different languages and varies widely depending on the country it’s spoken it. Even still, there are a few common words and phrases that English speakers around the globe use on the regular. If you’re learning English, this is a helpful list to refer to for foundational vocabulary.

Words English speakers say all the time

More than 840 million people speak English as their first or second language, which makes it the second most-spoken language in the world after Chinese Mandarin. So if you’re in the process of learning English, don’t fret – many people have successfully done it! And once you learn to speak, you’ll have a world of opportunities and new people you can communicate with.

As with any language, learning English starts with learning the basics: vocabulary. So that you know which ones to prioritise, I’ve broken the most commonly spoken words into different categories.

Pronouns

The majority of sentences in English start with a pronoun to clarify who is the subject. These are:

  • I
  • you
  • he/she/it
  • we
  • they

To mention something important about “you”: some languages such as German have different words for formal vs informal you (“Sie” for formal and “du” for informal). In English, we only have the word “you” for both situations, but we do distinguish them by using particular words and being more polite.

Common verbs in English

After each subject, then comes a verb. Here are some of the most common verbs in English:

  • get
  • have
  • be
  • to
  • do
  • make
  • say
  • talk
  • walk
  • go
  • eat
  • sleep
  • work
  • read
  • ask
  • help
  • know
  • would
  • could
  • can
  • should
  • need
  • feel
  • become
  • leave
  • come
  • start
  • stop

“Get” is infamous for being one of the most flexible words in the whole English language. How you use it depends entirely on the context. To give you a better idea, here are a few examples: 

  • Can you please get me a coffee? (Here “get” means either bring or make.)
  • I totally get you, that makes sense. (Here “get” means understand.)
  • I heard someone knocking. Can you please get the door? (Here “get” means open.)
  • He got the gift instead of his sister. (Here “get” means receive.)
  • I have to get home now, it’s so late! (Here “get” means go.)

For nearly every circumstance, there are alternative verbs for “get”, but if you want to truly sound like a native English speaker, using “get” is much more commonly used, especially when speaking.

Nouns

Nouns are used to describe a person, place. or thing. A few of the most common English nouns are:

  • thing
  • people
  • woman
  • man
  • child
  • family
  • dog
  • cat
  • door
  • window
  • table
  • chair
  • kitchen
  • bed
  • blanket
  • dishes
  • towel
  • shoes
  • socks
  • pants
  • shirt
  • dress
  • floor
  • food
  • drinks
  • water

My biggest recommendation for learning English nouns is to make sticky notes around the house for each item. Then each time you look at it, you’re reminded of that word. Because you start learning vocabulary according to your surroundings, they’re more familiar and become easier to memorise.

Another pro tip: if you don’t know the word for a noun when speaking to someone, just refer to it as “thing” and try to describe it. Honestly even native English speakers do this all the time when we’re feeling lazy!

Question words

When you want to transform your sentence into a question, you’ll often begin with a question word. Here is a quick overview of English question words:

  • why
  • where
  • who
  • how
  • when
  • which
  • whose
  • what

Prepositions in English

Prepositions are another essential element of English grammar, because they are combined with many other words to form phrases. The most common prepositions are:

  • to
  • in
  • out
  • for
  • with
  • on
  • since
  • at
  • until
  • by
  • as
  • about
  • into
  • between
  • against

When I worked as an English teacher, one of the most commonly asked questions about prepositions was the difference between until and by in the context of due dates. Here is an example to clarify:

  • The students need to turn in their homework by Monday. (Here we’re only stating the fixed deadline.)
  • The students have until Monday to turn in their homework. (Here we’re talking about the total time period up until the deadline.)

English Adjectives

Adjectives are the spices of language and English is no exception. Here are a few of the most commonly used adjectives:

  • awesome
  • wonderful
  • easy
  • difficult
  • hard
  • big
  • small
  • beautiful
  • cool
  • new
  • old
  • pretty
  • fantastic

By the way, if you’re speaking with an American, always go for the word “awesome”. I am one myself and we use it constantly (probably too much haha).

