Author: Nguyen Tien Hai
6000 most common Korean words sorted in the order of decreased frequency
In December 2004 [1], The National Institute of Korean Language in South Korea (국립국어원) published the list of 6000 most common Korean words. These words are sorted in the order of their appearance (frequency) in the Korean text and their complex degree (i.e. the difficult degree for understanding their meanings). Therefore, you just need to study only a few words in this list to understand the whole content of a Korean text (over 90%) as well as everyday conversations of Korean people for sure. This study method is very effective indeed. This comprehensive research work was the effort of many scholars in the Korean language education field. (The first word in the list appears most frequently, in almost every sentence, the frequency of other following words will be decreased gradually.)
There are about 500,000 words in the Korean vocabulary (among them 190,000 technique terms, 70,000 North Korean words, 20,000 words related to religions, and 12,000 old words included) [10]. Therefore, if you try to study all of these 500,000 words without a scientific method, you will not be able to remember them. You will not be able to understand what Korean people say in the daily life or read books/papers written in Korean language. Why do you have to study words that you never use them, while there are many words you have to use/speak often but you do not know them. Why do you have to study names of animals in Korean such as dynosaur or camel that you almost never meet in your daily life? Therefore, you should learn words with priority, you should choose which words need to study first. If you know 6000 words in the list provide in this post you will be able to understand anything Korean person speaks, every sentence in books or papers written in Korean language.
