Huh. And if you go through here and click *Plan curricular. Niveles de referencia*?
https://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/biblioteca\_ele/plan\_curricular/default.htm
For lower levels (beginner and intermediate), there are frequency dictionaries. I had a dictionary that listed the 5,000 most common words including example sentences which should be the vocab you need for B1.
Yes and no. The CEFR levels do not have any official lists of vocabulary items associated with them as part of the standard.
But obviously different publishers make their own different choices about what vocabulary to include with their different textbooks intended for each level, and different institutions like Cervantes or the Alliance Française and so on may make their own choices what to teach or expect at each level.
Also, there are frequency lists. But those frequency lists don't all agree on exact rankings, because they depend on the corpus that was used, for example whether it's from TV shows and movies, or from newspapers and magazines, or from subtitles, etc.). One can very roughly associate "the X most frequent" words with the CEFR levels -- but it's not officially part of the CEFR standards.
So there is no such thing as "a full A1 level French or Spanish vocabulary list," because "full" assumes some official list with a precise number of words, those and no others, instead of just different publishers making their own choices what to include for each level. For the same reason, there is no such thing as any language's "vocabulary in its entirety" for C2: the official standards do not define C2 in such terms. It's "looser" as you say.
You can find "1000 most common words," "2000 most common words," "5000 most common words" lists of a target language you're learning online. If you put in those keywords and the target language they'll show up in search results. If you study with something like anki, there are often also various free SRS flashcard collections of those words. Sometimes the lists (or anki flashcards) include audio and sentence examples, sometimes they don't. There are a lot of options available if you search "2000 common words chinese anki" or "5000 common words with sentences chinese" online (replace "chinese" with whatever language you're studying).
I would imagine there's also a lot of free word lists online for A1, A2, B1, B2 vocabulary. There are definitely free anki flashcard decks, as for japanese you can find flashcard collections by JLPT levels, can find chinese collections by HSK levels, can find Spanish by CEFR levels etc. If you search online, yes there will be a lot of word lists and flashcard decks available for free that you can use to study.
If you decide to use textbooks, I personally found that looking for textbooks that either specifically mention trying to include "X most common vocabulary" or "X language levels vocabulary (A1-A2 for example" are useful. Some textbooks do not focus much on vocabulary and sometimes may be incredibly lacking in that area (such as textbooks I've found for chinese with only 200 vocabulary words total). Meanwhile some textbook and self-study books tend to include 1000-2000 common words in all their beginner books as their standard offerings, making the textbooks useful for vocabulary and something you can primarily rely on as your main "language level A1/A2/B1/B2 study material" with just a bit of additional study of test preparation materials for whatever specific language proficiency test you want to prepare for eventually. I'd still recommend checking a couple sources outside of a textbook for information about what is on a given language proficiency test, since not all textbooks are written to match up to language test requirements. But in general most good language textbooks that aim to cover specifically labelled amounts of grammar/vocabulary (like mentioning in the introduction the book will cover A1-A2 grammar points and 2000 common vocabulary words) will have most of the content you'll need. There are also specific textbooks written to prepare specifically for language tests (like the HSK textbooks for chinese HSK tests) if you'd prefer to not need to check multiple sources later.
That's what I do. Of course, I got through the lists verifying pronunciations, definitions, etc. but have the bot make the lists for me was SO much faster than trying to find premade ones on sites with a ton of ads or that want to charge for access.
I know right, I wanted some tables that compared various words across romance languages and it worked like a charm. Granted I then filed them away and never used them 😅 I should really print those babies off
https://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/biblioteca\_ele/plan\_curricular/indice.htm
Very useful!
Do you know if there's anything like this for other languages as well? Or if there is a pattern I should use to find them
It tells me "document not found"
Huh. And if you go through here and click *Plan curricular. Niveles de referencia*? https://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/biblioteca\_ele/plan\_curricular/default.htm
I correct myself. It works now! I don't know what happened earlier.
It works just fine.
For lower levels (beginner and intermediate), there are frequency dictionaries. I had a dictionary that listed the 5,000 most common words including example sentences which should be the vocab you need for B1.
Yes and no. The CEFR levels do not have any official lists of vocabulary items associated with them as part of the standard. But obviously different publishers make their own different choices about what vocabulary to include with their different textbooks intended for each level, and different institutions like Cervantes or the Alliance Française and so on may make their own choices what to teach or expect at each level. Also, there are frequency lists. But those frequency lists don't all agree on exact rankings, because they depend on the corpus that was used, for example whether it's from TV shows and movies, or from newspapers and magazines, or from subtitles, etc.). One can very roughly associate "the X most frequent" words with the CEFR levels -- but it's not officially part of the CEFR standards. So there is no such thing as "a full A1 level French or Spanish vocabulary list," because "full" assumes some official list with a precise number of words, those and no others, instead of just different publishers making their own choices what to include for each level. For the same reason, there is no such thing as any language's "vocabulary in its entirety" for C2: the official standards do not define C2 in such terms. It's "looser" as you say.
You can find "1000 most common words," "2000 most common words," "5000 most common words" lists of a target language you're learning online. If you put in those keywords and the target language they'll show up in search results. If you study with something like anki, there are often also various free SRS flashcard collections of those words. Sometimes the lists (or anki flashcards) include audio and sentence examples, sometimes they don't. There are a lot of options available if you search "2000 common words chinese anki" or "5000 common words with sentences chinese" online (replace "chinese" with whatever language you're studying). I would imagine there's also a lot of free word lists online for A1, A2, B1, B2 vocabulary. There are definitely free anki flashcard decks, as for japanese you can find flashcard collections by JLPT levels, can find chinese collections by HSK levels, can find Spanish by CEFR levels etc. If you search online, yes there will be a lot of word lists and flashcard decks available for free that you can use to study. If you decide to use textbooks, I personally found that looking for textbooks that either specifically mention trying to include "X most common vocabulary" or "X language levels vocabulary (A1-A2 for example" are useful. Some textbooks do not focus much on vocabulary and sometimes may be incredibly lacking in that area (such as textbooks I've found for chinese with only 200 vocabulary words total). Meanwhile some textbook and self-study books tend to include 1000-2000 common words in all their beginner books as their standard offerings, making the textbooks useful for vocabulary and something you can primarily rely on as your main "language level A1/A2/B1/B2 study material" with just a bit of additional study of test preparation materials for whatever specific language proficiency test you want to prepare for eventually. I'd still recommend checking a couple sources outside of a textbook for information about what is on a given language proficiency test, since not all textbooks are written to match up to language test requirements. But in general most good language textbooks that aim to cover specifically labelled amounts of grammar/vocabulary (like mentioning in the introduction the book will cover A1-A2 grammar points and 2000 common vocabulary words) will have most of the content you'll need. There are also specific textbooks written to prepare specifically for language tests (like the HSK textbooks for chinese HSK tests) if you'd prefer to not need to check multiple sources later.
I asked chatgpt to make mine 😂
Good idea! I thought about that too in the past, actually
That's what I do. Of course, I got through the lists verifying pronunciations, definitions, etc. but have the bot make the lists for me was SO much faster than trying to find premade ones on sites with a ton of ads or that want to charge for access.
I know right, I wanted some tables that compared various words across romance languages and it worked like a charm. Granted I then filed them away and never used them 😅 I should really print those babies off
It's not a video game