Miscellaneous English words

There are some popular, miscellaneous filler words that are important to keep in mind as well:

  • like
  • and
  • but
  • so
  • well
  • too
  • just
  • more
  • this
  • that
  • because
  • very
  • even
  • quite
  • may
  • maybe
  • another
  • few
  • here
  • there

A quick note on “like”: if you’ve watched American TV series like Friends, The Big Bang Theory, or Family Guy, you’ll notice that they use the word “like” all the time. It’s one of the words that is basically pure slang and has a few different meanings. A few examples are:

  • I was talking to my friend and he was like “I had such a bad day yesterday”. (Here “like” is another word for “said” and it’s often used in the context of telling a story of a previous conversation.)
  • I spoke to my sister yesterday and she was like seriously tired after working so much. (Here “like” means really, as in to emphasise the tiredness.)
  • I talked to my boss yesterday to ask for a day off and he said no. Like, how could he be so mean? (Here “like” emphasises the surprising element of the other person’s response.)

In the same manner as “get”, this is another word that becomes clear once you hear how others use it and you become more advanced in your speaking skills.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Studies that estimate and rank the most common words in English examine texts written in English. Perhaps the most comprehensive such analysis is one that was conducted against the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), a massive text corpus that is written in the English language.

In total, the texts in the Oxford English Corpus contain more than 2 billion words.[1] The OEC includes a wide variety of writing samples, such as literary works, novels, academic journals, newspapers, magazines, Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, blogs, chat logs, and emails.[2]

Another English corpus that has been used to study word frequency is the Brown Corpus, which was compiled by researchers at Brown University in the 1960s. The researchers published their analysis of the Brown Corpus in 1967. Their findings were similar, but not identical, to the findings of the OEC analysis.

According to The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists, the first 25 words in the OEC make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and the first 100 words make up about half of all written English.[3] According to a study cited by Robert McCrum in The Story of English, all of the first hundred of the most common words in English are of Old English origin,[4] except for «people», ultimately from Latin «populus», and «because», in part from Latin «causa».

Some lists of common words distinguish between word forms, while others rank all forms of a word as a single lexeme (the form of the word as it would appear in a dictionary). For example, the lexeme be (as in to be) comprises all its conjugations (is, was, am, are, were, etc.), and contractions of those conjugations.[5] These top 100 lemmas listed below account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.[1]

100 most common words

A list of 100 words that occur most frequently in written English is given below, based on an analysis of the Oxford English Corpus (a collection of texts in the English language, comprising over 2 billion words).[1] A part of speech is provided for most of the words, but part-of-speech categories vary between analyses, and not all possibilities are listed. For example, «I» may be a pronoun or a Roman numeral; «to» may be a preposition or an infinitive marker; «time» may be a noun or a verb. Also, a single spelling can represent more than one root word. For example, «singer» may be a form of either «sing» or «singe». Different corpora may treat such difference differently.

The number of distinct senses that are listed in Wiktionary is shown in the polysemy column. For example, «out» can refer to an escape, a removal from play in baseball, or any of 36 other concepts. On average, each word in the list has 15.38 senses. The sense count does not include the use of terms in phrasal verbs such as «put out» (as in «inconvenienced») and other multiword expressions such as the interjection «get out!», where the word «out» does not have an individual meaning.[6] As an example, «out» occurs in at least 560 phrasal verbs[7] and appears in nearly 1700 multiword expressions.[8]

The table also includes frequencies from other corpora. Note that as well as usage differences, lemmatisation may differ from corpus to corpus – for example splitting the prepositional use of «to» from the use as a particle. Also the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) list includes dispersion as well as frequency to calculate rank.

