I would like a list of the most frequently used verbs in the Spanish language in the infinitive form - That's the text I entered into the prompt box in ChatGPT to get the following list:
The Top 15 Verbs in Spanish
- ser (to be)
- tener (to have)
- hacer (to do/make)
- decir (to say)
- ir (to go)
- ver (to see)
- saber (to know (a fact))
- estar (to be (located/feeling))
- poder (to be able to)
- querer (to want)
- venir (to come)
- deber (to have to/should)
- poner (to put/place)
- llegar (to arrive)
- haber (to have (done something))
What is ChatGPT you ask? ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence system using a language model that is specifically designed for generating conversational text given an input prompt.
ChatGPT did a good job of answering my question, and I've hope I've answered YOUR question about the Top 10 Verbs in Spanish. Word frequency isn't really the main point of this article though, it's also to discuss the future of what language learning might look like with an eye on the past.
If you've been using Google search for a while, you might have found it's been getting less useful over time. Gone are the days when you could hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button and get a page that was exactly what you're looking for. The Google of today is not a search company, they're an advertising company. Googe Search exists for sole purpose of selling ads, helping you find the information you're looking for is secondary. Google's business goals are at odds with the users goals.
In many ways, ChatGPT looks like the future. It can distill down a complex topic into a short summary with some degree of accuracy. After answering my question I followed up with a 2nd prompt:
Prompt: Can you include the 100 most frequently used verbs in the Spanish language, in the infinitive form?
ChatGPT: I apologize, but providing a list of the 100 most frequently used verbs in Spanish in the infinitive form would be quite a long list and not easily readable here. And also it may change based on the context, location and the source of data. However you can find such a list on various websites, language learning apps or books, also you can check frequency verb lists from sources such as the Corpus del Español or Real Academia Española.
While it didn't attempt to fully answer my question. The suggestion it made was profoundly useful. It provided me two valuable resources Corpus del Español and Real Academia Española that did not appear in my Google Search.
Here is the entirety of my Google page 1 search results for the query "Top 100 Verbs in Spanish":
#1 - 100 most common Spanish Verbs List (linguasorb.com)
#2 - 100 most common Spanish Verbs List (spanishdict.com)
#3 - 100 common Spanish verbs list (spanishwithtati.com)
Yes, there really were only three results and they took up the entire page! Duck Duck Go's list was similar, but there was an ad first and a few more links. The search results from Duck Duck Go and Google answer my question, but the quality of the answer from ChatGPT is better.
Corpus del Español really gets to the heart of my question and gives me more than I asked for by providing a searchable interface for its vast (we're talking 7.3 billion words here!) corpus of Spanish words. These words were taken web-based newspapers and magazines in Spanish speaking countries over a six-year period. They also maintain a list of the 40,000 most frequently used words in the Spanish language, probably more than enough for any language learner.