Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!ptimtc!rdmei!icspub!astemgw!wnoc-tyo-news!ascwide!ascgw!fgw2!fgw!pfrad!ace!melby From: melby@daffy.yk.Fujitsu.CO.JP (John B. Melby) Newsgroups: comp.compression Subject: Re: word frequency in English Message-ID: Date: 14 Apr 91 21:24:32 GMT References: <13834@adobe.UUCP> Sender: news@ace.yk.fujitsu.co.jp Organization: Open Systems Dept. Div. 2 Sect. 3, FUJITSU LTD. Lines: 19 >Where can I find a list/dictionary/datafile of English words sorted by >relative frequency in various classes of usage. For example, is "a" the most >commonly used English word. followed by "the"? In fact, the word "the" is generally considered to be the most common word in the English language. As was pointed out, this is dependent on the body of text that is used as a reference - for instance, on telegrams the word "olive" might be more common. You might want to look at a non-technical book on codes and ciphers. Some of these books also contain other interesting pointers (the most common two-letter combination in the English language is "th," the letters most frequently found in the English language are e,t,a,o,n,[r,i | i,r],s,h, and so on....) ----- John B. Melby Fujitsu Limited, Machida, Japan melby%yk.fujitsu.co.jp@uunet