Word Parts of speech OEC rank COCA rank[9] Dolch level Polysemy
the Article 1 1 Pre-primer 12
be Verb 2 2 Primer 21
to Preposition 3 7, 9 Pre-primer 17
of Preposition 4 4 Grade 1 12
and Conjunction 5 3 Pre-primer 16
a Article 6 5 Pre-primer 20
in Preposition 7 6, 128, 3038 Pre-primer 23
that Conjunction et al. 8 12, 27, 903 Primer 17
have Verb 9 8 Primer 25
I Pronoun 10 11 Pre-primer 7
it Pronoun 11 10 Pre-primer 18
for Preposition 12 13, 2339 Pre-primer 19
not Adverb et al. 13 28, 2929 Pre-primer 5
on Preposition 14 17, 155 Primer 43
with Preposition 15 16 Primer 11
he Pronoun 16 15 Primer 7
as Adverb, conjunction, et al. 17 33, 49, 129 Grade 1 17
you Pronoun 18 14 Pre-primer 9
do Verb, noun 19 18 Primer 38
at Preposition 20 22 Primer 14
this Determiner, adverb, noun 21 20, 4665 Primer 9
but Preposition, adverb, conjunction 22 23, 1715 Primer 17
his Possessive pronoun 23 25, 1887 Grade 1 6
by Preposition 24 30, 1190 Grade 1 19
from Preposition 25 26 Grade 1 4
they Pronoun 26 21 Primer 6
we Pronoun 27 24 Pre-primer 6
say Verb et al. 28 19 Primer 17
her Possessive pronoun 29, 106 42 Grade 1 3
she Pronoun 30 31 Primer 7
or Conjunction 31 32 Grade 2 11
an Article 32 (a) Grade 1 6
will Verb, noun 33 48, 1506 Primer 16
my Possessive pronoun 34 44 Pre-primer 5
one Noun, adjective, et al. 35 51, 104, 839 Pre-primer 24
all Adjective 36 43, 222 Primer 15
would Verb 37 41 Grade 2 13
there Adverb, pronoun, et al. 38 53, 116 Primer 14
their Possessive pronoun 39 36 Grade 2 2
what Pronoun, adverb, et al. 40 34 Primer 19
so Conjunction, adverb, et al. 41 55, 196 Primer 18
up Adverb, preposition, et al. 42 50, 456 Pre-primer 50
out Preposition 43 64, 149 Primer 38
if Conjunction 44 40 Grade 3 9
about Preposition, adverb, et al. 45 46, 179 Grade 3 18
who Pronoun, noun 46 38 Primer 5
get Verb 47 39 Primer 37
which Pronoun 48 58 Grade 2 7
go Verb, noun 49 35 Pre-primer 54
me Pronoun 50 61 Pre-primer 10
when Adverb 51 57, 136 Grade 1 11
make Verb, noun 52 45 Grade 2 [as «made»] 48
can Verb, noun 53 37, 2973 Pre-primer 18
like Preposition, verb 54 74, 208, 1123, 1684, 2702 Primer 26
time Noun 55 52 Dolch list of 95 nouns 14
no Determiner, adverb 56 93, 699, 916, 1111, 4555 Primer 10
just Adjective 57 66, 1823 14
him Pronoun 58 68 5
know Verb, noun 59 47 13
take Verb, noun 60 63 66
people Noun 61 62 9
into Preposition 62 65 10
year Noun 63 54 7
your Possessive pronoun 64 69 4
good Adjective 65 110, 2280 32
some Determiner, pronoun 66 60 10
could Verb 67 71 6
them Pronoun 68 59 3
see Verb 69 67 25
other Adjective, pronoun 70 75, 715, 2355 12
than Conjunction, preposition 71 73, 712 4
then Adverb 72 77 10
now Preposition 73 72, 1906 13
look Verb 74 85, 604 17
only Adverb 75 101, 329 11
come Verb 76 70 20
its Possessive pronoun 77 78 2
over Preposition 78 124, 182 19
think Verb 79 56 10
also Adverb 80 87 2
back Noun, adverb 81 108, 323, 1877 36
after Preposition 82 120, 260 14
use Verb, noun 83 92, 429 17
two Noun 84 80 6
how Adverb 85 76 11
our Possessive pronoun 86 79 3
work Verb, noun 87 117, 199 28
first Adjective 88 86, 2064 10
well Adverb 89 100, 644 30
way Noun, adverb 90 84, 4090 16
even Adjective 91 107, 484 23
new Adjective et al. 92 88 18
want Verb 93 83 10
because Conjunction 94 89, 509 7
any Pronoun 95 109, 4720 4
these Pronoun 96 82 2
give Verb 97 98 19
day Noun 98 90 9
most Adverb 99 144, 187 12
us Pronoun 100 113 6

