Esperanto at Stanford University

Graded Vocabulary Lists

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Graded Vocabulary Lists

Here are the 1000 most commonly used* roots in Esperanto. I suggest starting at the top of this list and studying the groups, in order. It may sound impossible, but learning 500 roots per quarter is not unreasonable. (Remember, that includes the numbers, days of the week, etc. It's a piece of cake. :)

The vocabulary lists are currently broken up into 2 broad groups. I have a listing that breaks them into finer levels. As the groups are reorganized i'll be putting them up here for reference.

Level 1 through 5 - 500 most commonly used roots
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6 through 10 - the next most used 500 roots.
Level 7
Level 8
Level 9
Level 10

* These lists are a combination of the lists (although there is amazing overlap) from:

Kontakto - Kontakto is a magazine which regularly publishes a list with 2 levels of the most used words in Esperanto. They require that all articles be written with only level 1 words (using only the first 500 roots) to be considered easy and only level 1 and level 2 words (a total of 1000 roots) to be considered intermediate. If an article has a word outside the lists it must be defined with words from the lists, but the article is considered difficult.
The word list from Gerda Malaperis. This is a most excellent teaching story using simple and then more and more difficult words in Esperanto. It is also considered a very nice mystery story.
The list of most commonly used roots in the Esperanto language as compiled by Zlatko TISCHLJAR from taped conversations of Esperantists. He used this word list to create the Zagreb Method of teaching Esperanto.

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