A Frequency Dictionary of French (2009)

The first author would like to thank his French instructors throughout his formative years, particularly France Levasseur-Ouimet and Gérard Guénette. He also acknowledges the inspiring influence of past colleagues in translation and lexicography including Greg Garner, Benoît Thouin, Brian Harris, Robert Good, Alain Danik, and Claude Bédard. He dedicates this book to his parents, to his wonderfully supportive wife Daniela, and to Walter H. Speidel whose own pioneering work in corpus-based computerized lexicography stands as an example for all of us who work in this field.

The second author wishes to thank Philippe Hamon, Bernard Quemada, and Réal Ouellet, his professors at the University of Rennes, the University of Paris III, and Laval University, who instilled in him the desire to study and teach the French language and literature. He dedicates this book to his parents and especially to his wife Hoa for her continued support and encouragement in his professional endeavors.

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Abbreviations Categories Example

adj

adjective

1026 lourd adj heavy

adv

adverb

1071 certainement adv certainly

conj

conjunction

528 puisque conj since

det

determiner

214 votre det your

intj

interjection

889 euh intj er, um, uh

n

noun

802 absence nf absence

nadj

noun/adjective 4614 insensén adj insane

prep

preposition

389 parmi prep among

pro

pronoun

522 lui-même pro himself

v

verb

1014 confirmer v to confirm

Features on categories

Example

f

feminine

1011 armée nf army

i

invariable

1324 après-midi nmi afternoon

m

masculine

707 signe nm sign

pl

plural

3654 dépens nmpl expense

(f)

no distinct feminine

3770 apte adj(f) capable

(pl)

no distinct plural

3901 croix nf(pl) cross

P

IT

chC

ob

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Introduction

The value of a frequency dictionary for French

Today French is the second most taught and widespread second language globally, behind English.

Yet, surprisingly, there is no current corpus-based frequency dictionary of the French language. The present dictionary is meant to address this shortcoming, and is part of a series that includes other highly useful dictionaries for Spanish (Davies, 2006) and Portuguese (Davies & Preto-Bay, 2008).

As such it is similar in intent, approach, structure, and content to its predecessors. As noted below, some modifications have also been made to make it more usable for English speakers, who do constitute the largest group of speakers on the planet.

The purpose for this book is to prepare students of French for the words that they are most likely to encounter in the “real world”. It is meant to help alleviate the phenomenon encountered all too often in dictionaries and language primers where word lists are introduced based on intuitive or unverifiable notions of which words might conceivably be most useful for students to acquire, and in which order. The dictionary is designed primarily as a reference work which could be used in concert with standard classroom curricular materials or used on an individual study basis. Ideas on how to carry out this integration have been noted in the previous dictionaries noted above.

Contents of the dictionary

This is first and foremost a frequency dictionary. The principal information concerns the 5,000 most frequent words in French as determined in the process described below. This information is arranged in three different formats: (i) a main frequency listing, which begins with the most frequent word (with associated information) followed by the next most frequent word, and so forth; (ii) an alphabetical index of these words, and (iii) a frequency listing of the words organized by part of speech, and (iv) thematic lists grouping some of the words into related semantic classes. Each of the entries in the main frequency listing contains the word itself, its part(s) of speech (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc.), a context reflecting its actual usage previously in French, an English translation of that context, and summary statistical information about the usage of that word. Some or all of this information is likely to be highly useful for language learners in different settings.

The vocabulary itself was derived from a corpus, or body, of French texts. The corpus we collected was assembled specifically for this work and totals millions of words, half of them reflecting transcriptions of spoken French and the other half written French texts. Since the dictionary is focused primarily on frequency and usage, the words do not have associated with them any pronunciation guides, etymological history, or domain-specific usage information. The dictionary is also focused on single words, which is a crucial but not exclusive consideration in language learning; to extensively address fixed word expressions such as collocations and idioms would be beyond the scope of this dictionary.