Parts of speech

The following is a very similar list, subdivided by part of speech.[1] The list labeled «Others» includes pronouns, possessives, articles, modal verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions.

Rank Nouns Verbs Adjectives Prepositions Others
1 time be good to the
2 person have new of and
3 year do first in a
4 way say last for that
5 day get long on I
6 thing make great with it
7 man go little at not
8 world know own by he
9 life take other from as
10 hand see old up you
11 part come right about this
12 child think big into but
13 eye look high over his
14 woman want different after they
15 place give small her
16 work use large she
17 week find next or
18 case tell early an
19 point ask young will
20 government work important my
21 company seem few one
22 number feel public all
23 group try bad would
24 problem leave same there
25 fact call able their

See also

  • Basic English
  • Frequency analysis, the study of the frequency of letters or groups of letters
  • Letter frequencies
  • Oxford English Corpus
  • Swadesh list, a compilation of basic concepts for the purpose of historical-comparative linguistics
  • Zipf’s law, a theory stating that the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in a frequency table

Word lists

  • Dolch Word List, a list of frequently used English words
  • General Service List
  • Word lists by frequency

References

  1. ^ a b c d «The Oxford English Corpus: Facts about the language». OxfordDictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. What is the commonest word?. Archived from the original on December 26, 2011. Retrieved June 22, 2011.
  2. ^ «The Oxford English Corpus». AskOxford.com. Archived from the original on May 4, 2006. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
  3. ^ The First 100 Most Commonly Used English Words Archived 2013-06-16 at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ^ Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, Harper Perennial, 2001, page 58
  5. ^ Benjamin Zimmer. June 22, 2006. Time after time after time…. Language Log. Retrieved June 22, 2006.
  6. ^ Benjamin, Martin (2019). «Polysemy in top 100 Oxford English Corpus words within Wiktionary». Teach You Backwards. Retrieved December 28, 2019.
  7. ^ Garcia-Vega, M (2010). «Teasing out the meaning of «out»«. 29th International Conference on Lexis and Grammar.
  8. ^ «out — English-French Dictionary». www.wordreference.com. Retrieved November 22, 2022.
  9. ^ «Word frequency: based on 450 million word COCA corpus». www.wordfrequency.info. Retrieved April 11, 2018.

External links

Источник

The 100 most common words in English

1. the 21.at 61.something
2.of 22.be 62. her
3. and 23. this 63. would
4. at 24. have 64. make
5. to 25.from 65.like

Correspondingly, What are the basic steps to speaking English? Follow these five easy steps to make your English sound more fluent starting today.

  1. Smile and breathe. No matter what your level of English, confidence is vital. …
  2. Memorize examples with vocabulary. Don’t just memorize lists of words. …
  3. Listen to learn. …
  4. Exercise your mouth muscles. …
  5. Copy a native speaker.

What are the 10 new words?

  • 10 new English words for 2021. Read Time. …
  • Adulting. Definition: The action of becoming or acting like an adult. …
  • Awe walk. Definition: Taking a walk outside and making an effort to look at the things around you. …
  • Contactless. Definition: not having to physically touch or interact with people. …
  • Doomscrolling. …
  • PPE. …
  • Quarenteen. …
  • Thirty.

Furthermore, What is the most used word in the world 2021?

Most-used phrase in 2021: Google has revealed the most used phrase of 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, “now more than ever” had been the most used phrase, this changed to “new normal” in 2021.

What is the most spoken word?

