Questions about Most Common Words

[jonathankoh]

@mike

Might you be able to share any of these lists? We likely won’t change the current approach, but we love a good frequency list as much as anyone and perhaps we can use them in other ways.

I’m not familiar with Spanish word lists, but more of English word lists. For example, Oxford, Cambridge, Longman, MacMillan all have their own list. As far as I know, and I’m an ESL teacher, and don’t teach Spanish or other languages, the way people use word lists are that they include all conjugations, etc.

@mike

I’d counter that it might be a bit much to see the past tense subjunctive in the 100 Most Common Words collection when you’re presumably a beginner looking to work through the most common words, unless of course it really is a form you’re likely to see daily.

I can understand your point of view and Kadrian’s point of view. The subjunctive in Spanish is normally a more intermediate to advanced teaching. On the other hand, the way I use CM is that I learn grammar (verb conjugation) separately and maybe it’s because I’m already at an intermediate level to begin with. But anyway, that’s just a different point of view and so I understand where CM is coming from.

[jamesp999]

The current approach is the correct one IMO.

[kadrian]

I looked up the Oxford list for English out of interest. It seems to include all conjugations and plurals. Here are some words and frequencies:

9 went
39 go
55 going
386 gone
445 goes

86 ran
343 run
364 running
1821 runs

1014 elephant
1327 elephants
6946 elephant’s (!)

[jamesp999]

Interesting that elephant is ranked so high in frequency. Maybe English is different from Romance languages for having so few conjugated forms and not having gender/number agreement, and also different from other Germanic languages in not modifying by case as much which leads to fewer unique ‘forms’ per ‘word’. (Not saying English is simpler). Doubt it is either zoology or idiomatic usage which would be driving the frequency.

[jamesp999]

@mike

Nope, and right Clozemaster uses the most “difficult” word in the sentence as the missing word (the least common according to a frequency list for that language)

ok this explains why in some languages you very rarely see sentences related to the absolute most common words (maybe like 1-10) for example ‘de’ in French or ‘die’ in german.

[kadrian]

Yet you get sentences like this in Latin, where the cloze word is “et”!

[jonathankoh]

@kadrian

I looked up the Oxford list for English out of interest.

Maybe you’re right regarding Oxford - and I assumed Oxford would do it differently. Maybe there are different lists. Even though I mentioned Oxford and Cambridge, I don’t really use their list. I’m more familiar with Macmillan and Longman and both do it differently from oxford if what you wrote is correct regarding oxford.

Of course in English, you don’t seem to have as many conjugations of verbs as in spanish perhaps.

You often hear people say that if you know the most common say 2,500 or 3,000 words in English (I’m not sure if this applies to other languages), you would know 90% of what’s written/spoken every day (or something to this effect). Whether or not this applies to other languages, I’m not sure. But my understanding of this is that you’re not talking about the top 2,500/3,000 most common words if you’re seeing each conjugation of a verb (or even plural vs singular) as separate words altogether.

@jamesp999

Interesting that elephant is ranked so high in frequency.

I’m not sure where that oxford list was found, but according to Macmillan and Longman, elephant is definitely not in the top 2,500/3,000 most common words.

[kadrian]

Hmm, it looks like the list I quoted is one for use in Australian schools (https://www.oxfordwordlist.com/pages/report.asp)

This list only includes verbs once (with elephant somewhere in the top 3,000).

But my understanding of this is that you’re not talking about the top 2,500/3,000 most common words if you’re seeing each conjugation of a verb (or even plural vs singular) as separate words altogether.

I agree.