500 everyday words.
You don’t need thousands of words to start speaking. A small core — the most frequent few hundred — covers the large majority of everyday English. Master these first, in phrases, not lists.
Why a small core goes far
A few hundred high-frequency words make up most of normal speech. Learn the workhorses and you can say almost anything, even before you know the “perfect” word.
The verbs you’ll use most
Around twenty verbs do an enormous amount of work:
The “glue” words
These hold sentences together — pronouns, articles, prepositions, and connectors:
- Pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, this, that
- Articles & quantifiers: a, an, the, some, any, much, many, a lot of
- Prepositions: in, on, at, to, for, with, from, by, about, of
- Connectors: and, but, or, so, because, when, if, that
- Question words: what, where, when, who, why, how, which
Everyday nouns & time words
How to learn them — in phrases
Don’t memorise single words. Capture each in a tiny sentence you’d actually say, and save it to your Notebook in the My Desk drawer. Then parse it here to see how the pieces fit:
Pick 10 words today. Write one sentence each. Tomorrow, write them again from memory. That’s how a core sticks.