How many Mandarin words do you know?
中文（普通话） · 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 Mandarin, 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 Mandarin vocabulary
Those words make up about of everything said in Mandarin 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
Start the free Mandarin course
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 Mandarin words, with translations.
About the Mandarin test
The course's Mandarin list is Verbavia's own frequency ranking of 6,000 words, so this test measures up to about 6,000 — enough to tell a beginner from an upper-intermediate learner, though a very advanced learner will simply reach the ceiling. Each word is shown in simplified characters with its pinyin underneath, because it is fair to ask whether you know a word, not whether you can read it: if you would understand it spoken, say yes. The made-up words are two common characters that do not make a word, with their ordinary readings.
How the number is worked out
The test draws on the top 6,000 entries of the course's Mandarin frequency list, cut into 5 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 5,871 words, and that is the most this test can measure.
| Band | List ranks | Words it stands for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1–500 | 468 |
| 2 | 501–1,000 | 474 |
| 3 | 1,001–2,000 | 975 |
| 4 | 2,001–3,500 | 1,479 |
| 5 | 3,501–6,000 | 2,475 |
Each attempt shows 6 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 6 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 Mandarin those words account for, and it is measured rather than assumed: the OpenSubtitles frequency counts — 85,487,865 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 Mandarin the first 100, 1,000 and 10,000 words cover is measured in how many words do you need to speak Mandarin.