The words worth learning first
Frequency lists are the usual way to order Spanish vocabulary, and they are the wrong way. A word that appears constantly but always beside three words you do not know buys you nothing you can read. What matters is how many complete sentences a word finishes — how many go from nearly readable to readable the moment you learn it.
These lists are ordered that way, measured on the 1,298 sentences of «Cuentos de la selva», Horacio Quiroga's eight jungle tales of 1918. Every entry carries its English meaning and the forms it is actually printed in.
The gap between those two numbers is the whole point
100 words are 57% of every word printed on this shelf — and they leave 16% of its sentences readable. That gap is why coverage figures alone mislead: you can know 57% of the words on a page and still not read a single line of it, because the ones you are missing are spread one to a sentence. The second number is the one that says whether you can read.
It is also why the order matters more than the length. These are not the commonest words of Spanish; they are the ones that clear the most sentences of this shelf first, which is the only ordering that gets a beginner reading rather than studying.
Where the lists stop, and why
The shelf's ladder runs to 1,504 rungs and its glossary holds 1,548 words, every one checked by hand. These lists publish the first 500, which is where the argument is already made: 500 words carry 86% of every running word on the shelf. What lies past them is the long tail — words that appear once or twice, that no learner plans around, and that arrive on their own while you read. In the room every one of them is glossed where it stands.
Learning them in sentences works better than learning them in a list
This is the honest caveat on a page that exists to hand you a list. A word met once in a column is a word you will meet once; a word met in «Cierta vez las víboras dieron un gran baile.» arrives with a sentence attached to it, and the sentence is what you keep. «Las medias de los flamencos» is free and entire, with no account, if you would rather start there.
Where to start reading in Spanish · the shelf, counted · the same lists for Russian