Greek Frequency Dictionary 1 - Essential Vocabulary - 2500 Most Common Greek Words
Greek Frequency Dictionary 1 - Essential Vocabulary - 2500 Most Common Greek Words
Greek Frequency Dictionary 1 - Essential Vocabulary - 2500 Most Common Greek Words
br Transaction: 1162
1
MostUsedWords.com presents
Greek
Frequency
Dictionary
Essential Vocabulary
2500 Most Common Greek Words
Book 1
MostUsedWords.com
10685-B Hazelhurst Dr. # 22933
HOUSTON, TX 77043
United States
www.MostUsedWords.com
Thank you for purchasing this book. We hope it serves you well on your language learning journey.
Not all words are created equal. The purpose of this frequency dictionary is to list the most common Greek
words in descending order, so you can learn this language as fast and efficiently as possible.
First, we would like to illustrate the value of a frequency dictionary. For the purpose of example, we have
combined frequency data from various languages (mainly Romance, Slavic and Greekic languages) and made it
into a single chart.
Word Frequency
100
90
80
70
Vocabulary %
60
50
40 Spoken
30
Written
20
10
0
Amount of Words
Above data corresponds with Pareto´s law. Pareto’s law, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that, for many
events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
In language learning, this principle seems to be on steroids. It seems that just 20% of the 20% (95/5) of the most
used words in a language account for roughly all the vocabulary you need.
To put this further in perspective: The authorative Dictionary of Modern Greek (4th edition) by George
Babiniotis lists over 150.000 references in current use. You will only need to know 3.3% (5000 words) to
achieve 95% and 89% fluency in speaking and writing respectively. Knowing the most common 10.000 words,
or just 6.6%, will net you 98% fluency in spoken language and 95% fluency in written texts.
Prepared exclusively for [email protected] Transaction: 1162
5
Keeping this in mind, the value of a frequency dictionary is immense. Study the most frequent words, build your
vocabulary and progress quickly.
One more frequently asked question needs to be answered: how many words do I need to know for varying
levels of fluency?
While it’s important to note that it is impossible to pin down these numbers and statistics with 100% accuracy,
these are a global average of multiple sources.
According to research, this is the amount of vocabulary needed for varying levels of fluency.
1. 250 words: the essential core of a language. Without these words, you cannot construct any meaningful
sentences.
2. 750 words: are used every single day by every person who speaks the language.
3. 2500 words: should enable you to express everything you could possibly want to say, although some
creativity might be required.
4. 5000 words: the active vocabulary of native speakers without higher education.
5. 10,000 words: the active vocabulary of native speakers with higher education.
6. 20,000 words: the amount you need to be able to recognize passively to read, understand, and enjoy a
work of literature such as a novel by a notable author.
Creating an accurate frequency list is more complicated than it seems. Depending on the source material
analyzed, you will get different frequency lists. A corpus on spoken word differs from source texts based on a
written language. That is why we chose subtitles as our source, because, according to science, subtitles cover the
best of both worlds: they correlate with both spoken and written language.
The frequency list is based on an analysis of huge amount of Greek subtitles. If you were to read the source text
used for this book, it would take you around 100 years of non-stop reading. A large base text is absolutely vital
in order to develop an accurate frequency list. The raw data included abit over 1 million entries, or different
“words”. The raw data has been lemmatized; words are given in their dictionary form.
Lemmatization and correct classification does come with its own complications. We list the most common
issues in the following list. The examples below are given in different languages, but they are applicable to
Greek as well.
2. Homographs
Let’s begin with homographs. Put quite simply, a homograph is a group (usually a pair) of words that are spelled
the same way. In example:
Since a dictionary does not list separate entries for the same word, we did not splice Greek homographs in ours.
Because homographs are quite rare, we kindly ask you to use your common sense while using this dictionary. If
you think a particular translation of a homograph is not used fairly often, then just skip learning it.
Some inflections can be classified as multiple parts of speech. Take for example the Spanish word dicho. It
originally ranked somewhere around the 147th most common Spanish word.
As a conjugated verb, dicho is the past participle of “decir - to say” and translates as “said”, while as a noun it
means “saying, expression”.
