A word list ranked by frequency tells you which words you are likely to hear. For a first week abroad, it helps to have whole phrases too: asking for the bill, finding the right train, explaining a problem at work. We chose 500 for each of six languages, grouped by those situations and split across three lanes: survive, travel and work. The notes explain register, regional differences and places where a word-for-word translation can mislead.
Why the number is 500
We chose 500 as a limit for a list covering common situations in the first weeks abroad. Count the moments in which a newcomer has to speak to a stranger between waking and sleeping: the greeting, the ticket, the coffee, the till, the pharmacy, the form, the landlord, the colleague, the opinion at dinner. Each needs a handful of lines, and 17 or 18 such moments at 18 to 40 lines each lands at 500. The Spanish list gives emergencies 20 phrases and eating out 38, because that is what each needs, and the rule we set ourselves was never pad.
The number describes the collection's size, not a learning deadline. At four plug-ins a day, 500 playbacks take 125 days. Some will be repeats, so hearing all 500 distinct phrases takes longer. The collections are on the website for now; the app packs will come later.
Grouped by the day, from first hello to first opinion
A first week has an order. You land, you greet someone, you fail to understand them, you find the train, the room, the food, the till, the pharmacy, the form, the job, and somewhere in the second week you tell a colleague what you think of the coffee. Each collection follows that order in 17 or 18 sections. The sections differ by language; German has one for pay, leave, sick days and HR. Six appear under the same name in all six lists, and they are the spine: first contact, getting around, eating out, emergencies, first day at work, and feelings and opinions.
Grammar never gets a section. At a till you need ¿Cuánto es?, and the note beside it says this one is for the total and ¿cuánto cuesta? for the item in your hand; the grammar is inside the phrases whether or not it is labelled.
Across the sections run three lanes: survive, the day-to-day floor of greeting, paying, health and admin; travel, moving through places; and work, a first week in an office, on a site, in a shop or in a kitchen. Each lane had a floor of a quarter and a ceiling of 45 percent; the situations decided the rest. Survive came out largest in all six languages, between 38 and 43 percent; travel took 30 to 34; work took 26 to 29. Nothing was trimmed to make the lanes match, which is why they do not quite.
| Language | Survive | Travel | Work | Sections |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish | 210 (42%) | 154 (31%) | 136 (27%) | 18 |
| French | 190 (38%) | 170 (34%) | 140 (28%) | 17 |
| German | 207 (41%) | 152 (30%) | 141 (28%) | 18 |
| Italian | 198 (40%) | 158 (32%) | 144 (29%) | 17 |
| Portuguese | 216 (43%) | 154 (31%) | 130 (26%) | 17 |
| Polish | 204 (41%) | 154 (31%) | 142 (28%) | 17 |
If we rebuilt one lane it would be work in Portuguese, which at 130 phrases is the thinnest of the eighteen.
What a phrase had to be
Every phrase had to pass one test: a polite adult says exactly this, out loud, to a stranger, and the stranger is not surprised. The test removes the full sentence a coursebook prefers, because people at a counter speak in fragments: Con tarjeta, por favor. Mit Karte, bitte. Across the six collections 93 to 100 percent of the phrases are under eight words, and the median phrase is three words in Polish, four in Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese, and five in French. A few run longer on purpose; explaining a symptom or asking for a deadline to move takes a whole sentence.
The test also put questions in. Between 35 and 42 percent of each collection is a question, because most of what a newcomer says is a request. And for every question someone will put to you, the list carries the answer you have to produce. ¿Con tarjeta o en efectivo? helps nobody who cannot say Con tarjeta, por favor., and Woher kommen Sie? is half a phrase without Ich komme aus Polen. Numbers arrive inside lines a person says, Son doce con cincuenta. at a till, and there is no number table anywhere in the six lists.
The repair kit comes second
The second section of the Spanish, French, German and Polish lists, and part of the first in Italian and Portuguese, is the repair kit: I don't understand, slower please, can you write that down. It sits that early because it is the section you use most in week one, and the one most lists bury at the end under useful expressions. A newcomer who owns Más despacio, por favor. and ¿Me lo puede escribir? can get through a conversation built almost entirely out of the other person's words.
The kit also holds the small sounds that keep an exchange alive, Alles klar. and Ach so. in German, Ya entiendo. in Spanish, and the refusal that closes a door without slamming it, Das geht leider nicht. A bare no is the one word every newcomer already has, and the one that lands worst.
The note column says what the translation cannot
Beside 802 of the 3,000 phrases there is a note: 23 percent of the Spanish list, 30 percent of the Italian, the other four in between. A note has one job, to say something the translation cannot, and we allowed four kinds and cut the rest: register, whether this is the tú line or the usted line; a regional variant, when Spain and Mexico or Brazil and Portugal use different everyday words; a trap, where the obvious rendering is wrong or rude; and timing, when in the exchange you say it. Six, as they stand on the pages.
- Bien, gracias. ¿Y usted? (Fine, thanks. And you?) The note says: Usted with strangers and older people; ¿y tú? with colleagues your own age.
- Todo recto. (Straight ahead.) The note says: Spain says recto; Latin America says derecho, which a Spaniard hears as the right-hand side.
- Es ist halb drei. (It's half past two.) The note says: Trap. Halb drei is halfway to three, so 2:30. English half two points the other way.
- Mir ist kalt. (I'm cold.) The note says: Trap. Ich bin kalt means you're a cold person. Same pattern for mir ist warm.
