A count of around eleven million words showed that only 207 word forms make up over 50 percent of the German written language, according to their frequency ( occurrence ). Such a list is particularly interesting for linguistics , cryptanalysis and text compression . It should be pointed out that the frequency of words (grammatical word: word form ) and not of words (semantic word: word paradigm or lemma ) was determined here and that conclusions about the size of the vocabulary are therefore only possible to a limited extent.
is, des, himself, with, that, that, he, it, one, me,
on, so, one, also, as, on, after, like, im, for
These forms (with the exception of the form one ) are monosyllabic, as expected from Zipf's law , and are no more than five letters long. Particles , in particular conjunctions and prepositions , as well as personal pronouns and articles are predominantly represented as word classes , for example all monosyllabic forms of the specific article (i.e. apart from , their, those ). As the only verb appears to be the third in his Person Singular on. The only word form on this list that was influenced by the 1996 spelling reform is that .
Another 70 forms make up another 15.3% of the words
one, but, from, through, if, only, was, still, will, at,
has, we, what, will, be, one, which, are, or, for,
his, more, on, because, now, under, very, even, already, here,
until, have, their, then, them, his, all, again, my, time,
against, from, whole, individual, where, must, without, one, can, be
The most common noun after this count is time , but the count generally does not distinguish between upper and lower case, which can falsify the result. Another verbal stem shows have in various forms.
Another 107 forms then make up 7.25% of the words
yes, was, now, always, his, well, this, hers, would, this,
but, because who, nothing, this, everything, was, wants, Lord, much,
my, well, should, let, do, this, their, further, life,
right, something, none, his, whether, you, all, great, years, wise,
become, the same, whole, German, lets, maybe, mine
Say appears as the first main verb in the list, while knowing is not counted separately from the color name in white . The competition from Paragraph indicates a corpus that consists to a significant extent of legal texts.
The hundred most common words in German
This list dates from 2001 and therefore still contains the word mark , which also has other meanings. The spoken language is not taken into account. Some word forms such as articles appear twice because the capitalization (at the beginning of the sentence) is taken into account.
Place 1–10
space
word
1
of the
2
the
3
and
4th
in
5
the
6th
from
7th
to
8th
the
9
With
10
themselves
11-20th place
space
word
11
of
12
on
13
For
14th
is
15th
in the
16
the
17th
Not
18th
a
19th
The
20th
a
Place 21-30
space
word
21st
as
22nd
also
23
it
24
on
25th
become
26th
out
27
he
28
Has
29
that
30th
she
31-40 place
space
word
31
to
32
becomes
33
at
34
one
35
Of the
36
around
37
at the
38
are
39
yet
40
how
41-50 place
space
word
41
one
42
over
43
one
44
The
45
so
46
she
47
to the
48
was
49
to have
50
just
51-60 place
space
word
51
or
52
but
53
in front
54
to
55
to
56
more
57
by
58
man
59
be
60
has been
61-70 place
space
word
61
be
62
In
63
percent
64
would have
65
can
66
against
67
from
68
can
69
beautiful
70
if
71-80 place
space
word
71
have
72
his
73
mark
74
your
75
then
76
under
77
we
78
should
79
I
80
one
Place 81-90
space
word
81
It
82
year
83
two
84
Years
85
this
86
this
87
again
88
no
89
Clock
90
his
91-100 place
space
word
91
been
92
And
93
want
94
between
95
in the
96
always
97
millions
98
A
99
What
100
said
The most common nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and numbers
In the case of nouns, verbs and adjectives, only the respective basic forms are given. It was determined which word occurred frequently and its basic word was noted in the list. With the pronouns, the capitalized forms of politeness were not taken into account. In the number words, the forms of the number one could not be distinguished from those of the indefinite article .
literature
Werner König : dtv atlas on the German language (= dtv . Volume3025 ). 10th, revised edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-03025-9 , word frequency, p.114-115 (256 pages).
Friedrich Wilhelm Kaeding (Hrsg.): Frequency dictionary of the German language . Established by a working committee of the German stenography systems. (= Basic studies in cybernetics and humanities . Volume4 ). Schnelle, Quickborn near Hamburg 1963, p.648–671 (facsimile print of the original edition, self-published by the editor, Steglitz near Berlin 1897. 55 pages; supplement to volume 4).
1st part: word and syllable counts (partial reproduction).
Part 2: Counting letters (excerpt from the addendum).
Helmut Meier : German language statistics . With a foreword by Lutz Mackensen . Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1967.
Volume 1: Building blocks for comparative language statistics. 2nd, enlarged and improved edition, XIII, 406 pp.
Volume 2: Relative frequency values for the 512 most common German word forms, 150 pp.
Helmut Meier: German language statistics . 2nd expanded edition. 2 volumes in 1 volume. Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1978 (422 and 150 pages).
Arno Ruoff (Ed.): Frequency dictionary of spoken language. Sorted by parts of speech alphabetically, declining alphabetically and by frequency . With the collaboration of Harald Fuchs (= Idiomatica . Volume8 ). 2nd unchanged edition. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1990, ISBN 3-484-24008-3 (517 pages).
Günther Thomé, Dorothea Thomé: Common words in German: Basic concept of spelling. What is easy What is difficult? Oldenburg: isb-Fachverlag 2018 ( ISBN 978-3-942122252 , 64 color pages, € 6.80, reading sample at: www.isb-oldenburg.de/material.html).