Of all the words in the English language, the word “OK” is pretty new. We explore how language helps us make sense of a changing world. Published September 3, 2019 This article is more than 2 years old.

What are the methods to learn English? Keep a notebook of new words you learn. Use them in sentences and try to say them at least 3 times when you speak. Visit EC’s free learn English website at least once a day and complete a lesson. Memorization of lists is one of the most common ways of learning vocabulary for a test.

How can I improve my English grammar? 5 Tips to Improve Your Grammar

  1. Read: Reading is one of the secret weapons to improve your grammar skills. …
  2. Use a grammar manual: It is a very useful idea to have a grammar manual nearby that you can consult when writing. …
  3. Write more and quiz yourself: …
  4. Re-reading aloud: …
  5. 5 Consult others and learn from feedback:

Which is the best way to learn English? 7 Simple Ways to Learn English Effectively

  1. Study sentences not words. …
  2. Learn by listening. …
  3. Get a placement test. …
  4. Prioritize quality over quantity. …
  5. Learn grammar with “point of view” stories. …
  6. Listen and answer, not listen and repeat. …
  7. Take an online lesson.

What is the oldest word?

Mother, bark and spit are some of the oldest known words, say researchers. Continue reading → Mother, bark and spit are just three of 23 words that researchers believe date back 15,000 years, making them the oldest known words.

What are 20 difficult words? 20 Most Difficult Words to Pronounce in the English Language

  • Colonel.
  • Worcestershire.
  • mischievous.
  • Draft.
  • quinoa
  • Onomatopoeia.
  • scissors.
  • Anemone.

What is the most longest word?

pneumonultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary, this 45-letter word for a disease is the longest English word that is defined in a major dictionary. It’s a technical word referring to the lung disease more commonly known as silicosis.

What is the new word of the year? 2020: Covid, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic.

What was the most used word in 2022?

Instead, here are the five most popular words and phrases of 2022.

  • Metaverse. A popular word thanks to the blockchain technology explosion in 2021, people are more curious than ever about the metaverse. …
  • Non-binary. …
  • UBI. …
  • Supply Chain Crisis. …
  • NFTs.

Why choose a word of the year?

Picking a word of the year can bring clarity and focus to who we want to become and what we want to accomplish in life. A carefully chosen word is a type of mental mentor — something to help us stay motivated as we move toward our goals in 2022.

What is the shortest word in the world? Eunoia, at six letters long, is the shortest word in the English language that contains all five main vowels. Seven letter words with this property include adoulie, douleia, eucosia, eulogia, eunomia, eutopia, miaoued, moineau, sequoia, and suoidea. (The scientific name iouea is a genus of Cretaceous fossil sponges.)

What are the 12 powerful words? What are the twelve powerful words? Trace, Analyze, Infer, Evaluate, Formulate, Describe, Support, Explain, Summarize, Compare, Contrast, Predict. Why use the twelve powerful words? These are the words that always give students more trouble than others on standardized tests.

Why English is important in our life?

Most people are using this language in daily life. It is an important language because we use this language to communicate with other countries people. English is a common language and you can use English to become an international person. In this global era, people are urged to be able to communicate globally.

What should I learn first in English? The first step in learning any language is to familiarize yourself with the alphabet. English begins with the letter A and continues through Z, with a total of 26 letters. To practice pronunciation, we have a very simple ABC song that is pretty easy to learn.

What are the 12 basic rules of grammar?

12 Basic Rules of Grammar

  • Nouns and Pronouns. The first noun rule relates to the spelling changes in plural forms: consonant –y changes to consonant –ies as in “skies,” and nouns ending in glottal sounds such as “sh” take –es. …
  • Verbs. …
  • Adjectives and Adverbs. …
  • Punctuation.

How many tenses are there in English? The simple tenses (past, present, and future) are the most basic forms, but there are 12 major verb tenses in English in all.

How do you write a class 1 sentence?

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By Robby

If you are new here please read this first.

