Most Common Spanish Words
Want to learn Spanish faster?
Your best bet is to learn the most common Spanish words that you can use throughout most of your conversations. Even in English, we only use 10-20% of words throughout 80-90% of our everyday conversations (unless you’re having an intense philosophical or business conversation).
1,000 Most Common Spanish words = 88% of comprehension
A study done on the Spanish language revealed that:
Studying the first 1000 most frequently used words in the language will familiarize you with 76.0% of all vocabulary in non-fiction literature, 79.6% of all vocabulary in fiction literature, and 87.8% of vocabulary in oral speech.
Studying the 2000 most frequently used words will familiarize you with 84% of vocabulary in non-fiction, 86.1% of vocabulary in fictional literature, and 92.7% of vocabulary in oral speech.
And studying the 3000 most frequently used words will familiarize you with 88.2% of vocabulary in non-fiction, 89.6% of vocabulary in fiction, and 94.0% of vocabulary in oral speech.
Without throwing too much research and date at you, these findings brings us to a simple conclusion that can save you a lot of time.
Learning and mastering the first 1,000 most common Spanish words will be an essential milestone we should achieve in any language, as this will allow us to:
- “grasp 88% of vocabulary in oral speech” (and most of us are learning with the sole intent to converse with another native speaker)
- “express everything we could possibly want to say”
For most of us, 1,000 words is that sweet mark between result and effort, since learning an additional 1,000 words (2,000 words) will only deliver 5% additional comprehension (88% –> 93%).
100 Most Common List of Spanish Words
For the sake of the time you have to read this article, we’ve compiled for you the most common 100 list of Spanish words you can get started with.
If you’re interested in finding out the other 900 list of Spanish words, here they are:
- 1,000 most common Spanish words (audio version)
- 1,000 most common Spanish words (flash card version)
- 5,000 most common Spanish words (memrise)
| de of, from, by la the el the a to, at los the un a, an, one las the del of the, from the, by the una a, an, one al to the, at the dos two uno one cada each tres three unos some, a few CONJUNCTIONS: que that, who, which, than y and o or como as, like pero but si if porque because cuando when ni nor, neither donde where y and aunque although, even though sino but, except mientras whilePREPOSITIONS: en in, on, into por through, for (means), along, by con with para in order to, for (ends) sin without sobre about, above, on top of entre between, among hasta until desde from, since durante during, for (time) contra against hacia toward según according to PRONOUNS:se himself, herself, itself, yourself, yourselves, themselves each other lo it, that su his, her, your me (to) me le (to) him, her, you sus his, her, your, their yo I qué what(?) mi my nos (to) us, ourselves te (to) you eso that él he, him nada nothing esto this ella she, her usted you cómo how(?) les (to) them, you algo something ellos they, them mí me nosotros we, us tu your
no no, not
VERBS: es is, are
ADJECTIVES: este this |
Best method to learn the list of Spanish words
While everyone learns and memorizes differently, there are a few resources that we can recommend to you to accelerate the process.
Anki
Anki makes it easy for you to create online flashcards to remember things faster. You can create it on your desktop, and take it with you on-the-go on your tablet or smartphone by downloading their app
Memrise
Memrise is an online community and memorization tool to help you memorize anything with ease, including Spanish words. In fact, Memrise has dedicated channels that are specifically built for languages like Spanish, French, Italian, German, and more.
We found this Memrise channel, which shares the first 5,00 words of Spanish that you can go through.
Rype
If you don’t want the hassle of learning the list of Spanish words alone, you could always rely on Rype to help you out. Our dedicated coaches can help keep you accountable, allow you to get real-life immersive practice, and give you immediate feedback to retain more knowledge in less time.
Each lesson plan is designed and customized to meet your individual needs, so you’ll never have to worry about other students taking up your precious time.
What’s next
If you’re interested in learning Spanish online, on your time, we’d love for you to meet Rype. With Private Spanish Lessons online, it’s the easiest and most effective way to learn a language for busy people.
Start your free trial with Rype, and you can book daily lessons at anytime of the day, any day of the week. We’ve built the entire experience to fit the needs of busy individuals like yourself, and you can even try it out for free! Or hear why students recommend Rype as the best way to learn Spanish.
We also recommend you check out our other free resources: