How many Spanish words do you need?
Enough to follow what you hear and read. How many that is depends on how much you can afford not to understand, so this guide answers with coverage: the share of running words a vocabulary covers, measured on the three corpora behind this site’s ranking.
The short answer
- To take part in a conversation
- About the first 1,000 words. In film and TV dialogue they cover 72% of what is said.
- For B1
- On this site’s test, knowing 1,100–2,199 of the 5,000 reads as B1. The CEFR itself sets no word count.
- To be fluent
- More than any 5,000-word list. Research on English puts comfortable listening at 98% coverage, and all 5,000 of these words reach 85% of dialogue.
The coverage curve
The first hundred words do half the work: 48% of dialogue, 49% of news. After that every word counts for less. The next 900 add 24 points in dialogue, and the 4,000 after those add 13 more. Dialogue sits above news and Wikipedia all the way along, because conversation leans hardest on the commonest words.
- Film and TV dialogue
- News
- Wikipedia
| Top | Dialogue | News | Wikipedia |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 48% | 49% | 48% |
| 500 | 65% | 61% | 59% |
| 1,000 | 72% | 67% | 65% |
| 2,000 | 78% | 74% | 72% |
| 3,000 | 81% | 78% | 76% |
| 4,000 | 83% | 80% | 78% |
| 5,000 | 85% | 82% | 80% |
These are word forms, counted as they are written: “es”, “fue” and “ser” each take a rank of their own. Lists that count dictionary forms or word families report higher coverage for the same number, because one entry for “ser” also covers es, fue and era. Compare numbers only within one way of counting.
What “conversational” takes
At the first 1,000 words, about one word in 4 of dialogue is still unfamiliar. That is enough to take part: you choose your own words, you can ask again, and the situation fills in a lot. It is not enough to follow two native speakers talking to each other at speed. The first 1,000 are where to start, and the test tells you how far into them you already are.
What B1 takes
The CEFR describes what you can do at each level, not how many words you know, and it sets no word counts. Vocabulary is one part of a level. What this site does is read a vocabulary size as a level, the same way on the test and on your progress page:
| Words known | Level on this site |
|---|---|
| Under 500 | A1 |
| 500–1,099 | A2 |
| 1,100–2,199 | B1 |
| 2,200–3,599 | B2 |
| 3,600 and up | C1 |
What fluent takes
Studies of English give the clearest numbers. Comprehension begins to hold at around 95% coverage (Laufer, 1989), and reading for pleasure without help needs about 98% (Hu & Nation, 2000). Reaching 98% took 6,000–7,000 word families for spoken English and 8,000–9,000 for written English (Nation, 2006).
Those are English word families, and a family (use, used, useful, user) covers more than one Spanish word form, so the numbers do not carry across one for one. The direction does. All 5,000 forms on this list reach 85% of dialogue and 82% of news, short of 95%. The 5,000 get you to the door of fluency, not through it. Past them, reading and listening do the rest.
Find your number
The four-minute test estimates how many of the 5,000 you know, and your study plan starts from there.
Sources
- Nation, I. S. P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1), 59–82. eric.ed.gov
- Hu, M. & Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403–430.
- Laufer, B. (1989). What percentage of text lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Lauren & M. Nordman (Eds.), Special Language: From Humans Thinking to Thinking Machines. Multilingual Matters.