SOCR LetterFrequencyData
Contents
SOCR Data - Latin Letters Frequency Distributions in Different Languages
Data Description
The data table below present the average frequencies of the 26 most common Latin letters for different languages. Letter frequencies in text are studied in cryptography. The exact letter frequency distribution underling a given language is unknown and varies with time, since all writers tend to write slightly differently and are affected by their culture. Modern International Morse code encodes the most frequent letters with the shortest symbols; arranging the Morse alphabet into groups of letters that require equal amounts of time to transmit, and then sorting these groups in increasing order. Similar ideas are used in modern data-compression techniques such as Huffman coding.
Letter frequencies, like word frequencies, tend to vary by writer, subject and language. Accurate average letter frequencies are obtained by analyzing large amounts of representative text.
Sources
Data Table
| Letter | English | French | German | Spanish | Portuguese | Esperanto | Italian | Turkish | Swedish | Polish | Toki_Pona | Dutch | Avgerage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | 0.08 | 0.08 | 0.07 | 0.13 | 0.15 | 0.12 | 0.12 | 0.12 | 0.09 | 0.08 | 0.17 | 0.07 | 0.11 |
| b | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.03 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.01 |
| c | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.05 | 0.04 | 0.01 | 0.05 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.04 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.03 |
| d | 0.04 | 0.04 | 0.05 | 0.06 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.04 | 0.05 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.00 | 0.06 | 0.04 |
| e | 0.13 | 0.15 | 0.17 | 0.14 | 0.13 | 0.09 | 0.12 | 0.09 | 0.10 | 0.07 | 0.07 | 0.19 | 0.12 |
| f | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| g | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.03 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.03 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.03 | 0.02 |
| h | 0.06 | 0.01 | 0.05 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.02 |
| i | 0.07 | 0.08 | 0.08 | 0.06 | 0.06 | 0.10 | 0.11 | 0.08 | 0.05 | 0.07 | 0.15 | 0.07 | 0.08 |
| j | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.04 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.03 | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| k | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.04 | 0.00 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.05 | 0.02 | 0.02 |
| l | 0.04 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.06 | 0.07 | 0.06 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.10 | 0.04 | 0.05 |
| m | 0.02 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.04 | 0.04 | 0.02 | 0.04 | 0.02 | 0.03 |
| n | 0.07 | 0.07 | 0.10 | 0.07 | 0.05 | 0.08 | 0.07 | 0.07 | 0.09 | 0.05 | 0.12 | 0.10 | 0.08 |
| o | 0.08 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.09 | 0.11 | 0.09 | 0.10 | 0.02 | 0.04 | 0.07 | 0.08 | 0.06 | 0.07 |
| p | 0.02 | 0.03 | 0.01 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.02 | 0.04 | 0.02 | 0.02 |
| q | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| r | 0.06 | 0.07 | 0.07 | 0.07 | 0.07 | 0.06 | 0.06 | 0.07 | 0.08 | 0.04 | 0.00 | 0.06 | 0.06 |
| s | 0.06 | 0.08 | 0.07 | 0.08 | 0.08 | 0.06 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.06 | 0.04 | 0.04 | 0.04 | 0.06 |
| t | 0.09 | 0.07 | 0.06 | 0.05 | 0.05 | 0.05 | 0.06 | 0.03 | 0.09 | 0.02 | 0.05 | 0.07 | 0.06 |
| u | 0.03 | 0.06 | 0.04 | 0.04 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.02 | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.03 |
| v | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.02 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.03 | 0.01 |
| w | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.04 | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.01 |
| x | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| y | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.03 | 0.01 | 0.03 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.01 |
| z | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.05 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Others | 0 | 0.03 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.02 | 0 | 0.12 | 0.06 | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | 0.04 |
Graphs
- Histogram (HistogramChartDemo7) of the English letters
- Stacked Bar-Chart (StackedBarChartDemo3, under BarCharts --> CategoryPlots) of all letters across each language
- SOCR Home page: http://www.socr.ucla.edu
Translate this page:
