The 100 most common Italian words, explained
The 100 most common Italian words start with e (and), non (not), che (that) and di (of). In 247 million words of Italian film and television dialogue, the hundred words in the table below make up 47.5% of everything said, and the first ten alone make up 18.5%. Below is the full list with meanings, and then the six things about it a learner should notice.
The 100 most common Italian words
| # | Word | Meaning | Per million words | Running total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | e | and | 29,908 | 3.0% |
| 2 | non | not | 25,328 | 5.5% |
| 3 | che | that, which, who; what; than | 24,543 | 8.0% |
| 4 | di | of, from; than (comparison) | 23,803 | 10.4% |
| 5 | la | the (fem.); her, it; there (là) | 15,733 | 11.9% |
| 6 | il | the (masc.) | 15,083 | 13.4% |
| 7 | un | a, an; one | 14,390 | 14.9% |
| 8 | a | to, at, in | 13,970 | 16.3% |
| 9 | per | for; through; in order to | 11,602 | 17.4% |
| 10 | è | is; he/she/it is | 10,799 | 18.5% |
| 11 | in | in, into, to | 8,730 | 19.4% |
| 12 | una | a, an; one (fem.) | 8,718 | 20.3% |
| 13 | mi | me; myself; to me | 8,148 | 21.1% |
| 14 | sono | I am; they are | 8,116 | 21.9% |
| 15 | ho | I have | 7,380 | 22.6% |
| 16 | l' | the (before a vowel); him, her, it (before a vowel) | 7,366 | 23.4% |
| 17 | si | oneself, himself/herself/themselves; one (impersonal) | 7,174 | 24.1% |
| 18 | ha | he/she/it has | 6,730 | 24.8% |
| 19 | ma | but | 6,679 | 25.4% |
| 20 | lo | the (masc. before s+cons/z); him, it | 6,101 | 26.0% |
| 21 | cosa | thing; what (che cosa) | 5,921 | 26.6% |
| 22 | con | with | 5,830 | 27.2% |
| 23 | no | no | 5,802 | 27.8% |
| 24 | le | the (fem. pl.); to her; them (fem.) | 5,771 | 28.4% |
| 25 | ti | you, yourself (object) | 5,690 | 28.9% |
| 26 | se | if; whether; oneself (sé) | 5,377 | 29.5% |
| 27 | da | from, by; since; at (someone's place) | 5,302 | 30.0% |
| 28 | i | the (masc. pl.) | 5,188 | 30.5% |
| 29 | come | how; like, as | 5,054 | 31.0% |
| 30 | io | I | 4,644 | 31.5% |
| 31 | ci | us; ourselves; there; about it | 4,578 | 31.9% |
| 32 | hai | you have | 4,199 | 32.4% |
| 33 | questo | this, this one | 4,094 | 32.8% |
| 34 | perché | why; because | 4,073 | 33.2% |
| 35 | bene | well; good (the good), fine | 3,962 | 33.6% |
| 36 | qui | here | 3,756 | 34.0% |
| 37 | sei | you are; six | 3,729 | 34.3% |
| 38 | del | of the (masc.); some | 3,589 | 34.7% |
| 39 | più | more; most; plus; (non...più) no longer | 3,434 | 35.0% |
| 40 | tu | you (informal) | 3,429 | 35.4% |
| 41 | solo | only, just; alone | 3,206 | 35.7% |
| 42 | mio | my, mine | 3,045 | 36.0% |
| 43 | al | to the, at the (masc.) | 3,015 | 36.3% |
| 44 | me | me | 3,007 | 36.6% |
| 45 | così | so, thus, like this | 2,974 | 36.9% |
| 46 | tutto | all, everything, whole | 2,853 | 37.2% |
| 47 | c' | there (c'è: there is); us (ci before e or i) | 2,769 | 37.5% |
| 48 | te | you (informal, after preposition); tea (tè) | 2,760 | 37.7% |
| 49 | era | (he/she/it) was; era, age | 2,662 | 38.0% |
| 50 | della | of the (fem.); some | 2,552 | 38.3% |
| 51 | mia | my; mine (fem.) | 2,469 | 38.5% |
| 52 | fatto | fact; done, made (participle) | 2,424 | 38.7% |
| 53 | fare | to do, to make | 2,363 | 39.0% |
| 54 | essere | to be; being (noun) | 2,358 | 39.2% |
| 55 | so | (I) know (sapere) | 2,333 | 39.5% |
| 56 | quando | when | 2,292 | 39.7% |
| 57 | sì | yes | 2,278 | 39.9% |
| 58 | ora | now; hour | 2,265 | 40.1% |
