The 1,000 most common German words
Two ways to learn them
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The first 20 of 1,000
| Rank | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ich | I |
| 2 | sie | she/they |
| 3 | das | the/that |
| 4 | ist | is |
| 5 | du | you |
| 6 | nicht | not |
| 7 | die | the |
| 8 | es | it |
| 9 | und | and |
| 10 | der | the |
| 11 | wir | we |
| 12 | was | what |
| 13 | zu | to |
| 14 | er | he |
| 15 | ein | a/an |
| 16 | in | in |
| 17 | ja | yes |
| 18 | mir | to me/me |
| 19 | mit | with |
| 20 | wie | how/as |
Both downloads contain all 1,000 forms. English meanings are brief guides and vary with context.
How the list is ordered
Ranked using published film and TV subtitle word counts, most frequent first. Forms count separately: each row is a form you may meet in real text.
These forms account for an estimated 62% of word occurrences in reference data. Coverage varies by text; it does not measure understanding. How it's estimated
This list: CC BY-SA 4.0. Ranked from FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave (CC BY-SA 3.0), which contains information from OPUS OpenSubtitles (ODC-BY). Sources and credits