A New List of Common Words in Modern Standard Arabic

Common words help in the teaching of languages and are useful for preparing educational curricula and developing language skills for learners. In Arabic there are a number of lists of common words but their results vary due to the limited texts upon which they are based and also the lack of a sound statistical guide. With the aim of improving the methods used to make lists of common words in Arabic and of saving time and effort in the teaching and learning processes, this study uses quantitative linguistics to build a list of common Arabic words, based on a relatively large linguistic corpus, through a series of linguistic, computational and statistical processes. The study intends to provide a systematic vision for building lists of common words. It also proposes a new list of common words in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), in its two forms: written and spoken. The study has produced important results, including a method for building and developing lists of common words and a complete list of common words in MSA. The list comprises 1000 words "without diacritic", sub-categorized into 1250 words "with diacritic". These words rotate in regular texts at an approximate rate of 75%.