The 50 most common words in French
Posted by Josh on 5th May 2025 in the blog in the vocabulary category
Did you know that there are over 100,000 words in Le Grand Robert, one of France’s leading dictionaries?
Luckily, you don’t need to know all 100,000 words to be fluent in French. In fact, studies suggest that you can be conversational by knowing as few as 5,000 words.
Of course, if you’re going to learn 5,000 words, you should priorities the most commonly used words in the language. Our vocabulary lists cover some of the most frequently used words in different categories, such as transport, animals and food.
But what are the most commonly used words in general? Unsurprisingly, they’re a mixture of articles, nouns, verbs and prepositions and other word classes. These are words that crop up in all kinds of situations and sentences, so they’re extremely important to learn.
If you’re just starting out learning French, it can be confusing to confront a list of frequently used words without any contextual grounding. But if you can memorise all fifty, you’re on your way to a solid understanding of the language.
The fifty commonest words in French come from Wiktionary’s frequency lists. In this case, the words are taken from a sample of film subtitles, which provide a helpful insight into how French is commonly spoken. As we’ve written elsewhere, watching movies in French is a great way to improve your French language skills passively.
1. je | I (subject pronoun, first person)
2. de | of/from
3. est | is (present tense of être, third person singular)
4. pas | not
5. le | the (masculine singular)
6. vous | you (informal plural/formal singular)
7. la | the (feminine singular)
8. tu | you (informal singular)
9. que | that
10. un | a (masculine singular)
11. il | he
12. et | and
13. à | to
14. a | has (present tense of avoir, third person singular)
15. ne | not
16. les | the (plural)
17. ce | this (masculine singular)
18. en | in/by
19. on | people/on
20. ça | it
21. une | a (feminine singular)
22. ai | have (present tense of avoir, first person singular)
23. pour | for
24. des | some/of (plural)
25. moi | me
26. qui | who
27. nous | we
28. y | there
29. mais | but
30. me | myself
31. dans | in
32. du | of the/some
33. bien | well
34. elle | she
35. si | if
36. tout | all
37. plus | more
38. non | no
39. mon | my
40. suis | am (present tense of être, first person singular)
41. te | yourself
42. au | to
43. avec | with
44. va | goes (present tense of aller, third person singular)
45. oui | yes
46. toi | you (singular informal accusative)
47. fait | does (present tense of faire, third person singular)
48. ils | they (masculine plural)
49. as | have (present tense of avoir, second person singular form)
50. être | to be
This list was compiled by user Hermitd on Wiktionary. Edits have been made to clarify the forms of the words in English.
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