A good way to identify the most common words you will use is a bit more time-consuming but it will also give you a better indication of what words you personally use the most.
It involves going about your day and noting down the words you’re using in your native language. Listen to the things you say throughout the day and spot the patterns. You can do verbs one day, nouns the next day, and adjectives the following day.
If you’re using them frequently on a daily basis, it’s likely you’ll need them in your target language as well!
Once you know the most commonly used words, you can use them to describe the ideas and concepts for which you don’t know the exact translation.
For example, you know how to say ‘car’ but you don’t know how to say ‘bus’. All you need to do is say that it’s like a big car for more than 20 people to travel around a city.
Or if you know how to say ‘walk’ but you don’t know how to say ‘run’, you can say it’s like walking but much faster.
See? You don’t have to learn all the words in your target language to be fluent. You don’t need to know all the words out there. What you need to do is identify the words that will have the biggest impact and the biggest contribution towards your language goals.
And one more tip: don’t obsess over the words you don’t know but celebrate the ones you already know!
Choose words that you hear or see a lot
If you hear them or see them a lot, they will most likely come up again, and again. Record the words that you always hear in conversations or see in texts you read, and look them up. Make them part of your vocabulary learning plan and they won’t surprise you next time!
