This is probably no secret to you: the French langage is a very rich one, with sometimes many words and expressions to say roughly the same thing, with only a subtle difference of meaning. For example, we have more than 10 ways to say “I am tired” in French: je suis fatigué(e), j’ai sommeil, je suis las(se), je suis épuisé(e), je suis exténué(e), je suis crevé(e), je suis claqué(e), je suis vanné(e), je suis vidé(e), je suis sur les rotules, j’ai un coup de barre…
The French language contains 600 000 to 700 000 words, or 1 million if you include scientific, medical and technical terms.
But how many words are used by an “average” person in his daily life? The answer is: less than 5 000 words.
Far more attainable, right? All the more so as language teachers agree on the fact that you need to master no more than 300 words in order to be understood by others.
Therefore, here are for you the 300 most common French words, organized in 3 categories: nouns, verbs and adjectives followed with a little quiz to help you learn them!
You just have to click on the buttons below!