The 1,000 Most Common French Words

Ranked by real-world frequency. Study all of them free with spaced repetition.

More French lists: Nouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs About learning French

The 1,000 Most Common French Words: the list

Tips for learning French words

• Start with être (to be), avoir (to have) and aller (to go): être and avoir are the auxiliaries used to build compound past tenses, and aller plus an infinitive expresses the near future.
• Practise the present-tense forms of irregular verbs such as vouloir (to want), savoir (to know), prendre (to take) and venir (to come) out loud, since their stems shift between persons and that is where hesitation usually creeps in.
• The final -s of plus (more) is pronounced in some contexts and silent in others, so drill it inside a full spoken sentence rather than as an isolated word.
• Small adverbs like alors (so then), aussi (also) and vraiment (really) rarely get proper study time because they look 'too simple', but they are what makes spoken French sound natural — give them the same attention as nouns.
• When you meet a noun such as chose (thing) or temps (time), store it together with its article from the very first exposure; repairing a wrongly learned gender later takes far more effort.
• Type the French word from the English prompt instead of reading flashcards passively — active recall on items like croire (to believe) or attendre (to wait) quickly exposes the ones you only half know.