Woordje

How many Dutch words do you know?

Type what each Dutch word means. No multiple choice, so no lucky guesses. Free, no account, about three minutes.

How the estimate works

The test samples five frequency bands, from the thousand most common Dutch words out to the ten thousandth. Knowing “huis” tells you nothing about the size of a vocabulary, because everyone knows it. What is informative is the band where you start to struggle, so each band is sampled and your score in it is extrapolated across the words that band stands for. Bands are capped by the one below, since knowing a few rare words is not evidence of knowing thousands.

Why you type the answer

Picking from a list lets you score one in four by luck, and no correction removes that cleanly. Typing the meaning removes the guess: nobody types “windmill” by accident. Matching is forgiving, so articles, plurals and word forms are all accepted, along with every translation the dictionary lists. Three of the items are invented words that follow Dutch spelling but do not exist; they cannot be answered and never count towards the score.

How many words is enough?

Around 1,000 to 1,500 words carry ordinary daily conversation, roughly A2. About 3,000 is enough to follow the news and hold a conversation at work, B1 to B2. Reading novels comfortably starts somewhere near 5,000. Frequency matters more than volume: the most common thousand words account for the majority of everyday speech.

How accurate is it?

Treat the number as a range, not a measurement. Two dozen items sampled across ten thousand words give a rough estimate, and the result is rounded to the nearest fifty to avoid suggesting more precision than that. It is useful for tracking whether you are growing, and for deciding which words to study next.

Updated