Core Vocabulary Across Languages #
What are the most basic concepts that virtually all languages express? Many linguists have put a great deal of effort into answering this question, and several short word lists have come out of it. The most famous are probably the Swadesh lists, based mostly on intuition and refined over time. Later lists like the Leipzig-Jakarta have used more stringent methods to determine which vocabulary items are most resistant to borrowing and change over time.
The First 95 Items #
What I’ve done here is I’ve taken five such word lists (Swadesh 100, Ranked Swadesh 40, Swadesh-Yakhontov, Leipzig-Jakarta, and Woodward) and kept only the items that occur in at least two of the lists.
Nouns
- name
- water
- blood
- fire
- stone/rock
- dog
- fish
- louse/flea
- hand/arm
- eye
- ear
- nose
- tongue
- tooth
- bone
- horn
- tail
- egg
- leaf
- night/evening
- star
- sun
- moon
- earth/soil
- salt
- mountain
- tree
- rain
- wind
- bird
- flesh/meat
- liver
- skin/hide
- knee
- breast/chest
- person/human
- man
- woman
- child
- hair/fur
- mouth
- neck
- foot/leg
- feather
- grease/fat
- smoke
- ash/soot
- sand
- wood
- root
- rope/cord
- path/road
- year
Verbs
- die
- see/look/watch
- hear/listen
- know
- drink
- give
- come
- stand
- sit/set
- lie/lay
- fly
- eat
- bite
- burn
- kill
- say/tell/speak/talk
- laugh
Adjectives
- new
- full
- good
- long
- red
- black
- white
- green
- yellow
- small/little
- big/large
- wide/broad
- heavy
- old
- dry
Other
- I/me
- you
- what/which
- who/whom
- one/a/an
- two
- not/no
- this/these
- we/us
- all/everything/everyone
You’ll notice that this list contains some very basic words but not necessarily the most frequent words, so it’s hardly an ideal place to start for language study. For the next phase of this project, I took word frequency into account to make the list more practical and well rounded.
The Next 105 Items #
Since every language is different, with its own particular (often difficult to translate) grammatical words, I limited my analysis of word frequency to Mandarin, Spanish, and English. For each, I started with a reputable list of the language’s 100 most frequent words. Then, I compared this to another list generated from a corpus of subtitles from TV and movies. For a vocabulary item to make the cut, it had to appear in both lists. Once I had a list for each of these three languages, I threw out all the items that only appeared in one of the languages. What was left could tentatively be called the most frequently expressed concepts in the most widely spoken languages on the planet.
Of course, there was some overlap with the original 95-item list (i.e., items 36, 55, 57, 69, 73, 86, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, and 95), but most of the vocabulary items were new. I then took all the items that I’d filtered out of my first list for not appearing in more than one of the reference lists and added those back in, just to make sure all the really basic concepts were covered. Much to my delight, I wound up with 105 additional vocabulary items, bringing the total to an even 200.
Nouns
- time/instance/occurrence
- shade/shadow
- house/home
- head
- belly/abdomen
- navel/belly-button
- heart/core
- back
- thigh
- wing
- nail/claw
- animal/beast
- ant
- cat
- pig
- snake
- worm
- parent/father/mother
- sibling/brother/sister
- spouse/husband/wife
- day
- cloud
- snow
- ice
- river/stream
- sea/ocean
- seed
- grass/lawn
- flower/blossom
- bark/husk
Verbs
- do/make
- be
- become/get
- have
- want
- can/be-able-to
- think/consider
- go
- walk/run
- take
- carry/wear
- tie/bind
- hide
- fall
- cry/weep
- blow
- suck
- hit/beat
- crush/grind
- live
- sleep
- work
- play
- swim
- hunt
- dance
- sing
- count
- vomit
Adjectives
- right/correct/proper
- bad/wrong
- far/distant
- hard (not soft)
- thick
- thin
- narrow
- sweet
- bitter
- hot
- warm
- cold
- wet
- smooth
- sharp
- dull (not sharp)
- dirty
- short
- round
Other
- it/he/him/she/her/they/them/the
- itself/oneself/himself/herself/-self
- that/those
- other/another/others
- no/none/no-one
- and
- or
- but/yet/except
- at/in/on
- to/toward
- of/from/’s (possessive)
- by/through/per/for/because
- with
- over/above/on
- for/in-order-to
- so/then (effect)
- then/right-away (sequence)
- now/still/doing (ongoing)
- did/done (past)
- will/be-going-to (future)
- much/many
- very/really
- where
- when
- how/like/as
- if/whether
- yesterday
The List in Other Languages #
I originlly posted this list on the now-defunct Duolingo discussion forums back in 2014. I then posted some translations and asked for help translating the items into different languages. Here’s what we have so far:
Contributing #
If you’d like to help with this project by offering feedback on my translations or translating the list into a new language, please hit me up on social media. I’d love to keep this list growing.