Word Frequency in German - Worthäufigkeit
The Top 1,000 German Words
Words Most Likely to Be Encountered in an Average German Text
German Word Frequency: Part 1 (1-100)
For an introduction to this list, see The German Top 1,000 and the comments below.
Also see our Top 100 Basic German Words (edited, ranked).
| Top 1,000 Words in German Computer analysis of word frequency with single word variations |
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| 1-20 | 21-40 | 41-60 | 61-80 | 81-100 |
| der die und in den von zu das mit sich des auf für ist im dem nicht ein Die eine |
als auch es an werden aus er hat daß* sie nach wird bei einer Der um am sind noch wie |
einem über einen Das so Sie zum war haben nur oder aber vor zur bis mehr durch man sein wurde |
sei In Prozent hatte kann gegen vom können schon wenn habe seine Mark** ihre dann unter wir soll ich eines |
Es Jahr zwei Jahren diese dieser wieder keine Uhr seiner worden Und will zwischen Im immer Millionen Ein was sagte |
| Click on any linked word for related grammar/info. *dass (ss) is word 261 **der Euro was put into circulation in Jan. 2002, so "Mark" (Deutsche Mark, DM) is probably less frequent now. See: Der Euro kommt |
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| NEXT 100 > Words 101-200 | ||||
| Source: Projekt Wortschatz - Universität Leipzig Stand vom 8. Jan. 2001 |
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A few observations about this list:
- In the first 100 words, there are only five nouns, all of which have to do with money/figures or dates/time (Prozent, Mark, Uhr, Jahr/Jahren, Millionen), probably reflecting news content.
- Since several simple past tense forms (Imperfekt, war, wurde, sagte) appear in the top 100, it might be better to introduce the past tense earlier in German instruction/learning.
- A similar analysis of conversational German, as opposed to German in print, would yield very different results. However, reading is a very important language skill.
- Zipf's Law seems to hold true: There is an inverse relationship between the length of a word and its frequency. (The most frequent words are monosyllabic. The longer the word, the less it's used, and vice versa.)
- This list includes a lot of duplicates because it considers various spellings and capitalization of the same word to be different words. For a list that eliminates such duplicates, see the Top 100 Basic German Words (edited, ranked).
MORE > Words 101-200 > 201-300 > 301-400 > More...
Related Pages
The German Top 1,000
The introduction to this word-frequency list.
Top 100 Basic Words
What are the top 100 German words a student should know? Here is an edited, ranked list of the most frequent German words.
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