Learn Top 100, 500, 1000+
Most Frequent French Words

Research on language understanding shows that learning French efficiently depends on learning the most frequent words first, rather than memorizing long vocabulary lists. In our large-scale study measuring how understanding grows with vocabulary size, we quantified how much real French learners can comprehend at each stage of learning.

According to the research, learning the top 100 French words gives you about 53% language understanding, the top 500 words about 68%, and the top 1000 words over 75% of real-world French. This page focuses on the first step: the Top 100 most frequent French words, which form the foundation of everyday comprehension.

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Top 100 Most Frequent French Words

Below is a representative list of the Top 100 most frequent French words, ordered by real-world usage frequency.

#	Word	#	Word	#	Word	#	Word
1	de	26	qui	51	fait	76	après
2	la	27	au	52	moi	77	aussi
3	le	28	se	53	savoir	78	toi
4	à	29	de la	54	lui	79	leur
5	et	30	on	55	vouloir	80	ma
6	est	31	par	56	cette	81	jour
7	que	32	elle	57	ils	82	ici
8	en	33	sur	58	ou	83	rien
9	je	34	avec	59	dire	84	quand
10	un	35	plus	60	suivre	85	sans
11	les	36	ça	61	non	86	très
12	il	37	faire	62	ses	87	votre
13	ce	38	mais	63	mon	88	entre
14	avoir	39	aller	64	été	89	prendre
15	des	40	son	65	devoir	90	venir
16	être	41	pouvoir	66	deux	91	chose
17	ne	42	me	67	à la	92	tous
18	une	43	si	68	dit	93	bon
19	pas	44	nous	69	oui	94	premier
20	du	45	y	70	as	95	es
21	A	46	comme	71	quoi	96	pourquoi
22	vous	47	te	72	même	97	quelque
23	dans	48	tout	73	voir	98	autre
24	pour	49	bien	74	alors	99	encore
25	tu	50	sa	75	ces	100	penser

What to Do Next

The top 100 words establish the core of French understanding. The largest gains come as learners move to the top 300 and 500 words, where comprehension grows rapidly, and then to 1000+ words, where French becomes comfortable to read and understand in real contexts.

WRD is built on the same research and tracks language understanding precisely as each word is learned, guiding learners from the top 100 French words to higher levels in the most efficient way possible.

The WRD app supports step-by-step learning of the top 100, 500, and 1000 most common words.

→ Download WRD and start learning today

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