Top 150 most useful frequent nouns

The following is the list of the top 150 most frequent, most common and most useful nouns to learn when learning a foreign language and its Italian translation.

It is based on about 5 different vocabulary frequency lists and my personal word lists which contain words that were occurring organically when I was learning languages from scratch or improving the languages I knew (Persian, Serbian, Polish, Cantonese, Spanish, Hungarian, French). This list contains only the most important nouns from all of these lists, that give you most language coverage, re-arranged so that they would roughly be ordered from the most useful, most general ones downwards.

I also worked on English, Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese, German, Mandarin Chinese (simplified and traditional), Russian (Cyrillic and Latin), Slovak, Hungarian and a Romance combo noun frequency list.

Buy other noun lists here

English	Italian
thing, matter	cosa (f)
place	posto (m)
experience	esperienza (f)
situation	situazione (f)
idea	idea (f)
plan	piano (m)
result	risultato (m)
goal	obiettivo (m)
problem	problema (m)
meaning	significato (m)
example	esempio (m)
expression	espressione (f)
question	questione (f), domanda (f)
reason	motivo (m), ragione (f)
feeling	sensazione (f)
building	edificio (m)
person	persona (f)
word	parola (f)
money	i soldi
life	vita (f)
food	cibo (m)
foreigner	straniero (m)
job	lavoro (m)
majority	maggioranza (f)
personality	personalità (f)
rule, law	regola (f)
room	camera (f)
opinion	opinione (f)
detail	dettaglio (m)
mistake	errore (m)
home	casa (f)
world	mondo (m)
friend	amico (m)
family	famiglia (f)
fault	colpa (f)
country	paese (m)
fact	fatto (m)
interest	interesse (m)
woman	donna (f)
man	uomo (m)
university	università (f)
motivation	motivazione (f)
present, gift	regalo (m)
memory	memoria (f)
talent	talento (m)
crowd	folla (f)
sound	suono (m)
picture	immagine (f)
decision	decisione (f)
water	acqua (f)
today	oggi
tomorrow	domani
yesterday	ieri
accent	accento (m)
beginning	inizio (m)
student	studente (m)
relation	legame (m)
injury	ferita (f)
doctor	medico (m)
bed	letto (m)
conflict	conflitto (m)
rain	pioggia (f)
topic	argomento (m)
dream	sogno (m)
mood	umore (m)
lesson	lezione (f)
society	società (f)
border	frontiera (f), confine (m)
minority	minoranza (f)
exam	esame (m)
dictionary	dizionario (m)
creativity	creatività (f)
ocean	oceano (m)
competition	competizione (f)
contract	contratto (m)
government	governo (m)
clothes	i vestiti
(makes) sense	(ha) senso
rest	riposo (m)
night	notte (f)
morning	mattina (f)
name	nome (m)
hand	mano (f)
body	corpo (m)
language	lingua (f)
explanation	spiegazione (f)
minute	minuto (m)
truth	verità (f)
end	fine (f)
center	centro (m)
day	giorno (m)
opportunity	opportunità (f)
ability	capacità (f)
time	tempo (m)
age	età (f)
city	città (f)
sentence	frase (f)
lunch	pranzo (m)
communication	comunicazione (f)
street, road	strada (f)
window	finestra (f)
market	mercato (m)
boyfriend/girlfriend	fidanzato (m), fidanzata (f)
house	casa (f)
door	porta (f)
girl	ragazza (f)
child	bambino (m)
difference	differenza (f)
teacher	insegnante (m)/(f)
history	storia (f)
way (of doing sth.)	modo (di fare qc.)
weather	tempo (m)
change	cambiamento (m)
year	anno (m)
music	musica (f)
car	macchina  (f)
internet	internet (m)
nature	natura (f)
temperature	temperatura (f)
area, field	area (f)
story	storia (f)
quality	qualità (f)
power	potere (m)
week	settimana (f)
price	prezzo (m)
process	processo (m)
direction	direzione (f)
strategy	strategia (f)
technology	tecnologia (f)
environment	ambiente (m)
month	mese (m)
position	posizione (f)
development	sviluppo (m)
income	reddito (m)
marriage	matrimonio (m)
illness	malattia (f)
(I don’t have) energy	(non ho) energia
technique	tecnica (f)
bus	autobus (m)
subway	metropolitana (f)
airplane	aereo (m)
book	libro (m)
school	scuola (f)
company	azienda (f)
eyes	gli occhi
news	le notizie
health	salute (f)
system	sistema (m)
community	comunità (f)
police	polizia (f)

Additional information

I know how to learn languages well from the intermediate level and onward, but I have a very big problem starting, which I think might be a problem for most people as well. In my opinion, the main reason for this difficulty is the complete lack of vocabulary when you are starting out on your language learning journey—you don’t have the most basic building blocks to say or understand anything.

I had the idea to pre-learn a lot of words to bypass this problem, but the question was always which words to learn. When I was learning Turkish (a distant language from the languages I speak with a relatively low number of cognates), I realized the easiest words to learn were concrete, tangible nouns (house, apple etc.) because I could visualize them very well in my mind. There are much more useful words/expressions of course (because, to have, to be, even though, if, I, you etc.) but they hold a lot more information and are more difficult to remember and relate to for a complete beginner.

Although I am a big proponent of learning things with context, the painstakingly long time it takes to get to a point where you are able to start having conversations and learn the language "by using" is really something that should be improved. The idea thus is to pre-learn smart-vocabulary with no context with memory techniques, to give you more speech building blocks at your disposal whether to help you start speaking or understanding.

I first had the idea of producing a list of high-frequency, useful tangible nouns which I would pre-learn with memory techniques but when I started compiling the list, it turned out to be surprisingly short (it consisted of only about 25 nouns!) so I decided to compile a list of all nouns I would consider useful.

The task turned out to be quite challenging, because it wasn't a simple matter of taking the 5 or 6 most respected frequency lists and merging them together. I had to literally handpick every noun based on my experience and common sense using my own frequency studies and word lists as a basis and frequency lists only as an additional guideline.

I will also work on a similar verb list, expressions list and a list of all other high frequency useful words. My plan is also to eventually create a monologue or a very contextual short story made of these words that a student could listen to over and over, or learn by heart if need be, which would serve as a nice way to pre-mass-learn vocabulary to get a student started and enable him or her to start speaking the language as soon as possible.