Frequency counts of German, from newspapers, novels, subtitles and recorded conversations, agree on one thing: a very small number of words does almost all of the work. The hundred most frequent words make up roughly half of any German text. Learn them and you will not understand German, but you will recognise every second word, which is the difference between noise and a language you are learning.
For English speakers there is a bonus. Around twenty of these hundred are words you already know, because English has the same word in a slightly different coat. We start with those, because they cost nothing, and then work through the rest in groups you can learn in a week each.
The 20 you already know
These are cognates: German and English inherited them from the same ancestor and they still look alike. Say them aloud and the English word is right there.
| German | English | German | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| und | and | Haus | house |
| in | in | Hand | hand |
| ist | is | Wasser | water |
| hier | here | Jahr | year |
| was | what | gut | good |
| wir | we | alt | old |
| mich | me | lang | long |
| hundert | hundred | Mann | man |
| Vater, Mutter | father, mother | kommen | come |
| Bruder | brother | bringen | bring |
The sound shifts are regular, which means you can use them to guess words that are not on this list. English „t“ often matches German „z“ or „s“: zehn (ten), Wasser (water), essen (eat). English „d“ matches German „t“: Tag (day), tun (do), trinken (drink). English „th“ matches German „d“: das (that), Ding (thing), Bruder (brother). English „p“ matches German „f“ or „pf“: Schiff (ship), Pfeffer (pepper). Once you see the pattern, half of the German dictionary becomes slightly transparent.
The articles and pronouns: 25 words
These are the most frequent words in the language, and they are the ones you cannot skip. The definite article alone, in its six forms, is the most common word in German by a wide margin.
Articles: der, die, das, den, dem, des (the) · ein, eine, einen, einem (a) · kein (no, not a)
Personal pronouns: ich (I) · du (you, informal) · er (he) · sie (she, they) · es (it) · wir (we) · ihr (you, plural) · Sie (you, formal) · mich, mir (me) · ihn, ihm (him) · uns (us) · sich (oneself)
Possessives and pointers: mein (my) · sein (his) · ihr (her, their) · unser (our) · dieser (this) · jeder (every) · alle (all) · man (one, people in general)
The word sie means she, they and, with a capital, the formal you. Context and the verb ending tell you which. The word man is not „man“ (that is Mann, with two n); it is the impersonal „one“, used far more than in English: Hier spricht man Deutsch, German is spoken here.
The verbs: 20 words
Nine verbs carry the language. Three of them are the auxiliaries you need for every tense, six are the modal verbs that let you say what you can, must and want to do. The rest are the actions of daily life.
Auxiliaries: sein (to be) · haben (to have) · werden (to become, will)
Modals: können (can) · müssen (must) · wollen (want) · sollen (should) · dürfen (may) · mögen (like), and its polite form möchte (would like)
Everyday verbs: sagen (say) · machen (make, do) · geben (give) · kommen (come) · gehen (go) · sehen (see) · wissen (know a fact) · lassen (let) · stehen (stand) · finden (find)
Two habits from this list: machen does the work of both „make“ and „do“, and es gibt (literally „it gives“) means „there is“. Es gibt keinen Kaffee: there is no coffee. You will hear it ten times a day.
The little words that hold sentences together: 25 words
Prepositions and conjunctions are the words learners skip, and they are the words that decide the case of the noun and the position of the verb. These are the ones that appear in the top hundred.
Prepositions: in (in) · zu (to) · von (from, of) · mit (with) · auf (on) · für (for) · an (at, on) · bei (at, near) · nach (after, to) · aus (out of) · um (around, at a time) · über (over, about) · vor (before, in front of) · durch (through) · bis (until) · unter (under)
Conjunctions: und (and) · oder (or) · aber (but) · dass (that) · wenn (if, when) · weil (because) · als (when, than) · wie (how, as) · ob (whether)
The last five send the verb to the end of the clause. That is the single most important thing to know about them, and we explain it with word-for-word translations in Why the German verb goes to the end.
Adverbs, question words and the rest: 30 words
Negation and yes/no: nicht (not) · ja (yes) · nein (no) · doch (yes, contradicting a negative question)
Time and degree: auch (also) · noch (still, yet) · schon (already) · jetzt (now) · dann (then) · immer (always) · wieder (again) · nur (only) · sehr (very) · so (so) · mehr (more) · viel (much) · ganz (whole, quite) · da (there) · hier (here) · also (so, therefore)
Question words: was (what) · wer (who) · wo (where) · wie (how) · wann (when) · warum (why)
Nouns and adjectives that make the cut: Jahr (year) · Zeit (time) · Mal (time, occasion) · Tag (day) · gut (good) · groß (big) · neu (new) · erste (first) · andere (other) · zwei (two)
That is the hundred, give or take a few, depending on which corpus you count. Two of the words on this list are false friends: also means „so“, not „also“, and bekommen, just outside the hundred, means „get“. Both are worth a moment’s attention.
Say it like this
Es gibt hier viel zu sehen. – There is a lot to see here. (six words from the list)
Ich weiß nicht, ob das gut ist. – I don’t know whether that is good.
Kann man das auch morgen machen? – Can one do that tomorrow too?
Wie viel ist das? – How much is that?
How to learn a hundred words in a month
Not from this page. A list is for checking, not for learning. Take five words a day, in a sentence each, said aloud, and let a spaced repetition system bring each one back on the day you would otherwise forget it. At five a day, the hundred takes three weeks and you will have said each of them twenty times by the end. The course we describe on our page Learn German with an English interface does exactly this with its long-term memory method, starting with the words above.
The hundred most common words get you to recognising half of a text. The next thousand get you to about 80 per cent, and that is where reading a German newspaper becomes possible with a dictionary at hand. The beginner’s course covers 1,300 words. Start with the twenty you already know.
Frequently asked questions
How many German words do I need to have a conversation?
Around 1,000 words cover everyday conversation, and 1,300 is the vocabulary of a typical A1/A2 beginner’s course. The hundred most frequent words are the skeleton; the rest are the nouns and verbs of your own life.
What is the most common word in German?
The definite article, counted across its forms der, die, das, den, dem and des. After that come und (and), sein (to be), in and ein (a). The first noun on most lists is Jahr (year).
Which German words are the same as English?
Hundreds of everyday words are close cousins: Haus, Hand, Wasser, Finger, Arm, Winter, Sommer, Butter, Milch, Name, gut, alt, jung, warm, kalt, kommen, bringen, finden, singen, trinken. The spelling differs slightly, the meaning is the same.
Learn the first 1,300 words with their sentences
The German beginner’s course with an English interface teaches 1,300 words in sentences, spoken by native speakers, and repeats each one at the right moment. Two days free, one-off payment, 31-day money-back guarantee.
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