Chinese Vocabulary by Frequency

Mandarin Chinese words ranked by corpus frequency: top 100, top 500, top 3000. Source: SUBTLEX-CH subtitle corpus.

Frequency lists based on the SUBTLEX-CH corpus (Cai & Brysbaert 2010), derived from ~33 million words of Chinese subtitle text.

Coverage Statistics

List Words Text Coverage
Top 100 words 100 ~65% of everyday text
Top 500 words 500 ~75% of conversation
Top 1,000 characters 1,000 ~90% of common written text
Top 3,000 words 3,000 ~90% of standard modern text
Top 10,000 words 10,000 ~99%+ of modern text

Key insight: Learning the top 1,000 characters gives you access to 90% of any Chinese text you encounter. This is achievable in 6–12 months of focused study.

Top 100 Most Frequent Words

Rank Chinese Pinyin English Notes
1 的 de possessive/attributive particle Most common character in Chinese
2 一 yī one; a Also used in phrases
3 是 shì to be Copula (before nouns only)
4 不 bù not, no Changes to bú before 4th tone
5 了 le completion/change aspect NOT a past tense marker
6 人 rén person, people
7 我 wǒ I, me
8 在 zài at, in; to be at
9 有 yǒu to have; there is/are
10 他 tā he, him Also 她 (she), 它 (it)
11 这 zhè this 这个, 这里
12 中 zhōng middle; China 中国, 中文
13 大 dà big, large
14 来 lái to come
15 上 shàng up, above; on Also: to go to
16 国 guó country, nation 中国, 美国
17 为 wéi/wèi for; to be (formal)
18 以 yǐ with; by means of Formal
19 到 dào to arrive; to Direction/resultative
20 说 shuō to say, speak
21 和 hé and; with
22 时 shí time; when
23 地 dì/de earth; adverb particle
24 出 chū to exit, come out
25 就 jiù then; precisely; as soon as Very versatile adverb
26 你 nǐ you
27 年 nián year
28 着 zhe ongoing state aspect
29 那 nà that
30 要 yào want; will; need Context-dependent
31 会 huì can; will; meeting
32 去 qù to go
33 都 dōu all; both
34 没 méi not (for 有/past) 没有 = don't have
35 也 yě also, too
36 对 duì correct; facing; toward
37 里 lǐ inside; unit of distance
38 可 kě can; may 可以, 可能
39 后 hòu after, behind
40 很 hěn very Also copula intensifier
41 什么 shénme what
42 我们 wǒmen we, us
43 生 shēng to be born; life
44 自 zì self; from 自己, 自然
45 行 xíng/háng to walk; OK; row
46 做 zuò to do, make
47 这个 zhège this one
48 看 kàn to look, see
49 只 zhǐ only Also: measure word (zhī)
50 知道 zhīdào to know (a fact)

Full top-500 and top-3000 lists will be generated by the chinese vocab frequency CLI command.

Data Sources