iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

'Thank you', ranked by how often film and TV say it: gracias #70 in Spanish, grazie #74 in Italian, 谢谢 #92 in Mandarin, merci #95 in French, danke #98 in German, obrigado #112 in Portuguese. English 'thank' only makes #131.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Happy German Unity Day. German in numbers: ich is the most common word on German screens, 91 word forms cover half of everything said, and doch (#68) is the 'yes, actually' English never got.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Plural "you", ranked in film and TV subtitles: vous #8 in French, ihr #37 in German, vocês #93 in Brazilian Portuguese, voi #152 in Italian, ustedes #258 in Spanish. English has nothing, so "guys" sits at #193. Y'all is filling a real gap. #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Disclosure: I run verbavia.com, a free A1 to C2 Spanish course. Its vocabulary comes in frequency order: 95 word forms cover half of Spanish film and TV dialogue, about 1,850 cover 80%. Pairs well with the shows people suggested here.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Lovely notebook. Worth giving the neutral tone its own colour too: 的, 了, 吗, 吧 and 呢, usually toneless, make up almost 9% of all words in Mandarin film and TV subtitles, and four of them are in the top 15.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The wall we hear about most: understanding native speakers at full speed. Part of why it lasts: in film and TV dialogue the top 1,000 words already cover 75–80%, but reaching 90% takes about 5,000 (French) to 7,500 (Spanish). Real progress can feel like none.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Ótimo hábito! E diário é o gênero perfeito pro alemão: nas legendas de filmes e séries, "ich" é a palavra mais comum da língua inteira (nº 1), e "heute" já aparece em 142º. Viel Erfolg!

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

There's research behind this too: Merrill Swain's output hypothesis (1985). Trying to write or say something is what makes you notice the gaps that reading and listening let you skip past. Recognising a word and being able to use it are two different levels of knowing it.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Ótima dica! E um dado pra comemorar: nas legendas de filmes e séries, as 1.000 palavras mais comuns cobrem 77% do que se diz em português brasileiro, 79% em francês e 75% em espanhol. Mil palavras já levam longe.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Very likely, yes. Latvian krogs is usually traced to Middle Low German krôch, the Hanseatic traders' word, which also gave Swedish krog. Dutch kroeg and German Krug are cousins. Riga was a Hanseatic city, so the pub vocabulary arrived with the merchants.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Great theme. The informal words turn up earlier than learners expect: in French film and TV subtitles, boulot (job) ranks #414 and fric (money) #1,184, both well inside a first-2,000-words list. Travail and argent still win, at #242 and #205.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Happy European Day of Languages! Share of film and TV dialogue covered by each language's 1,000 most common words: French 79% German 78% Portuguese 77% Spanish 75% Italian 75% A thousand words gets you three quarters of the words in any conversation. #EDL2026 #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Worth remembering how long they've held on: the Arbëreshë came to southern Italy in the 15th century, after the Ottoman conquest of Albania. More than five hundred years of keeping a language alive with no state behind it. Hope they keep it going.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A good number for the day: in film and TV dialogue, the 1,000 most common words cover 75–79% of everything said in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. A thousand words is a very reachable first goal in any of them. Happy #EDL2026!

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Great list. Brazil adds a scarier one: "está chovendo canivete", it's raining penknives. And just outside Romance, German goes minimalist: "es regnet Bindfäden", it's raining strings.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Coffee or tea in film/TV dialogue? Coffee, everywhere we checked (rank, 1 = most common): Mandarin 咖啡 904, 茶 1,901 Spanish 617 vs 1,127 French 598 vs 1,203 German 706 vs 1,306 Italian 1,299 vs 2,242 Portuguese 501 vs 1,107 Esperanto 1,285 vs 2,286 Subtitles skew Hollywood, mind. #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Burroughs' line, Anderson's tune. The frequency data fits the virus model too: in film and TV dialogue, the top 100 words make up roughly half of everything said, in all six languages we've measured. A tiny genome, very contagious.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

French commentary would be the hard mode: 97 is quatre-vingt-dix-sept, literally "four twenties, ten, seven". By the time you've done the maths the car has finished another lap.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

"Niet van suiker" is the best rain idiom going, and it travels: German "ich bin doch nicht aus Zucker", Brazilian Portuguese "não sou de açúcar". Apparently half of Europe is worried about dissolving. Enjoy Riga!

