When it comes to learning a language it can seem like you’re trying to cross the Himalayans on a pogo stick. Forget the botched metaphor. What I’m trying to say is that there are a lot of words in Spanish. A good-sized college-level Spanish dictionary typically has about 100,000 words. I’d be hard-pressed to memorize them all. So the most logical approach would be to pick the most useful words and learn them first, saving the stray, little-used technical vocabulary for last.

I was just paging through a book called Frecuencias del español : diccionario y estudios léxicos y morfológicos by Ramón Almela. It’s got lots of information about the frequency of words in Spanish.

I took his list of the 100 most common words (which include articles, pronouns, conjunctions and the like) and extracted all the nouns. So here is a list of the 24 most commonly used (and arguably most useful) Spanish nouns:

1. el año (year)
2. la vez (time, occasion) una vez = once, Todas las veces que fui… = Every time I went…
3. la vida (life)
4. el tiempo (time)
5. el día (day)
6. el mundo (world)
7. el gobierno (government)
8. la casa (house)
9. el hombre (man, mankind)
10. el país (country)
11. la forma (form, way, manner) Hazlo de esta forma. = Do it like this.
12. el caso (case) En ese caso saldremos más temprano. = In that case we’ll leaver earlier. ; No le hagas caso. = Don’t pay any attention to him.
13. el hecho (fact, happening) los hechos = the facts ; Examinemos los hechos = Let’s see what really happened (Let’s study the facts)
14. hoy (today)
15. el momento (moment, instant) en este momento = right now
16. las cosas (things, stuff)
17. España (Spain)
18. el trabajo (work, job, employment)
19. la política (politics)
20. la gente (people)
21. el lugar (place)
22. el ejemplo (example)
23. las personas (people, individuals)
24. la mujer (woman, wife)

5 February 2007 1:27 pm
Cats: Language Learning, Vocabulary
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