The 1,000 Most Common Spanish Words

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

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The 1,000 Most Common Spanish Words: the list

Tips for learning Spanish words

• Learn haber and tener as a pair rather than as duplicates: both are glossed 'to have', but haber works mainly as an auxiliary verb, while tener expresses actual possession. Keeping them on separate cards early prevents confusion later.
• Use noun endings as a gender clue, but don't trust them blindly: casa and vida end in -a and are feminine, tiempo ends in -o and is masculine, yet noche ends in -e and is feminine. Whenever an -e noun appears, learn its article (el or la) with the word.
• Prioritise the irregular high-frequency verbs — ser, haber, tener, hacer, decir, ir, querer, ver — before drilling regular -ar/-er/-ir patterns, since they don't conjugate predictably yet turn up constantly.
• Separate vez and tiempo carefully: vez means 'time' as an occurrence or count, while tiempo means time as duration (and also weather). English speakers often default to tiempo, so drill vez inside short phrases to break the habit.
• Occasionally type short phrases instead of single words — for example pairing siempre or nunca with a verb — because adverbs such as ahora, antes and siempre only click once you see where they sit in the sentence.
• Review bueno and mismo in context rather than in isolation: both agree with the noun they describe, so seeing them beside several different nouns cements the pattern faster than memorising the bare word.