About Us

Hi,

Thanks for taking an interest in MostUsedWords.com.

Our Mission:

MostUsedWords strives to enable everyone to learn a language as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We offer frequency dictionaries and bilingual books as e-books and paperbacks in 15+ languages — browse our full catalog.

Origins of MostUsedWords

Being obsessed with efficiency and obtaining maximum results from minimal input, I set out to decipher the language learning process.

Soon I stumbled upon how much vocabulary you need to know for fluency. In pretty much any language, you only need to know a relatively small number of words to understand and be understood.

The most common 2,500 words account for 95% of daily use in any language. To increase your fluency from 95% to 99%, you need to know another 97,500 words!

According to research, the practical cutoff for input vs. output is around 10,000 words. By knowing the most used 10,000 words in a language, you can understand 98% of all spoken language and 97% of all written language — enough to work out the meaning of unknown vocabulary from context.

Frequency Dictionaries

A frequency dictionary contains the most common words in a language, listed by how often you use them. They are an excellent method to expand your practical vocabulary in a foreign language.

The frequency lists I encountered were non-existent, incomplete, or not up to modern standards.

I wanted the following in a frequency dictionary.

• A thorough, modern, up-to-date frequency list.
• Practical for both spoken and written texts.
• Phonetic transcriptions. This is especially useful for languages pronounced very differently from how they are written. In English, think of Pear, prayer, sear, and seer.
• Parallel text showing word usage in context. You learn vocabulary in chunks, not from a static list.
• A sublist of the most common nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc.

For the full technical breakdown of how we build a book — corpus sources, the editing process, and our accuracy figures — see our methodology page.

Of course, the principles above have scientific backing. Expanding a bit on the inner workings of the frequency dictionary:

• Using a proper scientific basis for efficient language learning methods, we strive to give you the needed vocabulary in an orderly manner.
• A large source of subtitle data to analyze will present us with the most used vocabulary.
• Subtitle frequency accounts for both spoken and written language. Two birds, one stone.
• We show you the most used words in descending order, with example sentences. This way, you master your language as soon as possible.
• Our products can be used as a standalone product for self-study or as a handy supplement to any other language program.

Bilingual Books

The bilingual book series consists of classic stories in parallel text. The texts are given side-by-side.

This is what a bilingual book looks like. | Voici à quoi ressemble un livre bilingue.

Books published in this format provide the language learner with a method to quickly look up unknown vocabulary instead of reaching for a dictionary. It allows learners to read above their level and lessens the need to stick to graded readers.

Some of our bilingual books are the original story and its translation as it was published at the time. Since most of our classics are now well over 100 years old, some were archaic in word usage and quite difficult in sentence structure. That is why some books have been rewritten into simple, modern English. Learners from all levels can benefit from reading bilingual books to expand and solidify their vocabulary.

The future

MostUsedWords started as a one-person project and has grown into a small team spread across multiple countries. We've published, updated, and republished dozens of frequency dictionaries and bilingual books, with more in progress. We all love language learning, and the science behind it.

We want to bring these practical frequency dictionaries and bilingual books to the world, in all major languages. So that everyone can learn languages fast and efficiently, and we can all understand each other a bit better.

That user feedback led to the MostUsedWords Flash Cards App, a spaced-repetition study tool built directly from our frequency-ranked vocabulary lists.

If you have any further questions or would like to offer your feedback, you can contact me by e-mail here.

We hope we are helping you to achieve your dreams.

Edmond @ MostUsedWords