Word Frequency in German: Speaking
Worthäufigkeit - gesprochenes Deutsch
The Top 30 German Words
German Vocabulary Words Ranked
by Frequency of Use in Spoken German
You are here:
Introduction > Reading Words 1-50 > Words 51-100 > Spoken Top 30
About This List
The 30 words ranked here for spoken German are excerpted from the Rangwörterbuch hochdeutscher Umgangssprache by Hans-Heinrich Wängler (N.G. Elwert, Marburg, 1963). The words are ranked by frequency of use in everyday, spoken German. For more about German word frequency, see the Introduction to The German Top 1000 (reading).
| Top 30 Words - Spoken German Ranked by frequency of use German Speaking Vocabulary |
||
| Rank | Word | Comment/Link |
| 1 | ich | "I" - personal pronoun See Personal Pronouns |
| 2 | das | "the; that (one)" neuter - definite article or demonstrative pronoun) See Nouns and Gender |
| 3 | die | "the" f. - definite article See Nouns and Gender |
| 4 | ist | "is" - form of "to be" (sein) See Verbs: sein |
| 5 | nicht | "not" |
| 6 | ja | "yes" - See Essential German |
| 7 | du | "you" familiar - See Sie und du |
| 8 | der | "the" m. - definite article See Nouns and Gender |
| 9 | und | "and" |
| 10 | sie | "she, they" |
| 11 | so | "so, thus" |
| 12 | wir | "we" - personal pronoun See Personal Pronouns |
| 13 | was | "what" |
| 14 | noch | "still, yet" |
| 15 | da | "there, here; since, because" |
| 16 | mal | "times; once" - particle |
| 17 | mit | "with" - See Dative Prepositions |
| 18 | auch | "also, too" |
| 19 | in | "in, into" - See 2-Way Prepositions |
| 20 | es | "it" - personal pronoun See Personal Pronouns |
| 21 | zu | "to; at; too" preposition or adverb See Dative Prepositions |
| 22 | aber | "but" - See Coordinating/Subordinating Conjunctions |
| 23 | habe / hab' | "(I) have" - Verbs: haben |
| 24 | den | "the" - (form of der or dative plural) See Accusative Case and Dative Case |
| 25 | eine | "a, an" fem. indefinite article See Nouns and Gender |
| 26 | schon | "already" |
| 27 | man | "one, they" Personal Pronouns |
| 28 | doch | "but, nevertheless, after all" particle See 'Doch' ...and Other Tricky German Words |
| 29 | war | "was" - past tense of "to be" (sein) |
| 30 | dann | "then" |
| See comments below. Introduction - German Word Frequency WEB > Word Frequencies (TU Wien) |
||
| Also see the (unedited) Top 1000 German Words. | ||
MORE > German Words 1-100 (reading)
Comments: A few observations about the Top 30 Spoken German Words:
- In this list of the top 30 spoken German words, there are no nouns, but lots of pronouns and articles.
- Prepositions are important in spoken (and reading) German. In the top 30 spoken words there are three prepositions (all dative or dual): mit, in, and zu.
- The rank for spoken words can vary greatly from that for reading vocabulary. Examples: ich (spoken 1 / reading 51), ist (4/12), da (15/75), doch (28/69).
- All the top 30 words are "small words." None has more than five letters; most have only two or three! Zipf's Law seems to hold true: There is an inverse relationship between the length of a word and its frequency.
Related Pages
The German Top 1000
An introduction to our reading word-frequency list.
Top 20 German Verbs
The 20 most frequently encountered verbs in German.
German for Beginners
Our free online German course.
Glossaries
English-German glossaries on a variety of topics.
Daily German
What's today's German word of the day? For advanced and beginning learners.
German Newsletters
Subscribe to a free newsletter!
| German Forum 1 |
Deutsches Forum 2 |