The construction began. Men in yellow hats drove big machines. They dug deep holes. They poured concrete. They stacked bricks. Mr. Brown watched it all. He saw the workers. They used simple language. "Pass the hammer." "Hold that line." "Watch your head." "Take a break." They spoke in the most common words, the words that fall into the top one hundred. Yet, they built something that would last a hundred years.
He walked outside. The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the street. He looked at the city. It was a collection of millions of stories, spoken in millions of sentences, using the same five thousand words over and over again. 5000 most common english words
Weeks passed. The seasons changed. The on the trees turned from green to gold. The air became cold. Winter was coming. The construction began
It made him think about the hierarchy of language. At the bottom, you have the essentials: , death , love , hate . These are the heavy stones. In the middle, you have the actions: Work , play , eat , drink , learn , teach . These are the bricks. At the top, you have the rare words. The words that Mr. Brown loved: Ethereal , ephemeral , labyrinthine , cacophony . These were the decorations, the carvings above the door. They were beautiful, but you could not build a foundation with them. If you used them too much, the wall would crumble. They poured concrete
These provide the methodological foundation for creating a 5,000-word frequency list.