Most Common French Words

Most common French words
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Les mots les plus fréquents

Start learning French or just satisfy your curiosity with this list of the 25 most common French words.

Click any link for a detailed lesson about that word or set of words.*

1. le, la, l’
les
definite articles the
2. de, d’ preposition of, from, about
3. être verb to be
4. un, une indefinite articles
numbers
a, an
one
5.   avoir verb to have
6.  il subject pronoun he, it
7. ne negative particle ~not
8. ce, c’
(c’est)
indefinite demonstrative pronoun it, this, that
(it is)
9. à preposition to, at, in
10. et coordinating conjunction and
11. je, j’ subject pronoun I
12. pas negative adverb not
13. en preposition to, in, at
14. on subject pronoun one, we, they
15. que, qu’ subordinating conjunction that
16.  vous personal pronoun you
17. faire verb to do, to make
18. pour preposition for, in order to
19. ça indefinite demonstrative pronoun this, that
20. oui answering questions yes
21. dans preposition in, into
22. qui interrogative pronoun
relative pronoun
who, whom
who, what
23. mais coordinating conjunction but
24. se, s’ reflexive pronoun himself, herself, itself,
oneself, themselves
25. le, la, l’
les
direct object pronouns it
them

* Notes

  • I combined different forms (masculine, feminine, plural, contractions) of the same word into a single entry.
  • Whenever possible, I kept homographs with different grammatical functions separate.

Sources

There are numerous "most common French words" lists out there, none of which I entirely agree with. They vary greatly due to the source documents used in the determination, so to create this list, I consulted three sources and combined / sorted them into what makes the most sense to me.

  1. French Language Daily Most Common French Words
  2. Memrise Most Common French Words
  3. Worldlex_FR

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Top 25 French words

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