How Many French Words Do You Know?
Take this free 3-minute test. Answer 20 word definition questions and get your estimated vocabulary size, plus personalized podcast recommendations.
Answer
Pick the correct definition for 20 French words, from common to rare.
Get Your Size
See your estimated vocabulary size and CEFR level with a shareable result card.
Find Your Podcasts
Get personalized podcast recommendations that match your level.
How It Works
We test your knowledge across 8 word frequency bands - from the 1,000 most common French words to rare words used by advanced speakers. Based on how many words you recognize at each level, we estimate your total vocabulary size and match you with podcasts at the right difficulty.
How vocabulary size is measured
You cannot count the words in someone's head one by one, so every vocabulary test works by sampling. Words in French follow a steep frequency curve: a few hundred words cover most of what gets said, and past that each additional thousand appears more rarely than the last.
A test picks words from across that curve and watches where recognition starts to fail. If you know almost every word from the first few thousand but only some from the eighth thousand, your boundary sits somewhere in between. That boundary, not a raw score, is what the estimate reports.
One consequence worth knowing: the figure counts word families, not every form separately. Decide, decides, decided and decision count once between them, which is why estimates look smaller than you might expect.
What your result means
| Word families | Roughly CEFR | What it feels like |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 - 3,000 | A1 - A2 | Enough for everyday exchanges. Most slow, clearly-spoken French is followable, but normal-speed conversation still runs away from you. |
| 3,000 - 6,000 | B1 - B2 | The range where most learners plateau. You follow the gist of podcasts and films, and lose the details - which is exactly what dictation practice exposes. |
| 6,000 - 10,000 | B2 - C1 | Comfortable with news, documentaries and most podcasts. Unfamiliar words are usually guessable from context rather than blocking. |
| 10,000+ | C1 - C2 | Close to an educated native range. Remaining gaps tend to be specialist terms, idioms and regional usage. |
The bands overlap on purpose. A 20-item sample places you in a neighbourhood, not on a point, and treating the output as an exact score reads more precision into it than the method supports.
Knowing a word is not one thing
This test measures recognition: shown a word, can you pick its meaning? That is the easiest form of knowing, and it is the one that inflates. Plenty of learners recognise a word on the page, fail to catch it in speech, and never produce it themselves.
Listening is usually the gap. A word you have only ever read has no sound attached to it, so it slides past unnoticed in a podcast even though you would have identified it instantly in writing. If your estimate here looks healthy but listening still feels hard, that mismatch is the reason - and it is worth checking against a listening level test.
Growing the number
Vocabulary grows fastest through repeated encounters in real context. Lists get you a definition; context gets you the collocations, the register and the grammar the word carries with it - the things that decide whether your use of it sounds right.
Dictation is a particularly efficient way to do that, because it forces the listening and writing channels together. You hear a word, commit to what you think it was, and immediately see the correction. Being wrong in a way you can see is a stronger memory hook than any number of flashcard reps.
Frequently asked questions
- How many French words do I know?
- Nobody can count it directly, so vocabulary size is estimated by sampling. This test shows you 20 words drawn from across the frequency spectrum - from the very common to the genuinely rare - and infers your total from which ones you recognise. It takes about three minutes and gives you a range rather than a single number.
- How accurate is a 20-question vocabulary test?
- Accurate enough to place you in a band, not precise enough to defend a specific figure. Sampling 20 items gives a reliable sense of whether you are around 3,000 words or around 9,000, but the true number could sit some way either side. Treat the result as a band, and retake it every few months to see the direction of travel.
- What is a good vocabulary size?
- It depends what you want to do. Around 3,000 word families covers most everyday conversation. Roughly 6,000 to 9,000 is the range usually associated with reading and listening to unsimplified material comfortably. Educated native speakers are commonly estimated between 15,000 and 20,000 word families.
- How does vocabulary size map to CEFR levels?
- Only loosely - CEFR describes what you can do, not how many words you have stored. That said, the two correlate: learners around A2 typically sit near 2,000-3,000 words, B2 near 5,000-6,000, and C1 above 8,000. This test reports both so you can read one against the other.
- Is the test free?
- Yes, and it needs no account. You get your estimated size, your approximate CEFR level and a shareable result card without signing up.
- How do I actually grow my vocabulary?
- Meeting words repeatedly in real context beats memorising lists, because you pick up how a word is used and not just what it means. On WELE that happens through dictation on real podcasts: you hear the word, write it, get it wrong, and see it corrected - which is a far stronger memory hook than a flashcard.