Is 500 words enough to speak a language?

Is 500 words enough? It depends what for. 500 words is enough for survival scripts: greetings, ordering, asking directions, buying a ticket, basic needs. And the 500 most common words already cover a surprising share of everyday speech, so it's a real, useful start. But it isn't enough to hold a conversation with a native speaker at normal speed, because the words you don't know tend to be the ones carrying the point. Think of 500 as your first month, not your goal.

Here's why the gap is bigger than it looks. Paul Nation's coverage research found the most frequent 1,000 word families cover about 84% of everyday speech. That sounds like plenty until you notice it still leaves roughly one word in six as a blank, and the blank often lands on the word that carries the meaning. To follow comfortably you want closer to 95% coverage, which takes more like 2,000 to 3,000 words. So 500 gets you talking; it doesn't yet get you understanding fast speech. For the fuller picture, see how many words each CEFR level needs.

Source: Nation and Waring, text coverage by vocabulary size.