là-bas
là-bas is an French adverb meaning there, over there. It is the 410th most common word in French, which puts it at CEFR level A1. It turns up in about 1 in 746 sentences of real French prose.
410
rank
of 5,000
A1
CEFR level
by frequency
1 in 746
sentences
contain it
67.7%
running total
of a book covered
Running total is cumulative: knowing là-bas and every French word above it covers 67.7% of the running words in a real book.
Is là-bas worth learning now?
Yes - là-bas is inside the first thousand French words, and those thousand cover 75.99% of the prose in a real book and 81.81% of everyday speech. Words this common are worth far more study time than anything further down the list.
Frequency is the honest guide to order, not to method. A word learned from a list on its own fades; the same word met inside a sentence you wanted to read stays. Check a French text against the CEFR bands to see whether what you are reading is at your level.
French words of the same frequency
- présenter #406 - to present, to introduce
- service #407 - service
- six #408 - six
- raconter #409 - to recount
- reconnaître #411 - to recognise
- voler #412 - to fly through the air
- fond #413 - back
- chemin #414 - path, way, road
See all 5,000 most common French words, or look up any of the 20,063 French words Einlang ranks.
Where this comes from
The rank is measured, not copied: 281 million words of subtitle dialogue for how French is spoken, and 76 public-domain books for how it is written. Conjugations and plurals count towards the word they belong to, so là-bas is ranked as a word rather than as a spelling. The meaning and part of speech come from Wiktionary. Generated 2026-07-27.
Also on Einlang: the most common Spanish words and the most common German words.
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