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Nice. Spanish sidesteps that fight entirely: no -est suffix to overapply, just "el segundo más poderoso". Its kids save their overregularising for the verbs instead.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

They're ranks, so smaller means more common (rank 1 = the most frequent word). English: love 123, money 186. German: Liebe 188, Geld 193. Love takes both, just barely in German. We should have spelled that out!

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Lower number wins here: rank 1 is the most common word. Liebe is 188th and Geld 193rd, so love edges it by five places. Fair catch though, the post should have said that.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The dembow ad read deserves its own Grammy category. And Spanish podcasts are one of the best ways to learn, since the 1,000 most common words already cover about three quarters of everyday talk.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The dembow ad read deserves its own Grammy category. And Spanish podcasts are one of the best ways to learn, since the 1,000 most common words already cover about three quarters of everyday talk.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The Spanish one is perfect for a man who hasn't slept in weeks: "No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano", getting up early won't make the sun rise any sooner.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Best reason there is. Comics are secretly great for learning French: short sentences, pictures for context, and mostly everyday words. Moebius is a lovely place to start.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Favourite trio: a librairie is a bookshop, a coin is a corner, and your bras is your arm. Asking for your bras in the coin of a librairie is a very confusing afternoon.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A year in is exactly when German starts paying you back: its 1,000 most common words already cover about 78% of film and TV dialogue. Viel Erfolg to her!

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

30,000 speakers holding out against millions of tourists is remarkable. The opposite problem is just as real: Shanghainese still has millions of speakers, yet many children there now answer their parents in Mandarin. Size alone doesn't keep a language safe.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"Powerfullest" is such a good sign: the rule has clicked and the exceptions just haven't caught up yet. Adult learners do exactly the same, like Spanish learners saying "yo sabo" for a while before "yo sé" sticks.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Dogs vs cats, ranked by frequency in film/TV dialogue: English: dog 538, cat 1,041 Spanish: perro 622, gato 1,531 French: chien 594, chat 1,442 German: Hund 676, Katze 1,772 Italian: cane 730, gatto 1,752 Mandarin: 狗 634, 猫 1,471 Dogs win everywhere. Cats could not care less. #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Money or love? Rank in film/TV dialogue: Spanish: dinero 164, amor 250 Portuguese (BR): dinheiro 180, amor 233 French: argent 205, amour 299 Italian: soldi 232, amore 345 German: Liebe 188, Geld 193 English: love 123, money 186 Love wins only in English and German, where it's also a verb. #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Coworkers are the best teachers there are. Everyday talk leans on a tiny core: in Spanish film and TV dialogue, the 100 most common words make up about half of everything said, so every chat at work drills exactly the ones that matter.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Mr 5 is closer than he thinks: "farto" is a real word, just in Portuguese, where it means full or fed up. The Spanish for fart is "pedo", which is a whole other conversation.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

A bit of everything, since we build a free course for eight languages, but lately mostly Shanghainese. Millions of people speak it and there's very little learning material in English, which is exactly what makes it fun.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Esperanto was designed to be the easiest language to learn. Count how much film and TV dialogue its 1,000 commonest words cover, and it comes second from last. The reason: its greatest strength, regular endings. Counted as written, -o, -a, -j, -n turn one root into many forms. #Esperanto #langsky

Dot chart titled "Esperanto was designed to be easy. On this measure it comes second from last." Share of film and TV dialogue covered by each language's 1,000 most common words: French 79.5%, German 77.6%, Portuguese (Brazil) 76.8%, Spanish 75.0%, Italian 74.7%, Esperanto 73.3% (highlighted), Mandarin (words) 69.5%. Note: words are counted as written, and Esperanto's regular endings turn one root into many forms. Data: OpenSubtitles 2018 via FrequencyWords (CC BY-SA 4.0), equal-size samples of 403,882 words.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The 100 most common words make up about half of everything said on screen, in all six of these languages. The next 900 add about a quarter; the next 4,000, about a tenth. From OpenSubtitles counts. Words as written, so hablo and habla count separately, which pulls the Romance languages down.

