How many French words do you know?
Français · a two-minute vocabulary test · free, no sign-up
You will see 36 words, one at a time — about two minutes. Tap I know it only if you know what the word means; otherwise tap No. 6 of them are made up to look like French, so don't guess: a yes to a word that does not exist lowers your score.
On a keyboard: Y or → for yes, N or ← for no, Backspace to go back one.
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Your French vocabulary
Those words make up about of everything said in French films and TV — the most common words do most of the work. How this is worked out.
Where your words are
How many of the words in each part of the list you know, from the most common down.
Learn the words you are missing, in order
The course deals this same list from the top down, one lesson a day, with the grammar that holds the words together. Or read the list itself: the most common French words, with translations.
About the French test
French reaches past rank 19,000 in the course's list, so the top band is wide and holds genuinely rare words — do not be discouraged by it. French spelling carries a great deal of silent grammar, so judge whether you know the word, not whether you could spell every form of it. Many French words are also English words; say yes to one only if you know what it means in French, which is not always what it means in English.
How the number is worked out
The test draws on the top 20,000 entries of the course's French frequency list, cut into 6 bands. Names, conjugated forms glossed as forms of another word, and grammatical particles are set aside, because none of them is a word you could be asked about on its own; what is left is 11,443 words, and that is the most this test can measure.
| Band | List ranks | Words it stands for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1–1,000 | 682 |
| 2 | 1,001–2,000 | 626 |
| 3 | 2,001–4,000 | 1,195 |
| 4 | 4,001–7,000 | 1,787 |
| 5 | 7,001–11,000 | 2,269 |
| 6 | 11,001–20,000 | 4,884 |
Each attempt shows 5 words chosen at random from every band, and 6 made-up words, all shuffled together. Your yes-rate on each band is corrected by your yes-rate on the made-up words — the share of the words you do not know that you would say yes to anyway — using the standard correction for guessing: known share = (yes-rate on the band − yes-rate on made-up words) ÷ (1 − yes-rate on made-up words), never below zero. Each band's corrected share is multiplied by the number of words it stands for, and the bands are added up. If more than four in ten made-up words get a yes, no number is given, because there is then no telling knowledge from guessing.
With 5 words a band the test is quick, and that makes it an estimate, not a census: two attempts can differ by a few hundred words on a short list and by more on the wide top bands of a long one, so take it twice and split the difference if you want a steadier figure. It measures recognition — whether you know a word when you see it — which always runs ahead of the words you can produce yourself.
The second number is how much of ordinary French those words account for, and it is measured rather than assumed: the OpenSubtitles frequency counts — 318,214,450 words of film and television subtitles — say what share of all the words spoken there the most frequent 100, 1,000 or 10,000 make up. Your known share of each band is applied to that band's slice of the curve. Two cautions. The subtitle counts are of word forms, so hablo and habla count separately, while this test counts dictionary words; knowing a word usually means knowing several of its forms, so if anything the true figure is a little higher. And coverage is not comprehension: knowing nine words in ten still leaves a word you do not know in most sentences, and that is often the word that matters.
There is no ranking against other learners here, because we do not have that data and will not invent it. How much of real French the first 100, 1,000 and 10,000 words cover is measured in how many words do you need to speak French.