The most common words in English

The most common word in English is the. It occurs so frequently that it alone accounts for almost 4% of all words that appear in speech and an amazing 6.4% of words that appear in writing. This means that by learning just this one word, a student of English will already be able to understand 4% of the English words they are ever likely to hear in conversation and 6.4% of the words they read. Better still, a student only needs to learn a very small number of words to increase this percentage dramatically. The nine most common words account for over 20% of speech, and to get to an amazing 50% comprehension of words in spoken English, a student need only learn the 63 most common words. The trick is to know which words these are.

Read on to see a list ordered by frequency.

rank	% of speech	word
1	3.96	the
2	6.91	I
3	9.50	you
4	12.02	and
5	14.47	it
6	16.34	a
7	18.10	's
8	19.60	to
9	21.05	of
10	22.48	that
11	23.70	n't
12	24.86	in
13	25.90	we
14	26.92	is
15	27.88	do
16	28.81	they
17	29.62	was
18	30.37	have
19	31.10	what
20	31.83	he
21	32.55	that
22	33.25	to
23	33.89	but
24	34.51	for
25	35.09	be
26	35.65	on
27	36.22	this
28	36.77	know
29	37.30	well
30	37.81	so
31	38.31	oh
32	38.82	got
33	39.29	've
34	39.76	not
35	40.23	are
36	40.68	if
37	41.13	with
38	41.56	no
39	41.99	're
40	42.40	she
41	42.81	at
42	43.22	there
43	43.62	think
44	44.00	yes
45	44.39	just
46	44.75	all
47	45.11	can
48	45.46	then
49	45.80	get
50	46.14	did
51	46.47	or
52	46.80	would
53	47.12	them
54	47.42	'll
55	47.73	one
56	48.01	there
57	48.30	up
58	48.59	go
59	48.88	now
60	49.16	your
61	49.45	had
62	49.72	were
63	50.00	about