English word frequency lists

Improve Spoken English

Many of my fellow foreigners arrive to my blog while searching for the most commonly used English words, and there’s a good chance that you may be one of them!

‘The top 100 most commonly used English words’, ‘top 500 English words’, ‘English word frequency lists’ – such and similar keywords are used by thousands of foreign English speakers eager to improve their English fluency.

But are these English word lists any good? Do they offer good value in terms of improving one’s ability to speak fluently?

Frankly speaking, such frequency lists don’t provide a lot of practical value – if any!

Why?

Fair enough – give me a few moments and I’ll show you exactly why! 😉

English Word Frequency Lists Only Satisfy Our Curiosity – They’re NO GOOD for Anything ELSE!

Please follow this link for a list of 100 most common words in English. Now, scan the list and tell me if you found a single word you DIDN’T KNOW.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can say the following with the utmost certainty – “Among the top 100 most common English words there’s not a single one you didn’t know!”

Yes, the fact that these hundred words make up about a half of all written English material is astonishing, and it’s a typical 80/20 rule in action. 2000 General Service List Words account for 95% vocabulary used in daily conversations, for example, and it just goes to show that one doesn’t need to build MASSIVE vocabulary consisting of thousands upon thousands of words to be an efficient English communicator.

Sorry – Word Lists Are Good for SOMETHING – They Teach Us Not to Waste Our Time!

As I said – the fact that a relatively small number of individual words account for large volume of words in usage serves as a reminder that we don’t need to dedicate our lives to building insanely large English vocabulary.

That’s exactly what I was doing years ago, and among useful words I wrote in my pocket dictionary there were quite obscure specimens I’ve NEVER heard of in my later life – let alone used them!

So I have to admit that this is one aspect of those word frequency lists that does have a benefit. Namely, it highlights the importance of focusing on the essential vocabulary thus accelerating the learning curve.

Other than that, however, those lists are rather misleading because they create the impression that you can learn individual words, stick them together, and – presto! – you can communicate effectively and fluently.

Sorry guys, it just doesn’t happen like that, and the reason for that is quite simple:

It’s the Word Combinations that Matter – not Separate Words and Word Lists!

Now I’ll do a small experiment. I’ll google up the General Service List words and copy a small section of them to see how good they are for using in our daily conversations.

So here’s a random selection of 10 English words:

  • 1. the
  • 2. be
  • 6. to
  • 10. it
  • 15. with
  • 17. not
  • 25. do
  • 33. will
  • 76. over
  • 230. question
  • 236. night
  • 239. away
  • 398. happen
  • 1630. beg

The numbers represent the rankings of these words. There are over 2000 entries in the list and I’ve chosen a variation of different words – some are the most common English words such as ‘the’, ‘to’, and ‘be’; others don’t rank as high but they’re still very common. I’m sure that you know every single one of them!

So, the logical conclusion might be – “Once I know all these words, I have to learn MORE new ones to broaden my English vocabulary!”

Fair enough, but did you know that this is the biggest pitfall so many of us, foreigners, fall for?

You see – the problem is that we may know large lists of individual words, yet we struggle to USE them as part of a simple conversation!

To see what exactly I’m talking about, please look at the following English phrases:

  • To do away with
  • It begs the question
  • It won’t happen overnight
  • It happens to be
  • To be over with

All these phrases consist ONLY of the words from the list above, but how many of them you can honestly claim to be able to use?

I hope you start seeing the bigger picture now.

We may be very, very familiar with certain English words, YET we struggle to arrange them in natural speech patterns!

Basically it all boils down to WORD COMBINATIONS.

It’s just like playing lottery – you only have a small number of individual numbers, and you think – “What’s the big deal! Surely I can guess 5 or 6 of them!” In reality the number of combinations is mind-boggling, and the very same goes with individual English words and their combinations!

Biggest Problem I Have With The Frequency Lists – They Promote the Wrong Learning Methods!

The very concept of a frequency list implies that English learning is all about separate words.

