Spanish Word List

One of the most valuable things you can find when learning Spanish is a usable & well-thought-out essential Spanish word list. Not only will this save you from spending a lot of wasted energy learning words which you will never really use but it will also help you to focus upon acquiring a core Spanish vocabulary made up only of words which are commonly used in everyday conversation.

The bad news is that this is easier said than done.

Far too many Spanish courses and programs concentrate on trying to teach you as many words as possible, most of which you will never even need in real life. I can clearly remember learning how to say such obscure things as “a pine tree” in Spanish only to discover that four years later I have never once used it. I could easily create a list of hundreds of useless words that actually were not worth learning in Spanish.

The truth is that a Spanish vocabulary consisting of just 3000 words is normally enough to equip you for the last majority of conversations you’ll conduct. by concentrating on acquiring a core vocabulary you will immediately find that the language becomes easier to learn and much less of a daunting task.

Another thing I would discourage you from getting into it’s classifying Spanish words into categories such as sports, food, entertainment, home and so forth. this actually represents an incredibly old-fashioned and out of date way to go about building an essential list of words in Spanish. Remember that have been many new advances in the science of learning languages and we now understand how to teach languages far more effectively than ever before. there is no longer any reason to suffer from bad teaching, courses or programs which refused to move with the times and instead stubbornly stick to their old-fashioned ways.

Top 100 Spanish Words, Top 1000 Spanish Words

Typing the above heading into a standard Google search will soon bring you back many pages of results. While these word lists will still require a considerable amount of editing they are nevertheless a giant leap forward when it comes to learning currently the most useful words in any given language.

If you are a beginner then finding a list of the 100 most used Spanish words would be a perfect first step. This is because you will be building an important core vocabulary right from the very beginning and not wasting time or energy learning words which are off much lesser value. While nouns, adjectives and adverbs will easily make up the bulk of your Spanish vocabulary learning verbs should be treated separately.

Verbs form backbone of any language and taking any one verb it is possible to create many different variations and meanings. It is all in how you conjugate them. For this reason you can restrict your Spanish verb vocabulary to just 100 of the most essential and commonly used verbs. This is easily enough to cover you will be lost majority of everyday conversations you will hold with Spanish speakers.

The work here is not in learning and memorizing thousands of words but rather in learning how to conjugate a small group of verbs. That is an essential difference and the main reason why we make a clear distinction between learning vocabulary and learning verbs.

How To Memorize Spanish Words

The best way to memorize Spanish words is to link them to mental pictures. This is where you create a kind of mind map where the sound of one word can remind you all an image in your mind. What happens is that I’m trying to recall a word in Spanish which you have recently learned you instead concentrate on trying to remember the image you associated with that word when learning it. This process actually helps you to retain more vocabulary as you are creating a mental road map to new words.

For example, the Spanish word for frog is “rana”. This word immediately connects itself both in spelling and in sound to the English word “ran”. Therefore you could imagine a frog that “ran” down the road in front of you. Perhaps the frog was also wearing a Mexican sombrero and singing “La Curacha”… this is how we form strong mental images in our minds and link them to new vocabulary. It is actually easier to remember a mental scenario you have created in your mind around a word rather than trying to remember the word just on its own.

Specialized Spanish Word Lists

There is of course a case for learning Spanish words which are specialized and not commonly used in everyday conversation. For example it could be that you inside a legal or medical environment where not so common Spanish words are actually commonly used. This of course makes those words highly valuable to know because you are going to be using them on a consistent basis.

It really depends on the kinds of situations you will be needing to communicate in Spanish.

I myself recently had need to learn broad specialized Spanish words or relating to music and learning guitar. I was at the time creating a course for how to learn to play guitar and I was writing this course especially for the Spanish speaking market. As such I had to learn many obscure words in Spanish relating to chords, strings, strumming patterns and parts of the guitar.

Now normally these kinds of words would not be worth learning as the opportunity to use them would be so rare. However it do to the fact that I was going to be communicating in depth about this particular topic those words suddenly became highly valuable and worth learning.

Making Up Your Own List Of Words In Spanish

The best way forward is to start by searching for a top 500 or a top 1000 list of words in Spanish and then to edit that list using your common sense. Don’t be afraid to get these word lists from a variety of different sources just make sure you are clearly separating the verbs from nouns, adjectives and adverbs because we of course want to treat them separately.

Whenever you come across a word in Spanish which is difficult to remember try to associate it with a mental image instead and use that as a kind of trigger to help you remember that word in the future. As with all new vocabulary it’s important to rehearse and drill the Spanish word lists as often and in as many different ways as possible. Currently will those words make the transition from your short-term memory to your long-term knowledge.