How many words does an A1 speaker know?

About 120 word families, about 200 to 250 individual words. A popular 500-word target gives beginners more room for basic needs, introductions, and simple directions.

On vocabulary tests that sample the 5,000 most common dictionary words, A1 learners score below 1,500. Every published number is real; they just count different things. That's why one article says 120 and another says 500.

Why every source gives a different number

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) itself publishes no official word counts for any level, A1 through C2. Every number you'll find comes from vocabulary research, and the spread comes from the unit, not the research. Some studies count word families, some count lemmas (a dictionary headword plus its inflections), and some count every individual word. One family is roughly 1.6 to 2 individual words, so the same vocabulary produces very different totals depending on how you count.

The main measurements behind the numbers you'll see:

Below 1,500 is Milton and Alexiou's measured band for A1 learners on the X_Lex test, which samples the 5,000 most common lemmas. It's a score out of 5,000, not a total vocabulary size.

About 120 word families is Paul Nation's suggested A1 figure in his CEFR mapping. It is a rough estimate tied to very basic survival language, not a precise boundary every A1 learner crosses.

500 words is the popular doubling-table figure for A1. It is an internet extrapolation, not a figure in the research. The table simply doubles its total at every CEFR level, and usually leaves the unit unclear.

Two caveats. These are receptive counts from English-language studies: passive vocabulary you recognize when reading or listening. The vocabulary you can actively use in speech is smaller. And educated native speakers carry well past 15,000 word families. An A1 learner is building a survival kit, not a small version of a native vocabulary.

How far do 120 word families actually get you?

They support survival scripts and formulaic phrases: greetings, numbers, basic requests, and simple personal details. Those chunks can do more than the count suggests because they are learned as ready-made language. The popular 500-word figure is still a fair practical target. It adds enough choice to cope when a familiar exchange does not follow the script.

How many words do you need at the other levels?
See the real numbers for A2 · B1 · B2 · C1 · C2.

Sources: Milton and Alexiou, vocabulary size across the CEFR levels · Nation, Vocabulary and the CEFR · ILR, vocabulary size and reading coverage.