| 59 | lei | she, her; you (formal) | 2,244 | 40.4% |
| 60 | gli | the (masc. pl. before vowel/s+cons); to him; to them | 2,229 | 40.6% |
| 61 | ne | of it, of them; about it; from there | 2,208 | 40.8% |
| 62 | oh | oh | 2,173 | 41.0% |
| 63 | questa | this (fem.), this one | 2,164 | 41.2% |
| 64 | detto | said, told (dire) | 2,145 | 41.5% |
| 65 | ok | OK, okay | 2,079 | 41.7% |
| 66 | va | goes; he/she/it goes | 2,056 | 41.9% |
| 67 | quello | that (masc.), that one | 1,966 | 42.1% |
| 68 | mai | never; ever | 1,931 | 42.3% |
| 69 | alla | to the, at the (fem.) | 1,901 | 42.4% |
| 70 | o | or | 1,896 | 42.6% |
| 71 | anche | also, too, even | 1,894 | 42.8% |
| 72 | stato | state; been (participle of essere/stare); status | 1,872 | 43.0% |
| 73 | abbiamo | we have | 1,796 | 43.2% |
| 74 | tutti | everyone, all (masc. pl.), everybody | 1,789 | 43.4% |
| 75 | dei | of the (masc. pl.); some | 1,770 | 43.5% |
| 76 | grazie | thank you, thanks | 1,765 | 43.7% |
| 77 | chi | who | 1,752 | 43.9% |
| 78 | sta | stays, is; he/she/it stays | 1,749 | 44.1% |
| 79 | molto | much, a lot, very, many | 1,741 | 44.2% |
| 80 | voglio | (I) want (volere) | 1,706 | 44.4% |
| 81 | tuo | your, yours (informal) | 1,681 | 44.6% |
| 82 | beh | well…, um | 1,680 | 44.8% |
| 83 | sia | whether… or (sia… sia); (that) he/she/it be (subjunctive of essere) | 1,662 | 44.9% |
| 84 | nel | in the (= in + il) | 1,630 | 45.1% |
| 85 | lui | he; him | 1,622 | 45.2% |
| 86 | allora | then, so; at that time | 1,598 | 45.4% |
| 87 | posso | (I) can (potere) | 1,598 | 45.6% |
| 88 | ehi | hey | 1,582 | 45.7% |
| 89 | prima | before, first; earlier | 1,566 | 45.9% |
| 90 | tua | your; yours (fem.) | 1,547 | 46.0% |
| 91 | suo | his, her, its; your (formal), hers | 1,545 | 46.2% |
| 92 | niente | nothing; anything (in questions) | 1,522 | 46.3% |
| 93 | qualcosa | something, anything | 1,519 | 46.5% |
| 94 | già | already; formerly | 1,518 | 46.6% |
| 95 | sai | (you) know (sapere) | 1,518 | 46.8% |
| 96 | siamo | we are | 1,512 | 46.9% |
| 97 | un' | a, an (fem., before a vowel) | 1,501 | 47.1% |
| 98 | davvero | really, truly | 1,465 | 47.2% |
| 99 | ancora | still, yet; again; more; anchor | 1,448 | 47.4% |
| 100 | hanno | they have | 1,447 | 47.5% |
"Per million words" is how many times the word is said in a million words of subtitles. "Running total" is the share of all dialogue covered by that word and every word above it.
These are word forms, counted as they are said: sono, è and sei are three rows of one verb, and a verb form names its verb in brackets, so voglio is "(I) want (volere)". That is how a learner first meets them, and it is why this list differs from a dictionary's.
1. All seven words for "the" are in the hundred
English has one word for "the". Italian has seven, chosen by gender, number and the sound that follows, and every one of them is in the table:
| Before most consonants | Before a vowel | Before s + consonant, z, gn | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine singular | il libro | l'amico | lo zaino |
| Masculine plural | i libri | gli amici | gli zaini |
| Feminine singular | la casa | l'amica | la zia |
| Feminine plural | le case | le amiche | le zie |
Six more rows are "the" fused with a preposition: del, della and dei ("of the"), al and alla ("to the") and nel ("in the"). Italian joins the two words into one, and the joined forms are said so often that they rank on their own.
