What 3,000 phrases have in common

Our six phrase collections follow the same brief: situations from a newcomer's day, short spoken lines, and a mixture of questions and replies. Comparing the finished files shows how that brief shaped the result. Fifteen of the 19 situation categories appear in all six, the median phrase length ranges from three to five words, and 22 English translations occur in every list. The figures below describe the collections we made. They are not a survey of everyday speech or proof that the languages require the same phrases.

Fifteen situations out of nineteen

The six lists name their sections differently. Italian has shopping and money where Spanish has shopping and paying, and Polish files admin under forms, offices and the landlord. So we mapped each section id by hand to the situation it covers and counted. Nineteen situations exist across the set, and 15 are in all six: greeting and thanks, getting around, a room, eating out, shopping and paying, health and pharmacy, emergencies, phone and internet, forms and the landlord, first day at work, meetings and calls, email and messages, help and deadlines, small talk and sightseeing, feelings and opinions.

Four situations go missing somewhere, depending on how we grouped the sections. The repair kit stands alone in Spanish, French, German and Polish; Italian and Portuguese open with an arrival section and fold the repair lines into first contact. Numbers, times and dates gets a section in Spanish, German and Portuguese, while the other three scatter those lines through the sections that use them. Pay and time off is a section in five, and Portuguese puts pay in with asking for help. That is the whole disagreement.

The lanes agree too, less interestingly: the brief gave survive, travel and work a floor and a ceiling before anyone wrote a line, and they landed at 38 to 43, 30 to 34 and 26 to 29 percent. Why 500 phrases, and how we chose them has that reasoning. The brief also suggested a sequence of situations, from first contact to work and social life. The shared coverage is therefore partly by design; it should not be presented as independent agreement between writers.

The shape of a line, and the longest one

A phrase in these lists is short. The median is three words in Polish, four in Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese, five in French, and 93 to 100 percent of each list runs under eight words. Questions take 35 to 42 percent: 211 Spanish lines end in a question mark and 175 Polish ones. Both counts are mechanical: a question is a target phrase ending in a question mark, and length is whitespace-separated tokens of the target.

The longest line in each list is where it gets strange: in four of the six it is a phone number said out loud. Polish holds the record at 11 words, Mój numer to sześćset jeden, dwieście trzydzieści cztery, pięćset sześćdziesiąt siedem. The hundreds and the tens are each spelled out, and German and Spanish run to 10 for the same job, Portuguese to 9. The exceptions are French, whose longest is a train time at 10 words, Le prochain train pour Marseille, c'est à quelle heure ? and Italian, whose longest asks for leave at 8, Vorrei prendere ferie dal dieci al venti agosto.

Spelling a phone number out makes these examples longer than most other rows. The ranking also depends on the particular number chosen and how each language writes number words.

About a third of every list is an answer

A list made only of questions leaves you good at asking and stuck the moment someone replies. So we counted the other side. A simple text filter matches between 153 and 162 rows per collection, or 31 to 32 percent. The count is approximate and deliberately narrow: a phrase counts when its English carries no question mark and opens with I, I'm, I'll, I've, I'd, My, We, We're, We'd, Yes, No, Card, Cash, Just or Here's. It misses answers with other openings and can also include requests or standalone statements, so it is a rough indicator rather than a verified count or lower bound.

The reason to include replies is practical: a learner also needs to answer questions they did not choose. At a Brazilian till the question is CPF na nota? You may hear it while paying, and the note beside it says a plain no is a complete answer. At a Polish ticket window it is Normalny czy ulgowy? Full price or reduced, Knowing both the question and a suitable reply lets you practise the whole exchange.

Where the notes cluster

802 of the 3,000 phrases carry a note. Pooled across the six lists, the survive lane carries one on 31 percent of its lines and the travel and work lanes on 24 percent each. Survive covers what you do at home without thinking, which is where a translation alone runs thin.

Ranked by note count, these are the situations we annotated most heavily. Greeting and thanks leads with 94 notes on 207 lines, 45 percent of the section. Eating out follows with 83 on 230, shopping and paying with 63 on 199, first day at work with 54 on 194. Getting around and forms and the landlord tie for fifth at 52 each.

Our greeting notes often explain when a form is used. Buenos días, Guten Morgen and Buongiorno are morning or daytime greetings, but when speakers change to an afternoon or evening greeting varies by place and habit. The translation alone does not explain that variation.

The 22 lines every list needed

Match the English translations across the six files, case-insensitively and with whitespace collapsed, and 22 sentences appear in all six lists; 52 appear in five or more. Eight of the 22 report your own state: I don't know, I'm not sure, I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm lost, I'm pregnant, I'm allergic to penicillin, and it hurts here. The rest are what a room, a bill or a stranger pulls out of you: a table for two, is breakfast included, what's the wifi password, where are you from, what do you recommend, keep the change, there's been an accident, and help.