Statements like “The first 100 most commonly used English words make up 50% of all written material” makes us believe that we have to learn SEPARATE WORDS, and once we’ve acquired the optimal amount of words – we’ll be able to speak and write just like a native speaker.

Nothing could be further from the truth however, and I think I made it more than obvious using the examples above.

Just because you KNOW certain English words, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can COMBINE them into phrases and sentences!

You must make it your goal to KNOW English word combinations, and just like when playing lottery a handful or words may easily avail you of a much bigger amount of phrases to use!

Those five phrases I gave you a few paragraphs above are way more useful than the list of individual words. You can learn phrases and use them in relevant situations just like native English speakers would, but if you learn separate words, your means of expression are rather limited.

It’s the typical old-school approach – learning grammar rules, word lists and then stick words together and form sentences. It’s ineffective, unnatural and totally wrong!

Here’s what’s going to happen if you stick separate words together:

  • Your English is going to sound unnatural because you’ll translate from your native language when creating English sentences;
  • You won’t be able to produce spontaneous English speech because you’ll have to construct new sentences every time you speak!

“What Are the Most Commonly Used English PHRASES?” is the Right Question!

I can’t stress this enough – if you learn English phrases, expressions and sayings, you’ll be able to use them 10 times more efficiently than word lists!

Once you’ve memorized a phrase, you’re capable or using it WITHOUT MUCH THINKING AND PLANNING whereas sticking words together will always involve a certain amount of effort and your speech is going to be hesitant and slow.

English word frequency lists are a good representation of the 80/20 rule in action, and they prove that one doesn’t need to spend a lifetime learning 100 thousand English words to become fluent.

English words lists are good for linguists and grammar geeks.

Other than that, they serve no practical purpose!

So my advice is the following – you should definitely replace the question “what are the most commonly used English words?” with “what are the most commonly used English phrases?”!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

English Harmony System

P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!

English Harmony System

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What Are the Most Frequent Words in English?

When you hear somebody asking about the most commonly used words (be those nouns or articles) you tend to firstly think it over but then it appears quite a vague issue. How can we know that? Is there a person who analyzes all the literary heritage and our everyday conversations and then counts all English words? Otherwise, it is impossible to tell for sure how often we use this or that word, isn’t it? Actually, it is possible and we shall discuss here what the language corpus is and how interesting it may be.

Let us start with a piece of lexicological statistics. If you haven’t known, according to Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.), the English language possesses:

  • 171,476 words in current use
  • 47,156 obsolete words
  • 9,500 derivatives

Over a half of them are nouns, about a quarter go to adjectives and verbs take about a seventh. The rest is made up of interjections, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. But when we count all compounds (age + less = ageless), inflected forms (like running and runs), blendings (gigantic + enormous = ginormous), clipped words (gymnasium – gym), and slang words, we get 1,025,109.8 words as Global Language Monitor reports. Besides, Shakespeare himself invented over 1,700 words, so you can also try. As you see, you still have a lot to learn. But don’t worry, to speak English fluently and understand others, you need about only 2,000 of them.

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All those words are found in the collection of “world texts” accessed via the internet containing the authentic spoken and written language that altogether make a corpus. The latter, therefore, is a systematic and computerized collection of the naturally occurred language samples used for linguistic analysis.
The analysis itself deals with the frequency of the phenomenon under investigation and, of course,  is performed with special computer software. But okay, how exactly does it work?

Global Language Monitor, which we’ve previously mentioned, is a company that analyzes and tracks language usage trends worldwide. GLM main technology is called Narrative Tracker that is based on global discourse on the Internet, print and electronic global media, blogosphere, and social media sources. It provides real-time picture of the current language situation at any point in time. Although the most popular word appears to be an article “the” and there’s nothing strange about it, we offer you to take a look at the following set of words (from other parts of speech) that are the most frequent at the moment:

Table of common words

All these words are listed in the General Service List and its updated version (New General Service List) that gathers approximately 2,000 of the most “popular” words. Top 5 of them are easy to memorize: the, be, of, a, to. The complete list you may found here.

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