Stacked bar chart: share of all words in film and TV subtitles covered by the most common words. Top 100 words / words 101 to 1,000 / words 1,001 to 5,000 / total. English 58, +25, +9 = 92%. French 57, +22, +11 = 90%. German 51, +27, +11 = 89%. Italian 47, +28, +13 = 88%. Portuguese 50, +25, +13 = 88%. Spanish 51, +24, +12 = 87%. Source: OpenSubtitles 2018 word counts.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Mandarin has four tones, Cantonese six (nine if you count checked syllables the traditional way), Shanghainese five. But in Shanghainese the count matters less than you'd think. In a word, the first syllable's tone spreads across the whole thing and the rest lose theirs. #langsky #Shanghainese

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

That has a name: receptive bilingualism, and conversations where each side speaks its own language are common in heritage families. There's research suggesting childhood overhearers pick up production, accent especially, faster than true beginners. Your cousins may be closer than they think.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Esperanto builds 45 of its commonest words from a grid. Five openings (ki- what, ti- that, i- some, ĉi- every, neni- no) times nine endings (-u person, -o thing, -e place, -am time…). So kiam is when, tiam then, neniam never. Learn 14 pieces, get 45 words. #Esperanto #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

In Mandarin 爹 is dad. In Shanghainese 老爹 lau tia is your father's father. And 阿娘 a nyan isn't mother, as a Mandarin speaker would read it. It's grandmother. Kinship terms are where a shared script misleads you most. #Shanghainese #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

German kept the older word. Herbst is the cognate of English harvest, which in Old English meant the season itself, before autumn and fall squeezed it down to meaning the crop. The Romance side all took the Latin: otoño, autunno, outono, automne.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The timing fits. Shanghai's schools pushed Shanghainese out of the classroom from 1992, so anyone schooled after that got it at home or not at all. Keeping it through that isn't nothing. Do people your age switch to Mandarin when you open in Shanghainese?

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Many Shanghainese characters have two readings, one literary and one colloquial. 人 is nyin in everyday words like 男人 'man', but zen in learned ones like 人民 'the people'. The literary layer sits closer to Mandarin. Which reading you reach for tells people which register you're in. #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

That's close to imperial China. Officials were barred from serving in their home provinces and shared 官话, literally 'officials' speech', the ancestor of Mandarin. The people they governed stayed put and spoke topolects the magistrate often couldn't follow. The mobile class gets the koiné.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Wu Chinese is a neat mirror image. It never had a written standard of its own, because Mandarin always did the literary job, and within Wu, Shanghainese and Wenzhounese aren't mutually intelligible. Take away the standard and one of the levelling forces goes with it.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The digital version of this is quieter and maybe worse. SHN, a Shanghainese community site that ran dialect broadcasts and rap from 2003 to 2011, is offline now. Cassettes at least sit in a duffel bag waiting for someone patient. Dead servers don't.

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The first 1,000 word families cover roughly 78 to 81 percent of written English. Getting to comfortable unassisted reading takes something like 8,000 to 9,000. So the order you learn words in matters enormously at the start and barely at all later. Most courses have this backwards. #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Esperanto speaker counts range from 63,000 to over two million depending on who is counting. Lindstedt's breakdown is more useful than any single figure: ~1,000 native speakers, ~10,000 fluent, ~100,000 who can use it actively, perhaps a million with passive knowledge. #langsky

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Verbavia @verbavia.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

In Mandarin 只 zhī classifies animals and one of a pair. In Shanghainese 只 tsah has spread into something close to a general classifier for things. So a Mandarin speaker defaulting to 个 for everything will be understood — and will instantly sound like a Mandarin speaker. #langsky

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