i'm looking for a list of the top 4,000 or 5,000 most used spanish
words, or for a book containing them.
I'm trying to improve my Spanish by studying words; I think I know
about 2,000 words now, and I want to learn the next 2,000 or so
important ones.
A dictionary contains too many words, most Spanish instruction books
too few.

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Request for Question Clarification by tehuti-ga on 27 Jan 2003 08:27 PST

Hello michiel,

The only resource I have been able to find which deals with the same
order of magnitude (c. 5000 words) that interests you is based on
vocabulary use of nearly 80 years ago.  It is within a published book,
and I have identified an available secondhand copy.  Please let me
know if this would interest you.

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Clarification of Question by michiel-ga on 27 Jan 2003 09:41 PST

80 years seems very anachronistic. I'm afraid that wouldn't work. If
it is hard to find 5,000, perhaps anywhere up to 10,000 might be
easier?
Does the Google search engine itself have a list of the most
frequently used Spanish words in its index??

I thought your enquiry would be simple at first, especially since I
own a book called "Five Thousand French Words". The best way to
increase your vocabulary, rather than reading lists, is to buy a
large, good quality Spanish/English dictionary and reading spanish
articles looking up words as you come to them. This means that you
learn words you're most likely to commonly encounter in a
Spanish-speaking environment, rather than as with word lists.

There's a list of online Spanish resources here:
http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/types/flnews/spanish.html

I thought this would be easy too. It seems weird it's not readily
available somewhere. I have been doing just what you suggest, but it
is really slow, and I want to boost my vocab more quickly. I want to
have a list like this in order to ensure the relevance of the words
I'm learning...

Well, about all there is can be found on this list:
http://www.swan.ac.uk/cals/calsres/encyclopedia/Frequency_Spanish.htm

The one I was thinking of in my clarification request was the Eaton
book.  However, even that dates from 1940, and the Spanish part is
based on the 1927 book by Buchanan.  The Alameda and Cuetos volume
dates from 1995, but contains 2 million words.  The CD that is
mentioned is published by the University of Barcelona:
http://www.publicacions.ub.es/ Again, it doesn't really sound like
what you are seeking.