In following up a recent post on iTalki about recent video discussion word frequency (among other things but stemming from Zipf's Law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCn8zs912OE), I decided to try to learn the translations in my target languages of the 100 most common English words (available, for example, here: http://www.wordfrequency.info).
There are some minor glitches, for example, the multiple senses & uses of 'to' in English, but I thought I would focus on the verbs for starters. From the top 100 English word list, I found 16 verbs, now alphabetized in English) and translated them into Spanish (which I am learning, so please correct as needed). Conjugation is not included of course, so that's something to learn, but I guess the main point for me is that these are very common verbs, so I'd better learn them!
to be: ser, estar
can: poder
to do: hacer
to find: encontrar
to get: obtener
to give: dar
to go: ir
to have: tener
to look: mirar
to make: hacer
to say: decir
to see: ver
to take: llevar
to think: pensar
to use: usar
to want: desear
Other projects could be conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions; this may not be useful for all languages, and may not take one near fluency, but I thought I would see what this statistical approach yields. Your thoughts?
Jeptha- I like it... I like the approach. I believe that the more you know, the quicker you learn. So learning the oft used words first should speed learning. Thanks for the list. I am surprised at some on the list and of some missing. Also, I have some suggestions regarding which spanish word to learn: querer in place of desear, maybe conseguir in place of obtener. I would add: hablar and seguir.
Thank you, Sven, for your helpful changes and suggestions. I will incorporate them into the list!
