Common words first

Every word deck in Riff wears a badge: Common, Special, Exclusive or Rare. Common decks come first, and that ordering is the closest thing vocabulary learning has to a free lunch.

Word frequencies are brutally skewed. A core of the most frequent two to three thousand word families does most of the work in everyday speech, which is why vocabulary researchers, Paul Nation most prominently, argue that high-frequency words deserve priority until they are known. No other use of study time buys as much understanding per word learned.

The question left is what counts as common, and Riff answers it from the shows themselves. Instead of borrowing a list compiled from newspapers or textbooks, Riff measures how often each meaning actually occurs across the real dialogue in its catalog, counting senses rather than spellings, so run as in jogging and run as in managing earn their places separately. The badge on a deck reflects that measured frequency.

The idea is old and well supported; the ordering is ours, computed from the language you are actually about to hear. Your effort lands where the payoff is largest.