Open any German frequency list and the first thing you notice is how little of it is nouns. The top hundred is almost entirely articles, pronouns, prepositions and auxiliaries.
That is not a quirk of German. It is what all frequency lists look like, and German makes it especially visible because its function words carry so much grammatical load, and the articles alone tell you case, gender and number.
These hundred words cover roughly half of spoken German. They are also the words that make German sentences parse, which matters more here than in most languages.
The articles, which are also the grammar
German articles change according to case, gender and number, which is why they dominate every frequency count. You are not learning "the." You are learning a table.
- der / die / das — the. Masculine, feminine, neuter — and the plural is die
- den / dem / des — the. Accusative, dative and genitive forms
- ein / eine / einen / einem — a, an. Same declension pattern
- kein / keine — no, not a. Negates nouns: ich habe kein Geld
Do not attempt to memorise the full table cold. Learn each noun together with its article, der Tisch, not Tisch — and the pattern assembles itself.
The connectors
- und — and
- in — in
- zu — to. Also "too" as in too much
- von — from, of
- mit — with
- auf — on
- für — for
- an — at, on
- aus — out of, from
- bei — at, near, with
- nach — after, to
- über — over, about
- aber — but
- oder — or
- als — than, as, when
- wenn — if, when
- dass — that. Sends the verb to the end of the clause
- weil — because. Also sends the verb to the end
- nicht — not
- nur — only
- auch — also
- so — so, thus
- wie — how, like, as
- durch — through
- um — around, at (a time)
The verbs
- sein — to be. Irregular in every direction
- haben — to have. Main auxiliary for the perfect tense
- werden — to become. Also forms the future and the passive
- können — can, to be able
- müssen — must, to have to
- sollen — should, ought to
- wollen — to want
- dürfen — may, to be allowed
- mögen — to like
- machen — to do, to make
- sagen — to say
- geben — to give. es gibt = there is / there are
- kommen — to come
- gehen — to go
- sehen — to see
- wissen — to know. Facts
- kennen — to know. People and places
- stehen — to stand
- finden — to find
- bleiben — to stay
People and pointing
- ich — I
- du / Sie — you. Informal and formal — the capital S is not optional
- er / sie / es — he / she / it
- wir — we
- ihr — you (plural informal). Also "her" and "their"
- mich / mir / dich / dir — me, to me, you, to you. Accusative and dative
- sich — oneself. Reflexive
- man — one, you, people generally. Very common — nothing to do with Mann
- mein / dein / sein — my / your / his
- dieser / diese / dieses — this
- alle / alles — all / everything
- viel / viele — much / many
- etwas / nichts — something / nothing
Time, place and degree
- jetzt — now
- schon — already
- noch — still, yet
- immer — always
- nie — never
- heute / gestern / morgen — today / yesterday / tomorrow
- dann — then
- hier / da / dort — here / there / over there
- wo — where
- sehr — very
- mehr — more
- gut — good, well
- groß / klein — big / small
- neu — new
- erst — first, only just
- wieder — again
- Zeit — time
- Jahr / Tag — year / day
- Mensch / Leute — person / people
- Frau / Mann — woman / man
- Kind — child
- Hand — hand
- Haus — house
- Land — country, land
What a frequency list will not do
Covering half the words on a page is not the same as understanding half of what is on it. The half you are missing carries most of the meaning: articles, pronouns and prepositions are structure, and structure is not content.
A frequency list hands you the scaffolding. It does not hand you the building, and the building is what you came for.
Two further limits. Frequency depends entirely on the corpus: a list built from film subtitles looks different from one built from newspapers, so pick the one matching what you want to consume. And your own priorities outrank any general list. If you are learning German for work, the vocabulary of your field beats half of this.
A German-specific warning. Because the articles encode case, knowing the word der is not the same as knowing when to use den or dem. This list gets you recognition; the case system takes considerably longer, and no amount of vocabulary substitutes for it.
How to actually learn them
A frequency list is a syllabus, not a method.
- Learn them in sentences, never alone. Function words mean almost nothing in isolation. Learn them inside a phrase and let the pattern do the teaching.
- Fifteen a week, not a hundred at once. A hundred words crammed on Sunday are a hundred words gone by Wednesday.
- Cover the English and produce the word. Reading down a list feels like studying and mostly is not. Make yourself retrieve it.
- Get to real material fast. The list exists so that real German becomes partly comprehensible. Once it is, the input teaches you faster than any list can.
You can look any of these up with pronunciation and usage examples in our dictionary, and our learning paths introduce them roughly in this order rather than alphabetically.
Learn the hundred, learn each new noun with its article attached, and let real German do the rest.