No way, José, that “saying, expression” is the most 147th most used Spanish word. As previously stated, our
words are lemmatized, and decir is already listed at place 77. Turns out that the noun dicho is around the
11.000th most common words, and thus beyond the scope of our dictionary series.
Some common proper nouns have multiple translations. Take for example “Jack” in our English frequency list.
“Jack” is a very common first name, but also a noun (a jack to lift up a vehicle) and a verb (to steal something).
So is the word “can” It is a conjugation of the verb “to be able” as well as a noun (a tin can, or a can of soft
drink).
With the current technology, it is unfortunately not possible to precisely identify the correct frequency
placements of words like can and Jack words. We came up with a method to accurately estimate the correct
placement of these entries.
In example, a frequency list on the English language listed the noun “can”, like a can of coke, as the 247th most
used word in the English language. Our methods would list it around the 3347th most used word. While not
perfect, we can tell you that our method is more accurate than the methods used by our competitors.
In our opinion, it is important you do know these words. Store them somewhere in your passive vocabulary,
instead of trying to integrate them into your active vocabulary. But in the end, it’s up to you whether you think
you should learn a word, or skip it. We provide the data, it is up to you to select and learn relevant vocabulary.
7. Vulgarities
We also decided to keep out most vulgarities, even though these are rather common in daily speech. We wanted
to keep this book appropriate for readers of all ages. We tried to imagine what a modern-day midwestern
American woman would take offense to, and drew the line there.
At the same time, some words absolutely needed to be clarified. In rare occasions, the usage of vocabulary items
can differ severely in various locales. It could lead to pretty awkward situations if you were not aware of these
differences.
These words have been censored in a way that one can still deduce their meaning, if one is already in the know..
Let’s take the Spanish word coger as an example: ”coger-vb - to take, f*ck (LA)” In Europe, coger is pretty
innocent. But in Latin-America, it has a whole different meaning.
Some sentences are easy, some are more difficult. Some are a direct translation, some are more loosely
translated. Some mimic spoken language, some mimic written language. Some are more high-brow, some are
more colloquial. In short, we tried to include a mix of different types of language, just like you would encounter
in real life. The first book in the series generally contains easier sentences than the 2nd, 3rd and 4th book.
The big secret to learning language is this: build your vocabulary, learn basic grammar and go out there and
speak. Make mistakes, have a laugh and then learn from your mistakes. Wash, rinse, repeat..
We hope you enjoy this frequency dictionary and that it helps you in your journey of learning Greek.
Word Order
Translations
We made the decision to give the most common translation(s) of a word, and respectively the most
common part(s) of speech. It does, however, not mean that this is the only possible translations or the only
part of speech the word can be used for. This is a dictionary for learners, and not an ortographic dictionary.
The pronunciation of foreign vocabulary can be tricky. To help you get it right, we added IPA entries for
each entry. If you already have a base understanding of the pronunciation, you will find the IPA
pronunciation straightforward. For more information, please visit www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org
Frequency Dictionaries
In this series:
Greek Frequency Dictionary 1 – Essential Vocabulary – 2500 Most Common Greek Words
Greek Frequency Dictionary 2 – Intermediate Vocabulary – 2501-5000 Most Common Greek Words
Greek Frequency Dictionary 3 – Advanced Vocabulary – 5001-7500 Most Common Greek Words
Greek Frequency Dictionary 4 – Master Vocabulary – 7501-10000 Most Common Greek Words
Our mission is to provide language learners worldwide with frequency dictionaries for every major and minor
language. We are working hard to accomplish this goal. You can view our selection on
https://store.mostusedwords.com/frequency-dictionaries
Bilingual books
We’re creating a selection of parallel texts. We decided to rework timeless classics, such as Alice in
Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, etc.
Our books are paragraph aligned: on one side of the page you will find the English version of the story, and on
the other side is the translation in the language you’re learning.
To help you in your language learning journey, all our bilingual books come with a dictionary included, created
for that particular book.
For more information, check https://store.mostusedwords.com/bilingual-books . Check back regularly for new
books and languages.
You’ll find reviews of other 3rd party language learning applications, software, audio courses, and apps. There
are so many available, and some are (much) better than others.
Contact
If you have any questions, you can contact us through e-mail [email protected].