Memorize German A1 Essentials: 215 High-Frequency Words From a 260-Card Deck

The German Vocabulary A1 — Essentials deck (code TV4027, 260 cards) on Flip It is not a beginner's themed word list. It is a frequency list from spoken German — the words that fill real dialogue, ranked by how often you hear them. That makes it valuable, as long as you study it as what it is.

What's inside

Every card is English → German, single words, no example sentences.

Words you'll learn: ich, du, sie, er, es, wir, ihr, mich, mir, dich, dir, ihn, ihm, uns, ihnen, sich, nicht, nein, ja, und, aber, oder, denn, wenn, als, ob, dass, mit, für, von, zu, auf, an, bei, nach, aus, über, durch, ohne, bis, um, vor, hier, da, jetzt, dann, heute, morgen, immer, nie, schon, noch, nur, auch, sehr, wieder, wirklich, einfach, genau, gerade, wohl, etwas, nichts, alles, jemand, warum, wieso, wer, wo, wie, was, bitte, danke, hallo, plus the core verbs sagen, machen, tun, gehen, kommen, sehen, wissen, lassen, reden, helfen, finden.

260 cards, 215 words

Cards 101-146 replay cards 1-100 with the English reworded — sie, das, du, die, ein, auf, dass, von, wenn, noch, dir, sich, gut, als, sein, mal, aus, doch, alles, weiß, nach, man, will, bei, also, vor, los, sagen, machen, alle, denn. The only new card in that stretch is 136 (s, the spoken clitic of es). Suspend the replay and the deck shrinks to 215 real words.

Turn scattered forms into tables

Frequency lists shred grammar. This deck contains fourteen article forms (der, die, das, den, dem, des, ein, eine, einen, einem, einer, kein, keine, keinen), seven forms of haben (haben, habe, hast, hat, hab, hatte, hätte), eight of sein (bin, bist, ist, sind, war, waren, wäre, sein) and four each of können and wollen. Learning dem alone as "the (dative masc/neut)" is nearly useless. Write one card per paradigm — a full der/ein declension grid, the present tense of sein and haben — and keep the single-form cards only as recognition drills.

Capitalise the nouns before you start

German nouns are always capitalised, and the gender is part of the word. The deck gives them in lower case with no article: mann, frau, leben, zeit, gott, leute, vater, mutter, geld, tag, nacht, liebe, paar. Rewrite each back as der Mann, die Frau, das Leben, die Zeit, der Gott, die Leute, der Vater, die Mutter, das Geld, der Tag, die Nacht, die Liebe, das Paar.

A few backs also need context:

• way → weg: weg means "away"; "way" is der Weg.
• sorry → leid: the phrase is Es tut mir leid.
• know/white → weiß: two words (ich weiß, weiß = white) — split the card.
• his/to be → sein: same split, possessive vs infinitive.
• man → mann sits next to one → man: drill them as a pair.
• mr., sir, okay, hey and oh betray a dubbed-TV corpus; skip them.

Where this deck fits

TV4027 shares its generator with the next two levels in the series. Once the 215 words stick, continue with our German A2 Everyday study guide and the B1 Expanding deck guide.