Talk:Most common words in English

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Length of the lists

Since I began this article and reworked this topic, two editors have attempted to add words to the lists (without sources, too). I have reverted these additions for the following reasons:

The lists that are in place are from a calculation done by Ask Oxford, what I'd consider a reliable source. I think it's reasonable that any additions to the lists must either come from the same study, or replace the whole list at once. We should not be mixing sources or adding unsourced material to an already sourced list.

Furthermore, i really need or want more than 25 words per type (do we care especially about the 40th)? or 100 lemmas absolutely? I don't see why we should. If better, longer lists are found, it's probably best that we link to them, not include them directly: this is a general purpose encyclopedia for the average curious man (who I think will be satisfied with the length of these), not a source of data for the aspiring linguist.

Before increasing the length of these lists (very tempting, I know), please consider the above arguments and respond here so that we may discuss it. -- Rmrfstar 09:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The words and their ranks I added are based on the same corpus. -- Dissident (Talk) 17:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

As for your second point, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, so there is no reason to arbitrarily limit oneself as long as the supplied info remains verifiable. -- Dissident (Talk) 15:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Is there any reason to extend the lists? Perhaps linking to them would be more practical. -- Rmrfstar 00:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

am/are/is?

It is not believable that none of these words appear on this list. What happened to them? Hlorri (talk) 06:03, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

These words are all derivatives of the verb "to be" which is the second most common word on the list after "the". Vorbee (talk) 14:43, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Why are "we" and "us" separated? They seem closer together than 'am' and 'were.' 164.47.179.32 (talk) 18:10, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

A/an?

If this list covers lemmas, and not individual words, why are a and an listed separately?--CJGB (Chris) 19:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I dunno. It's that way on the site, though, so the problem is not here. -- Rmrfstar 02:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I grant that the source of the problem lies elsewhere, but since it involves other lemmas that are represented more than once (I/me, will/would), maybe we should look elsewhere for a list -- or make a comment? Also, there seems to be no oral source. So maybe the title should be changed, or at least the first sentence should make this clear. Kdammers (talk) 01:48, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

[untitled]

Presenting a list that mixes lexemes and words is like a list of 'car brands and transportation means' and showing that a Mercedes C is more common than an aircraft carrier ... in essence meaningless. If they treat am/is/are etc as a single entry then they should do the same with I/you/he/she/we. They don't. But that makes the title of this page very misleading: this is NOT a list of the most common 'words' in English. Also, because the list is taken from a single source, it would be prudent to mention that in the title as well, so visitors know this is just one company's opinion and not academic fact or even theory.

In other words, this page should be named: "Oxford Online's list of most common English lexemes".

This page would create real value if it compares several of these lists: plenty have been done by serious and established researchers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.30.137.66 (talk) 09:59, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree that there are number of improvements that could be made. A comparison would be so much more meaningful and interesting. I've begun broadening the scope of the article and table of words accordingly. —Ringbang (talk) 19:12, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Most common words in Spoken English

50 most common words with their frequency per 1,000,000 words

Source Oxford Corpus, but analysed by me (User:Ca Woodcock)

Note that this list is quite different and more important in my opinion (note the prominence of I and you)

• epic — 38,009
• I — 22,103
• you — 21,063
• to — 20,914
• and — 20,230
• that — 19,216
• it — 18,246
• a — 18,039
• pneumonoultramicroscopicsilico— 16,043
• 's — 15,543
• in — 11,345
• we — 10,825
• is — 10,244
• n't — 8152
• dome — 7559
• er — 7300
• they — 6720
• have — 6543
• be — 6035
• on — 6007
• for — 5746
• was — 5407
• there — 5360
• what — 5171
• this — 5098
• erm — 4977
• one — 4869
• are — 4767
• 've — 4578
• if — 4529
• 're — 4214
• with — 4197
• Yeah — 4166
• think — 4109
• not — 3950
• but — 3876
• know — 3791
• at — 3579
• got — 3568
• can — 3489
• would — 3447
• or — 3412
• And — 3399
• about — 3367
• so — 3286
• just — 3155
• as — 3146
• all — 3098
• your — 2773
• like — 2724

Also it is worth pointing out that in spoken English, adverbs are more common than adjectives, so why not a list of those as well? In terms of word types in spoken English:

• singular nouns — 94549
• personal pronouns — 94441
• articles — 60964
• adverbs — 60494
• prepositions — 54922
• adjectives — 37896
• determiners — 32857
• co-ordinating conjunctions — 32771
• plural nouns — 28980
• lexical verb infinitives — 28971
• lexical verb base forms — 26112
• lexical verb 's forms — 23722
• modal auxiliaries — 20212
• interjections — 18613
• cardinal numerals — 18440
• 'of' — 15940
• subordinating conjunction — 15772
• to — 15731
• lexical verb 3rd form — 14709
• lexical verb -ing form — 13216
• n't — 12402
• be — 11619
• proper nouns — 10325
• adverb particles — 10104

—User:Ca_Woodcock 19:57, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Strange result for the 50 most common words : first time ever I see 'dome' making to first 100 commonest words Jansegers (talk) 12:53, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

By Wikipedia's policy of no original research, we can't include your results in the article. -- Rmrfstar (talk) 09:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

[untitled]

