1000 Most Common Spanish Words.

You know more Spanish than you think. Spanish is spelled the way it sounds, and hundreds of its most common words already look familiar because they resemble English: hotel is hotel, familia is family, problema is problem. The 1,000 headwords in this book make up about three quarters of the words in everyday written Spanish, counted by frequency, so they are the place to start.

This frequency reader opens with the small words that hold every sentence together, el and de, que and en, and the workhorse verbs ser, estar, tener, hacer and ir. Part Two gathers 485 words you can read through English: identical twins (hotel, color, idea), the hidden s that turns escuela into school and estado into state, predictable endings like nación and libertad, and words close enough to guess aloud, like problema and montaña. The rest of the thousand follow by everyday theme, from people and family to feelings and ideas, so related words stay together instead of scattering down a frequency list.

Every entry gives the word, its IPA, an easy English respelling with the stressed syllable in capitals and its meaning (with the gender of every noun), then three example sentences glossed word by word, with a natural translation underneath. Four short guides come first: how to pronounce Spanish, a few grammar essentials (ser and estar, the five ways to say you, how me gusta works), the words most likely to fool you (actual means current, largo means long) and the everyday phrases Spanish builds its own way, from tengo hambre (I'm hungry) to me duele la cabeza (my head hurts). Fourteen key irregular verbs carry a conjugation table, every chapter ends with a quick check and each Part with a test, and the answer key and an A–Z dictionary of every word sit at the back.