2. "No" is said more often than "yes"
No is number 23 and sì is number 57. Part of that is drama, which is full of refusals, but most of it is that no does more jobs. It is "no", it is the tag on the end of a question (vieni, no?, "you're coming, aren't you?"), and it turns up inside phrases like come no ("of course"). And non is second on the whole list, because Italian puts it in front of the verb and keeps it even when the sentence already has a negative word: non vedo niente, literally "I don't see nothing". Niente and mai ("never") are both in the table to prove it.
3. "I" is number thirty
In English, I heads the list. Io is number 30, tu ("you") is 40, lei ("she", or the polite "you") is 59 and lui ("he") is 85. The verb ending already says who is doing it, so voglio needs no io, and Italian says the pronoun only for emphasis or contrast: io lo voglio, tu no, "I want it, you don't". German, which cannot leave its pronouns out, has ich at number one; the comparison is in the 100 most common German words.
4. Three rows end in an apostrophe
L', c' and un' are all in the hundred. They are lo or la, ci and una shortened before a vowel: l'amico, c'è ("there is"), un'amica. Subtitles are counted with a break at the apostrophe, so each shortened form has a row of its own, and c', which is almost always the c' of c'è, is in the top fifty on the strength of that one phrase.
5. Several of the hundred are two words that look the same
| Word | Mostly means | Can also mean |
|---|---|---|
| sei | you are | six |
| ora | now | hour |
| era | (it) was | era, age |
| stato | been | state |
| ancora | still, again | anchor |
| fatto | done, made | fact |
The commoner sense is nearly always the grammatical one: sei is "you are" far more often than it is "six". The subtitle count cannot separate the two, so each pair shares one row, and the meaning column lists both.
6. Two verbs supply thirteen rows
Essere (to be) puts eight forms in the table: è, sono, sei, era, essere, stato, sia and siamo. Avere (to have) puts five there: ho, ha, hai, abbiamo and hanno. Between them they are the backbone of the past tense as well, because ho fatto ("I did") and sono andato ("I went") are built from them. Added up form by form rather than row by row, Italian's verbs are ranked in the 100 most common Italian verbs.
How to learn them
- Learn them in sentences, not as a list. Ci, ne and si only make sense once you have seen them used a few times.
- Learn the articles as the table above. Seven forms, one pattern, and it is the same pattern for del, al and nel.
- Learn each common verb as a small family. Ho, hai, ha, abbiamo, hanno are five rows here and one thing to learn.
- Leave the pronouns out. Saying io in every sentence is the clearest sign of an English speaker.
How far the next thousand words take you is measured in how many words you need to speak Italian. Verbavia (our own course) teaches Italian vocabulary in frequency order, with a recording of each word: the course's Italian word list gives the first thousand in order with translations and a download, the two-minute Italian vocabulary test shows how many you already know, and the free Italian course starts from the top of the list. Two small sets have pages of their own: numbers 1 to 100 in Italian and the days of the week in Italian.
How it was counted
- Source. The Italian list from FrequencyWords, which counts every word in the OpenSubtitles 2018 collection of film and television subtitles.
- Left out: names and untranslated English. People's names, place names (john, york) and English left in the subtitles (the) are taken out before ranking. They are frequent because films are full of them, and they are not Italian words. Ok and oh stay in, because Italian speakers say them.
- Added together: missing accents. Subtitles often type perche or perche' for perché and piu for più. Those are counted with the correctly spelt word.
- Meanings. Where a word is in Verbavia's Italian course list, the meaning is the course's. That list holds dictionary words, so verb forms and feminine and plural forms were given their meanings by hand in the same style.
- Subtitles are not street recordings. Many of the films were first made in another language and translated, so this is Italian as it is subtitled. It is still the largest record of everyday dialogue there is.
The same count for English itself is in the 1,000 most common English words.
Sources
- Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J. (2016). OpenSubtitles2016: Extracting Large Parallel Corpora from Movie and TV Subtitles. Proceedings of LREC 2016. aclanthology.org
- Dave, H. FrequencyWords: frequency lists from OpenSubtitles 2018 (
it), content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. github.com - Verbavia's Italian word list, for the meanings of the words it contains. The ranks, rates and running totals are computed by
scripts/frequency_thousand.pyin Verbavia's repository and printed from its output rather than typed.