How many words does an A2 speaker know?

A few hundred word families, roughly 500 to 1,000 individual words. That's enough for routine shopping, travel, and simple exchanges about familiar things.

On vocabulary tests that sample the 5,000 most common dictionary words, A2 learners score about 1,500 to 2,500. Every published number is real; they just count different things. That's why one article says 1,000 and another says 2,500.

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:

1,500 to 2,500 is Milton and Alexiou's measured band for A2 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.

Low hundreds of word families is the best cautious reading of Paul Nation's suggested A2 point in his CEFR mapping. The intermediate figure is not printed precisely in the accessible summary, so a more exact claim would overstate the research.

1,000 words is the popular doubling-table figure for A2. 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. A2 needs only a small, practical slice of that vocabulary for predictable daily tasks.

Is A2 vocabulary enough to get by?

Yes, for routine transactions. An A2 speaker can buy a ticket, order food, ask for directions, and exchange simple information about familiar topics. No, it is not enough for a real, open-ended conversation. Once the topic shifts or the reply becomes unexpected, the small core runs out quickly.

How many words do you need at the other levels?
See the real numbers for A1 · 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.