French vocabulary

Why these words in particular

Every vocabulary site claims to have the most important words. Hardly any says how it measures that. Here it is, because without a yardstick “important” is just another word for “what occurred to us”.

The yardstick of this list is not frequency in texts but reach in everyday life: how many situations do you get through if you know this word and not the other? That is why a word you will be asked about at the doctor’s is here and a formal linking word that you can paraphrase is not, even if both are about as common in texts.

In practice that means four rules, which applied to every single word:

• It occurs in a situation everyone has. Shopping, being ill, asking the way, making plans, filling in a form. Specialist vocabulary is not here, however common it is in its field.
• It cannot be paraphrased in two words. A word you can easily talk your way around belongs on a higher level than one you cannot.
• It has an example sentence that explains something. A word without a sentence is a line in a dictionary. Every word here stands in a sentence in which it really occurs — not in one that merely mentions it.
• It appears exactly once. A word turning up in two lists sounds harmless and is not: work through both and you think you are further along than you are. The build checks that.

The selection is therefore a decision of this project, not a measurement. It is reasoned, documented and open to challenge — which is more than a number without a source could offer.

The levels

Every word carries the level from which you need it. A word on the first level is not easier to say than one further up — it just comes up earlier. So the question is not how hard a word is but from when on you cannot manage without it: a long word everyone needs sits on the first level, a short one you can do without for years sits right at the top.

The right-hand column is the yardstick. It is here so that the levels can be checked rather than taken on trust — and because a level without its question would only be a label.