Which language gives you more?
Pick up to 4 languages and see them measured against each other: how many words reach half of everyday speech, how much of the language the top 100 carries, and how steeply each frequency curve falls away.
Swedish Spanish Japanese Turkish
Side by side
The best value in each row is marked — read across, not down.
| Measure | Swedish | Spanish | Japanese | Turkish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corpus size Tokens of subtitle dialogue counted — more data means a steadier ranking | 14.1M | 14.1M | 19M , best in this row | 10.9M |
| Distinct word forms Unique surface forms found — a measure of morphology, not of quality | 230.2K | 195.2K | 92.8K | 456.7K |
| Words for half of speech Fewer is better — less vocabulary buys more of the language | 61 , best in this row | 101 | 90 | 606 |
| Words for 80% Entries needed to cover 80% of running text | 1,484 , best in this row | 2,891 | 2,668 | — |
| Top 100 covers Share of all speech carried by the 100 most common entries | 56.4% , best in this row | 49.9% | 51.0% | 31.1% |
| Top 10 covers Share carried by the ten most common entries alone | 23.3% | 21.8% | 24.3% , best in this row | 10.7% |
| Whole list covers Share of running text the full ranked list accounts for | 89.3% , best in this row | 86.4% | 87.2% | 75.1% |
| Promoted phrases Multi-word units ranked alongside single words | 1,444 | 2,233 | 2,713 | 657 |
| Average word length Characters per word across the top 1,000 — descriptive, not a virtue | 5.0 | 5.4 | 2.1 | 5.5 |
Where each language's weight sits
Share of running text carried by each band. A front-loaded language rewards a small vocabulary more.
| Band | Swedish | Spanish | Japanese | Turkish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 100 | 56.4% | 49.9% | 51.0% | 31.1% |
| 101–500 | 15.6% | 16.5% | 15.0% | 16.9% |
| 501–1,000 | 5.3% | 5.8% | 6.0% | 7.1% |
| 1,001–2,000 | 4.6% | 5.1% | 5.8% | 6.9% |
| 2,001–4,000 | 4.0% | 4.8% | 5.3% | 6.7% |
| 4,001–8,000 | 3.4% | 4.3% | 4.2% | 6.4% |
The five most common words in each
Ranked within their own corpus, translated to English.
Swedish
- 1 jag I
- 2 det it / that
- 3 är is
- 4 du you
- 5 inte not
Spanish
- 1 que that
- 2 de from
- 3 no no
- 4 a to
- 5 la the
Japanese
- 1 の no / of
- 2 は wa / is
- 3 を o / to
- 4 に ni / to
- 5 だ da / Yeah.
Turkish
- 1 bir one
- 2 bu this
- 3 ne what
- 4 ve and
- 5 için for
Choose languages to compare
Pick up to 4.4/4 selected
The first 23 are built from the same 2,166 films, so their rankings can be compared directly.
Built from each language's own films — rankings are sound, but not directly comparable with the set above.