The Spanish words to learn first at A1 are verbs, not greetings. Vocabcord's 625-phrase A1 corpus assigns 111 phrases to plain action verbs like trabajar (work), comprar (buy), and dormir (sleep), nearly double the next-biggest category, descriptive adjectives at 58. Greetings, the category most beginner courses open with, hold only 12 phrases. A1 is usually pitched as survival phrasebook Spanish: hello, please, the numbers, a few foods. The corpus tells a different story: it front-loads the verbs a sentence needs before it front-loads the words a phrasebook does.
Verbs outnumber greetings nine to one
Open most beginner Spanish material and the first page is greetings and pleasantries. Vocabcord's A1 corpus, part of the 33,233-phrase corpus, grades 625 Spanish phrases across 29 topic categories, and puts the weight somewhere else entirely. Action verbs alone account for 111 of those 625 phrases, the single biggest category by a wide margin, while greetings hold 12. That is a ratio of more than nine to one. The words you need to say what you are doing arrive far ahead of the words you need to say hello.
The A1 word count, by category
| Category | Phrases at A1 | What it buys you |
|---|---|---|
| Verbs (actions) | 111 | Work, sleep, buy, arrive, help, wake up |
| Adjectives (qualities) | 58 | Good, big, new, old, young, nice |
| Numbers | 45 | Counting, prices, ages, times |
| Food | 41 | Meals, drinks, ordering, shopping |
| Places | 40 | Home, street, city, shop, station |
| Objects | 40 | Door, table, phone, key, bag |
| Everything else (23 categories) | 290 | Time, family, greetings, weather, and more |
Add the top two rows and verbs plus adjectives already cover 169 of the 625 A1 phrases, more than a quarter of the level, before a single noun for a person, a place, or a thing gets counted. The categories that feel like the obvious starting point, greetings (12), polite phrases (10), and family (20), come to 42 phrases combined, well under half of the verb count alone.
14 of the verbs that carry A1, with audio
These are ordinary, physical verbs: things you do with your day rather than things you say to be polite. Every row has audio, so tap the play button and hear the verb before you try to say it.
| Spanish | English | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| despertarse | wake up | I wake up at six. |
| levantarse | get up | Time to get up. |
| trabajar | work | I work in an office. |
| estudiar | study | I study English. |
| comprar | buy | I want to buy bread. |
| pagar | pay | I will pay later. |
| cocinar | cook | He cooks Italian food. |
| limpiar | clean | Clean your room. |
| jugar | play | Children play in the park. |
| ayudar | help | Can you help me? |
| llegar | arrive | When did you arrive? |
| volver | return | I'll return tomorrow. |
| dormir | sleep | I sleep eight hours. |
| gustar | like | I like ice cream. |
None of these fourteen need a subjunctive or a second clause to be useful. Trabajo en una oficina (I work in an office) and vuelvo mañana (I'll return tomorrow) are complete, ordinary sentences the moment you attach a subject, which is most of what A1 grammar asks a verb to do.
Adjectives and numbers: the next two categories
The 58 A1 adjectives are almost all everyday qualities rather than technical terms: bueno (good), malo (bad), grande (big), pequeño (small), nuevo (new), viejo (old), joven (young), agradable (nice). Pair any one of them with a noun and a verb from the table above and a sentence builds itself: trabajo en una oficina pequeña, I work in a small office.
Numbers come third at 45 phrases, and they earn the spot honestly: a beginner needs them for prices, ages, phone numbers, and times almost immediately, well before most nouns for objects or places. Counting itself is covered in how to count in Spanish, and the rules for building numbers all the way to 1,000 are their own guide.
The phrasebook categories are smaller than they feel
Greetings, polite phrases, and family words feel like the natural place to start because they are the words a phrasebook leads with, and because a first conversation usually opens with hello and a name. The corpus count does not support giving them first priority: greetings (12), polite phrases (10), and family (20) add up to 42 phrases, well under half of the 111 verbs alone, and close to the 41 phrases food gets on its own. That is not an argument to skip greetings. Learn them, they cost little and open every conversation. It is an argument against stopping there: the words that let you build a sentence outnumber the words that let you open one by a wide margin.
A realistic order to work through A1
Given the shape of the level, a working order looks like this: the handful of greetings and polite phrases first, since they cost little and get used immediately, then the verbs, since a dozen of them (work, sleep, buy, help, arrive, return) let you describe almost any ordinary day once you attach a subject. Numbers and a few adjectives round out the sentences those verbs build. Everything else, food, places, objects, family, is worth picking up as it comes up in your own life rather than in a fixed order, since each one only pays off in its own situation. That habit continues past A1: at A2 abstract nouns become the biggest single category, and by B1 reasoning verbs take over from the plain action verbs learned here. The reasoning behind ranking by frequency instead of by topic or the alphabet is on the methodology page.
Vocabcord turns that ranking into a habit instead of a study plan. Plug your phone in to charge and one A1 phrase plays out loud, drawn from wherever you left off and spaced by how well you already know it, so a verb like trabajar or volver gets repeated before it fades. Get Vocabcord on the App Store and start with the verbs today.
Common questions
Which Spanish words should you learn first at A1?
Verbs first. In Vocabcord's 625-phrase A1 Spanish corpus, plain action verbs like trabajar (work), comprar (buy), and dormir (sleep) form the single biggest category at 111 phrases, nearly double the next category, adjectives (58), and well ahead of greetings (12).
What vocabulary do you need for A1 Spanish?
Beyond the roughly 500 words CEFR research links to A1, Vocabcord's A1 Spanish tier grades 625 phrases across 29 categories. The biggest are verbs (111), adjectives (58), numbers (45), food (41), places (40), and objects (40), with greetings and polite phrases making up a much smaller slice than most beginner courses suggest.
Is A1 Spanish mostly verbs or nouns?
Verbs, by a wide margin. Action verbs are the single biggest category at A1 (111 of 625 phrases), ahead of any one noun category: food (41), places (40), and objects (40) are each well under half the verb count.
How many words do you need to know for A1 Spanish?
Vocabcord's A1 Spanish corpus grades 625 phrases, and CEFR research generally links roughly 500 words to solid A1 comprehension. The category breakdown matters as much as the raw count for where to start: verbs and adjectives together cover 169 of the 625 phrases.
What comes after A1 Spanish?
A2, where abstract nouns like razón and resultado become the level's biggest single category, followed by B1, where reasoning verbs take over from the plain action verbs learned at A1. See which words to learn first at A2.