- Perdone que le moleste. (Sorry to bother you.) The note says: Say it before asking a stranger anything; disculpe las molestias is what announcements and shop signs say.
- Ginge es auch bis Montag? (Would Monday be all right too?) The note says: Ask before the deadline, with a reason and a new date. Asking after it is a different conversation.
That rule is why 70 to 77 percent of the phrases carry none. Hola. needs no note, and a column that is full stops being read.
What we cut, and the one exception
Four things were cut on sight. Proverbs, because nobody opens with one. Textbook sentences, since the book is on the table has never been said at a table. Slang that dates, because a phrase that marks the year you learned it is worse than no phrase. And anything that exists only to teach a grammar point, the sentence built so a class can see the subjunctive.
One category broke the spoken-only rule and stayed. Email openers and sign-offs are never said aloud, and a newcomer at work types them on day one. So the German, French and Polish lists carry them with the punctuation each language uses: Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, with a note that in the email it takes a comma and the next line normally starts lower case, and Mit freundlichen Grüßen, the default sign-off, which has no comma. Polish sign-offs such as Z poważaniem also have no comma. The punctuation matters: a line that only ever exists on a screen should be learned the way it appears on the screen, so the first email goes out right.
Which Spanish, which Portuguese, and which you
Each list picks one variety and says so at the top. Spanish is Spain's, with the Latin American form noted wherever daily use differs: coche and carro, ordenador and computadora, vale against bueno. Portuguese is Brazil's, because the app's Portuguese voice is Brazilian, with the European form noted where it differs: ônibus and autocarro, você and tu. French is France's, with Quebec noted only when the everyday word differs. German is Germany's, with Austrian and Swiss forms noted for greetings and food only, so Guten Tag. carries Grüß Gott and Grüezi in its note.
Register was decided once per language: usted, vous, Sie, Lei, Pan and Pani by default, with the informal noted where a colleague would use it. A newcomer is safest formal, and the note tells you when to drop it: ¿Nos tuteamos? in a Spanish office, Sollen wir uns duzen? in a German one.
Polish marks the speaker's gender on some phrases, and we gave each such phrase once, in the masculine, with the feminine in the note. Dopiero przyjechałem. (I've just arrived.) A woman says: Dopiero przyjechałam. Listing both forms as separate phrases would have spent the list on duplicates.
What a phrase list cannot do, and who checks ours
A phrase list does three things badly. Grammar is the first: the day you build a sentence of your own, you will need one. Conversation is the second. Five hundred lines get you through exchanges where the other person does most of the work, and they will not get you through a dinner where you are expected to hold a view for ten minutes. Listening at speed is the third; the replies you get will be faster than the questions you asked, and the repair kit is the only tool in the list for that.
The other honest limit is us. We review the lists for natural phrasing and register, including calques: lines that are translated word for word and sound unnatural. This is an editorial check, not a claim of independent native-speaker approval. Age takes tener, so Tengo treinta y dos años. is the line, and soy treinta y dos is the slip a word-for-word translation produces. The calques that worry us are the ones that read fine to us and will read wrong to you. We expect readers who live in these languages to find more, and the shortest route when you do is the feedback sheet in the app (Settings, then Report a bug or suggest a feature) or the support page. The fix goes into the list first and into the pack after.
The six collections
Each collection has its own page with all 500 phrases in tables, and each page prints.
- Spanish: Spain base, the largest share of questions at 42 percent.
- French: France base, the longest phrases of the six at a median of five words.
- German: Germany base, with email openers and sign-offs kept in their written form.
- Italian: Lei by default, the most notes at 30 percent.
- Portuguese: Brazil base, the largest survive lane at 43 percent.
- Polish: Pan and Pani by default, the shortest phrases at a median of three words.
The lists are pages first. They become packs in the app later, with text-to-speech audio for every phrase, and then each line plays on the charger, one per plug-in, with the lines you have gone longest without hearing favoured in the draw. One word per charge explains that loop. Until the packs land, print the page for your language and carry it.
Common questions
How many phrases do you need to get by in a new country?
We chose 500 to cover common situations in the first weeks abroad, from greetings to questions at work. There is no fixed number that covers every person's needs. Each collection is split across survive, travel and work; survive is the largest lane at 38 to 43 percent. Learning time depends on practice and repetition, not just the number of rows.
Is 500 phrases enough to work abroad?
They provide phrases for a first week in an office, a shop, a site or a kitchen: introductions, meetings, email openers, asking for help, deadlines and pay. The work lane holds 130 to 144 phrases per language, 26 to 29 percent of each list. It does not cover the vocabulary of your trade and it does not teach conversation, so pair it with something that makes you talk.
Why not learn the 1,000 most common words instead?
A frequency list is honest about which words you will hear and silent about what to say. A phrase list can show how to ask for the bill or explain that halb drei is half past two. The situations a newcomer meets need whole lines, in order, with the answers as well as the questions, which is why 35 to 42 percent of each collection is a question. Frequency has its place, and our graded word corpus is built on the New General Service List for that reason; the phrases come first.
Are the phrases for Spain or Latin America?
Spain, with the Latin American form noted wherever daily use differs: coche and carro, ordenador and computadora, vale and bueno, and a warning on coger, which is everyday in Spain and obscene in Mexico and Argentina. Portuguese runs the other way, Brazil as the base with the European form in the notes. The notes make each list usable on both sides of the Atlantic; the base is Spain for Spanish and Brazil for Portuguese.