This page should be titled, "The most commonly used words in English".Eregli bob (talk) 08:25, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Why? Article titles are not supposed to start with "the", also. -- Rmrfstar (talk) 09:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

the rankings should be updated from "Google Labs Books Ngram Viewer". in 2011

Or at least, separate rankings from it should be shown. Given the size of the project it's already authoritative, and it disagrees with what's here now. 70.91.136.242 (talk) 03:38, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I trust the OED's list much more. The Goole Labs project is too automated and definitely not a finished project, much less a report of any kind. -- Rmrfstar (talk) 16:32, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Still, it's interesting that Ngrams has a very different placement even in the top six results; to and be are much further down. Someone has got it wrong somewhere, I would have thought that the law of large numbers would make the top few results the same in anyone's list. SpinningSpark 13:57, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Page appearance

On my screen, a lot of words are incomplete, including the headings of parts of speech and the word "edit."Kdammers (talk) 02:35, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Sjdkkf 2600:8800:1600:A600:ADDC:7D41:10F0:7945 (talk) 01:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Vandalism

Cannot find last correct version. I'm sure it doesn't include the lyrics to "call me maybe"

Not sure if this entire page was made as a joke. Seems somewhat likely to change as words fall in and out of usage and common english changes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.70.170.48 (talk) 08:57, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Semi-protect?

Since this page pertains to an essentially stable subject and since it is fairly frequently vandalized, could an admin please consider semi-protecting it? Kdammers (talk) 00:59, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

An RM to "List of ..." format?

How does List of words by usage in English sound? GregKaye 14:55, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Forced. --Onorem (talk) 15:24, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Will

I remember "will" as a verb. Is there any good reason why it's an "other"?--161.130.167.67 (talk) 05:52, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

It is a modal verb ... I am more amazed that 'can' isn't mentioned in these listings, and I would like to know why will/would made it, but can/could didn't make it both into the Oxford listing ... Jansegers (talk) 12:57, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Citation 1 broken link

Just what it says on the box. The link for citation 1 404's. 208.88.255.214 (talk) 16:28, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Tagged it. I can't find the equivalent info on the current OED page but maybe we can find an archived version. Meters (talk) 16:51, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

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All of the 100 most common words are NOT of Anglo-Saxon origin.

In the lede, the 4th paragraph states: "According to a study cited by Robert McCrum in The Story of English, all of the first hundred of the most common words in English are of Anglo-Saxon origin." A further reference offered in support of this is Bill Bryson, "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way", Harper Perennial, 2001, page 58 (which strikes me as odd, btw: Did some editor actually cite one book's citation of another? If so, that represents a further problem with the inclusion of this material). →This statement is false. Just for counterexamples that come to mind immediately, among the 100 most common English words in any reputable list, the forms of the pronoun "they" ("they", "them", "their") are from Old Norse; and in the present list, "people" is from Latin via French. This claim, sourced or not, is just plain wrong and needs to be removed.--IfYouDoIfYouDon't (talk) 00:32, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 20 November 2017

Removed the column titled Fry's Sight Words from the table in this section; it is completely empty except for the title, and there is no Wikipedia page for Fry's Sight Words, which probably means that it is not reputable. 2601:2C1:C280:3EE0:4DDC:CC3B:418C:273 (talk) 02:36, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Done DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 10:37, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 June 2018

106.200.250.48 (talk) 16:02, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. -- The Voidwalker ^Whispers 16:26, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I can't see how to add an edit request. Someone, replace wrong "Nouns 1.time 2.PERSON" to "Nouns 1.time 2.people" according to the table above there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Okolo-basii (talk • contribs) 10:12, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

List needs update

In chapter "Parts_of_speech" it says "The following is the same list subdivided by part of speech." while it is not the same list as the list provided in the chapter "100 most common words". 1. there are 114 words in the lower list, not 100. 2. The words in one list do not match the words in another. For example the first list has 4 adjectives, the second has 25 and most of them are not found in the first list like "first, last, long, great, ...". What we need is a clean list with one hundred most common words, which are all classified by their parts of speech. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kabulistani (talk • contribs) 06:39, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I would argue the second list to be of much value, so please, leave it there ... the title is "Most common words in English" and not "Top 100 most frequent words" ... It should be made clear that the list don't match each other and a clear source indication for the second list should be given just as for the Oxford list before the listing itself ... I'm still in the dark why 'will'/'would' did both make the first list, but 'could' didn't ... and I'm very amazed by the absence of 'can' in the second listing ... but that means that there is information there to ponder at ... Jansegers (talk) 13:04, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Why "хо..." ..

Why no "що..." .. ? .. ) 176.59.210.226 (talk) 17:03, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Her - 29,106

In the table, her is listed as the 29,106th word, rather than the 29th word.

Conlanging

This article is actually pretty useful when conlanging. It can help you form simple sentences. S64050 (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Most used words

2023: real 2A00:A040:1DD:6D66:8C93:3ABE:AB58:BFB1 (talk) 13:57, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

@2A00:A040:1DD:6D66:8C93:3ABE:AB58:BFB1 2409:408C:4EB3:5C8E:966E:8A40:7859:5318 (talk) 20:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Other lists/sources?

This article is almost entirely based on OEC, with a mention of COCA. Shouldn't other lists, e.g., NGSL, Oxford, and maybe (if there is one without doing original research) Google's ngram viewer be mentioned or linked to?Kdammers (talk) 19:42, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

"If" is not a preposition

In the list "if" is listed as a preposition. I've checked several online dictionaries including wikitionary and they all only list them as a conjunction or noun. Unless there is some usage I am not familiar with, I think this needs to be corrected. Credulous Skeptic (talk) 03:30, 8 July 2024 (UTC)