Oxford 3000 for French

Question

“The Oxford 3000” (PDF listing) is a selection of the 3000 most frequently used words in English. If you know them, you can understand the meaning of more than 80% of the words in a general text.

Is there something like that for French? A simplified dictionary for students would be nice too. Because I'm in a condition in which I cannot buy any book, I would prefer to find such dictionary online or in PDF format so that I can print it.

Answer 1

I don't know of any resource as complete as the Oxford 3000, but lists of words sorted by frequency have been compiled by lexicologists, such as:

• one published on Éduscol (direct PDF link), created by Étienne Brunet, has the most used 1500 words. It is commonly used by elementary or middle school teachers.
• Wiktionary has another one, with 1750 words all linked to the relevant Wiktionary page. Unfortunately, the link to the original source (“Liste de 1750 mots connus d’un enfant de 4 ans, d’après l’académie d'Amiens”) is dead.

Answer 2

For 1000 words, featuring prepositions and such, I found this one, based on work by the Lexique.org team: Lexique 1000¹.

For 2000 words, there seem to be very interesting flashcards to help learn them.

¹ Let's name it that.