I am looking for a list of most commonly _spoken_ German words. 

This seems like it would be an ideal resource for the many thousands
of people who want to learn the German language. It should contain at
least 1000 words and be ranked such the the first words are the most
commonly used. I have studied "most common word" lists taken from
written sources but have found that these differ largely from words
most often spoken.

---

Request for Question Clarification by alienintelligence-ga on 18 Oct 2002 21:15 PDT

Hi tgs...

Should we include "small words" like a, an, the.

Would you consider the "chat" in a german chatroom
to be equivalent to spoken words? I know from personal
experience I chat like I speak verbally (in english).
I therefore presume the same for other languages.

thanks,
-AI

---

Clarification of Question by tgs-ga on 19 Oct 2002 01:07 PDT

regarding Request for Question Clarification by alienintelligence-ga
on 18 Oct 2002 21:15 PDT

Yes, I think a German chat room would be an excellent source for this
kind of list. If I were to complile one myself, this is where I would
go. But I was hoping maybe someone else already had. :)

You are quite right, tgs,

  Frequency Dictionaries, which lists words in the order of decreasing
  frquency of use, are excellent tool for learning a language. They 
   exist for just about any language in printed form, and recently they
   are available in electronic form as well.

 Here is one on-line list
 http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~adubey/freq-german/

 which has a nice feature of being linked to an german-english dictionary.

  Related is a book  on the most common verbs:
http://www.wileyeurope.com/cda/product/0,,0471540269,00.html

 The search strategy is simply:
 
 Frequency dictionary
 German

   To  order a printed list, you may try Amazon german site. 
    Please do ask for clarification, if you need help with that.

 Hedgie

Thanks!

Here is an article that might help to lead you (or one of the Google
Answers Researchers) to the list you seek -- or, alternatively, to
explain why you cannot find it:

"Wortschatz eines deutschen Durchschnitts-Sprechers", Post von Goethe
Budapest 25/99 (17.12.1999)
hudaf-lis: Archiv
Goethe-Institut
http://www.goethe.de/ms/bud/sfort/hud_arch/hud_2599.htm#5
[See especially the paragraph that begins, "Die Haeufigkeit
gesprochener Woerter ist nur vage schaetzbar."]