Both rows repay a stare. The English "Nice to meet you." is five words and every version above is one or two; none of the six mentions meeting or niceness, and five carry a note about the gender ending or the handshake. "Keep the change." splits them: four tell the other person to keep or take it, and German says Stimmt so. That means that's right, said as the money leaves your hand. Word for word gets you nowhere there, which is why the German, Italian and Polish rows carry a note.

The lines nobody says out loud

Every phrase had to pass one test: a person says this, aloud, to a stranger. Email openers and sign-offs fail it and are in the lists anyway, because a newcomer at work types them on day one. German keeps five, Polish three, French two. Six lines across the 3,000 end in a comma rather than a full stop, which is the punctuation an email uses: three German openers, two French lines and one Polish opener. They keep the comma on the page. Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, Bonjour Monsieur, Szanowni Państwo,

The sign-offs go the other way. German Mit freundlichen Grüßen and Viele Grüße take no comma, and neither do Polish Z poważaniem and Pozdrawiam. Our Spanish and Italian lists print Un saludo. and Cordiali saluti. The Portuguese messages section carries no sign-off formula at all; its lines read like chat, Segue em anexo. and Qualquer dúvida, me chama. These differences describe the examples selected for our email sections. They do not mean that Portuguese lacks sign-off formulas or that every Spanish and Italian sign-off takes a full stop.

Four differences between the collections

The queue examples show why selection matters. Spanish and Italian ask a person, ¿Quién es el último? and Chi è l'ultimo? You go in behind whoever answers. Polish and Portuguese include ticket-system phrases: Proszę pobrać numerek. is what the clerk says, and Onde pego a senha? is what you ask, senha meaning both a queue ticket and a password. French does both, with C'est quel guichet ? and a note telling you to take a ticket first. The German list has no queue line, and that is the one thing on this page we would go back and change.

Tipping turns one habit into four sentences. German gives you Machen Sie zwanzig. You name the total you want to pay with the tip already inside it. The Italian note on Il coperto è incluso? has to explain a per-head charge for bread and the table, printed on the menu and unrelated to any tip. Brazilian bills usually add an optional ten percent, so O serviço está incluído? asks whether it is already there, while Poland's Reszty nie trzeba. carries a note saying ten percent is usual.

Instalments exist in exactly one list. À vista ou parcelado? is asked at Brazilian tills for trainers as readily as for a sofa, and Pode parcelar em três vezes? is how you answer. We did not include that phrase in the other collections. Instalment payments are not unique to Brazil.

Paperwork is where the lists stop being translations of each other. Spain has Quiero empadronarme. and Necesito sacarme el NIE. Germany sends you to the Bürgeramt with Ich möchte mich anmelden. In Italy the first line is Mi serve il codice fiscale. Brazil starts with Preciso tirar o CPF. Poland has Chcę się zameldować. France sends you for Je viens pour un titre de séjour. These name different administrative processes. Which ones a newcomer needs depends on their nationality, residence status and plans; they are not a universal first-week checklist.

What to do with this

Two things follow from the numbers. Start in the survive lane, where 31 percent of the lines carry a note, and read the notes; they exist because the translation alone would mislead you. Then practise both sides of a short exchange: ask the question, close the page and give a suitable reply. Use the examples in context rather than treating our text filter as a ready-made answer list.

The six pages hold every phrase with its note: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Polish. They sit together on The Vocabcord 500, which is also where anything we add to them will show up.

This page counts phrases and says nothing about whether you will remember them. The lists become app packs later, with text-to-speech audio, and once the automation is set up a line plays when the phone goes on the charger, favouring the ones you have gone longest without hearing. One word per charge explains why the loop is built that way. Until the packs land, print the page for your language and put it in your bag.

Common questions

What do phrasebooks in different languages have in common?

Across our six 500-phrase collections, 15 of the 19 situations appear in all six lists: greeting and thanks, getting around, a room, eating out, shopping and paying, health and pharmacy, emergencies, phone and internet, forms and the landlord, first day at work, meetings and calls, email and messages, help and deadlines, small talk and sightseeing, and feelings and opinions. The shape of a line matches too. The median phrase is three to five words, 93 to 100 percent run under eight words, and 35 to 42 percent are questions.

How long should a phrase in a phrasebook be?

Short enough to say at a counter. In our six lists the median is three words in Polish, four in Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese, and five in French, with 93 to 100 percent of every list under eight words. The longest lines show what breaks that shape: in four of the six the longest phrase is a phone number said out loud, reaching 11 words in Polish.

Should a phrasebook include answers as well as questions?

Yes. Practise giving an answer as well as asking a question. Our rough text filter matches 153 to 162 rows per list, but that is not a verified count of answers: it checks English sentence openings, misses some replies and also catches requests or statements. A cashier asking about a bag or a ticket seller asking full price or reduced gives you a useful exchange to practise.

Which phrases are the same in every language?

The situations repeat and the wording does not. Twenty-two English lines appear in all six of our collections, and 52 appear in five or more. Eight of the 22 report your own state, such as I'm lost, I'm allergic to penicillin, and it hurts here. The translations still diverge sharply: Keep the change is Stimmt so in German, which literally means that's right.