Ready to stop learning trivial Spanish like animal names and colors? This guide will teach you vocabulary you’re actually going to use in everyday Spanish conversation.
We’ll go over the top 10 Spanish nouns based on a frequency analysis of Spanish spoken by native speakers. These are words that you actually need to connect on a deep and personal level with the Spanish speakers in your life.
Let’s start with just a list of the top 10 nouns. Some of these might surprise you!
These words are listed in order of how frequently they’re used in native Spanish conversations:
Before we dive in and practice using all of these, notice something about this list: Most of these words are abstract and general. We don’t have nouns for things like “bird” and “desk”; instead we have nouns for “thing” (cosa), “time”(vez and tiempo), and “truth” (verdad).
There’s a reason for that. These words can express much more than a bunch of animal names or colors ever could.
Let’s start with some of the easiest words on the list, and we’ll kick off with casa.
Casa literally means “house”, but it can also mean “home”. So let’s start with a simple example that you’ve probably heard before:
Any time you say “the house”, you’ll say la casa, because casa is a feminine noun. For example:
But you’ll also use the word casa any time you would say “at home” in English. This translates to en casa. Here are a couple of examples:
Now time for a little practice!
Try to predict the blank portion in Spanish — it will be either la casa, en casa, or mi casa.
ANSWERS
The word cosa literally means “thing”. This is a super handy word, especially when you don’t know the name of something; you can just vaguely say “the thing” (la cosa).
For example:
It’s also useful to point and say “that thing”, which is esa cosa. For example:
As one more way to use this: To say “the things”, in the plural, you’ll say las cosas. For example:
Let’s practice la cosa, esa cosa, and las cosas. I’m also going to throw in one or two examples of casa just to make sure you can choose between them.
ANSWERS
Next, let’s look at the word hombre, which means “man”. This is super frequently used, and it’s useful because it can refer vaguely to someone when you don’t have a more specific word. Check out all of these examples in English.
In all of these cases, if you’re talking about a man, you could simply replace all of these with “man” if you don’t have the specific word.
Of course, it’s eventually helpful to have more specific vocabulary. The point here is that these high-frequency words, like hombre, are extremely handy to fall back on in all kinds of situations.
Here are the Spanish versions of those sentences:
Let’s also throw in the word for “woman”, which is mujer. Here are some similar sentences that might use mujer.
Let’s get some practice with these. Translate “the man” as el hombre and “the woman” as la mujer. I’ll also throw in some uses of cosa and casa to keep practicing those. Try to predict the Spanish!
ANSWERS
The next noun that we’ll learn is similar to hombre, but it’s a bit more formal. The word señor means something like “mister” or “gentleman”.
You’ll often use this word to be polite; for example, it might sound a bit rude to say “that man over there”. So instead, you might say something like “that gentleman”, which would be ese señor.
Here’s an example:
Pro tip: Make sure to pronounce this as SE-ñor, not SI-ñor, unless you really want to sound like a gringo! Think of the word “send” when pronouncing this, and you’ll get it right.
Now let’s get some practice with this. Try to predict hombre or señor in these sentences. I recommend saying the sentences out loud for the best possible practice.
ANSWERS
Next, let’s look at the word vida, which means “life”.
For a random example:
It’s interesting that both English speakers and Spanish speakers talk about “life” all the time. Here are several typical examples:
It’s important to notice something about the first two sentences. When talking about “life” in general, in English we just say “life”, but in Spanish we say la vida, literally “the life”. A lot of times Spanish uses these little words, called articles (el, la, etc.), where we would just leave them off in English.
Lets’ get some practice with this. In each case, you’ll either say mi vida or la vida.
ANSWERS
Now that we’ve worked on some easy nouns, let’s learn a few nouns that are more abstract.
We’ll start with three nouns that refer to time, which is something both English speakers and Spanish speakers talk about all the time. (See what I did there?)
We’ll start with a simple one, the word for “year”, which is año. As a simple example:
Since the word año is masculine, to say “the year” you’ll say el año. Sometimes you’ll do this even when you just say “year” in English (so that’s a lot like what we’ve done with vida).
For example:
Literally, “It’s open all the year.”
To say “this year”, you’ll use este año. For example:
Let’s practice this. Try to predict whether to use un año, todo el año, or este año.
ANSWERS
Next, let’s learn how to say the English word “time” in Spanish.
Spanish has two different words that mean “time”. First we have tiempo, which represents the passage of time and amounts of time. For example:
But if we want to talk about a specific instance in time, like when we say “one time” or “the first time”, we use the word vez. Here are some examples:
So if it helps, think of tiempo as something that passes slowly, but vez is for one-time events. Here are a couple more examples of each one:
If this is confusing, don’t worry, you’ll catch on pretty quickly with some practice. Let’s drill this with a few more examples.
ANSWERS
If you want even more practice on all the different ways to say “time” in Spanish, check out the LearnCraft Spanish Podcast. There, you can get some great quizzing on this and everything else we’ve learned in this guide.
We’re down to the last two words in our list, and these might be surprising. The word favor means “favor”, and verdad means “truth”.
When I was first learning Spanish, I looked at these two words and was like — why are these so high on the frequency list? Do Spanish speakers really talk about favors and truth all the time?
But actually the reason these words are so common is that they’re used in some very common idioms.
The word favor is most commonly used in the expression por favor, which means “please”.
Of course, favor can literally mean “favor” as well. For example:
But much more often it’s used in contexts more like this:
Let’s get some practice! Try to predict where you should use favor and por favor.
She needs a favor. → Necesita un _____.
I need help, please. → Necesito ayuda, ____.
It’s a small favor. → Es un _____ pequeño.
ANSWERS
It’s the same thing with verdad — it means “truth”, but it’s more commonly used in idioms.
Here’s an example where it means “truth”:
But more often, verdad is used in one of these little two-word combinations:
Here’s a simple example.
So you’ll use de verdad to express disbelief, just like we use “really” in English. It’s very often used in questions. Here’s another one:
And then here’s an example of en verdad:
So you use en verdad the way you’d use “actually” in English, typically to say something you think is surprising. Here’s another example:
Let’s get some practice in! Try to predict where you should use verdad, en verdad, and de verdad.
ANSWERS
As you can see, the most important nouns in Spanish aren’t what you might think — they don’t refer to specific people, places, or things. Instead, the top ten nouns are the most useful and flexible nouns you can use in all kinds of situations.
These nouns are also harder to master than colors and animal names. To learn these deeply, you need to drill them to perfection and start using them in a wide variety of contexts.
If what you want to do is master Spanish for deep expression — not just dabble in vocabulary, but actually achieve expressive fluency — you can practice everything from this guide using the LearnCraft Spanish Podcast.
This podcast is a free course that will systematically take you through all the top 1,000 Spanish words, step by step, with 250 lessons designed for deep mastery. You’ll get tons of quizzing and sentence practice, so that the Spanish you’re learning becomes second nature — the kind of Spanish you can use in real life. You can access all 250 lessons for free here: LearnCraft Spanish Podcast.