The Top 100

What if you didn’t have to learn everything?

What if you could just learn the words you needed to use the language?

Here’s a thought: would we really ask students to learn chemistry without knowing about the elements of the periodic table? In chemistry classes, do we really ask people to learn hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide, ferrous sulfate as completely random, separate items, with no context, or do we see if there’s an underlying pattern and then use that to build a sense of the myriad of chemicals that we see around us?

There is no easy route to learning languages. They’ve taken thousands of years to evolve and mix a country’s history, culture, influences and traditions into a melting pot to produce distinctive words. However, that doesn’t stop us seeking the most effective routes to learning any language of our (or our school’s) choosing.

Rather than giving equal weighting to each word we learn, it is possible to determine what the most commonly-used words are in a language. Once we’ve done this, we suddenly have access to the glue that holds most sentences, most subjects, objects and verbs, together. With these most common words forming the foundation, we can then build and layer our understanding of the many other skills of reading, writing and listening that a new language demands of us.

So, how many words do we need? Tony Buzan used to refer to 100 words that make up 50% of the conversation in most languages, Gabriel Wyner refers to 625 words in Fluent Forever, and I’ve also seen references to 1000 or 2000 words to form the base for any language.

I suggest Layering.

If you’ve never learned a language before and are starting from scratch, start with the top 100 words. These will be the words that hold the glue for 50% of most sentences (examples below). Once you are familiar with the top 100 then move onto the top 625. This doesn’t stop you from learning what you learn in class or in a language course — you’ll get fresh insights into how the sentences are constructed by adding the top 100 in addition to your current material.

I think you’ll be quickly amazed at how many words spring up at you from the page.

Below are 10 words to get you started. Then use whatever dictionary, coursebook, google translate you are using to make a summary of the next 90. I like to keep everything on a spreadsheet.

The words are:

1. A

2. After

3. Again

4. All

5. Almost

6. And

7. Always

8. Also

9. Because

10. Before