How many words do you need to speak a language?

• About 500 words: greetings, numbers, simple needs, survival conversations.
• About 1,000 words: basic everyday conversation on familiar topics.
• About 3,000 words: following most day-to-day speech and expressing yourself with some detail.
• 5,000 words and beyond: reading widely and discussing less familiar topics.

In every language a small set of words does most of the work. Learning the commonest words first means each new word appears often, so you meet it again and remember it. A list ordered by usefulness beats a list ordered by topic.

A word you can only recognise is not yet a word you can speak. Practise each one inside a sentence you say aloud so you remember how it behaves: its article, ending and place in the sentence.