When I lived in Switzerland for graduate school in 1978, I took a Christmas trip to Italy with a friend. I was worried about not speaking the language but my friend’s roommate, who was studying linguistics, said to just learn 100 basic words and use them freely without regard to grammar. A word for me, you, them, goes with a verb without conjugation. A word for later and earlier substitutes for tenses. I tried it and he was right that people really appreciated the effort and made sense out of very few words. I have followed this technique repeatedly and regretted it when I didn’t.

When my family spent the summer of 2006 in Europe so I could write my first book, Driving Innovation, I made a list of what I thought the 100 words should be and I had the children write the translations in tabular form for Spanish and French. We used it in our travels to good effect.

We recently found the yellow sheet with the list of 100 words. (Well, it was actually 75 words.) It was in a phrase book for most European languages that was my traveling companion for many years.

Now that I can’t talk and spelling is slow with the Tobii eye gaze system and slower with a glance chart, I make do communicating  with nods and shakes of my head or directing my stare at the thing I am concerned with. If people are patient and ask me lots of yes/no questions, we can communicate successfully.

If you are reading this, you are capable of memorizing 100 words. In writing this post, my two college graduate children and I have added 25 words to the original 75 from the yellow sheet to make it an even 100. Feel free to customize the list as you desire. Here they are:

1. Yes
2. No
3. Hello
4. Goodbye
5. Please
6. Thank you
7. I’m sorry
8. Excuse me
9. Where is…?
10. How much (cost)?
11. When
12. Who
13. I/me
14. You
15. He/him
16. She/her
17. It
18. They/them
19. Man
20. Woman
21. This
22. That
23. Here
24. There
25. And
26. Or
27. Toilet
28. Police
29. Restaurant
30. Hotel
31. Bank/ATM
32. Taxi
33. Do you speak English?
34. I don’t understand
35. What does ___ mean?
36. Help
37. I want…
38. To eat
39. To drink
40. To find
41. To sleep
42. To read
43. To have
44. To be
45. To do
46. To make
47. To need
48. More
49. Less
50. A lot/lots
51. A little
52. Earlier
53. Later
54. Open
55. Closed
56. Good
57. Bad
58. Hot
59. Cold
60. Vegetarian
61. Meat
62. Fish
63. Poultry
64. The check
65. Monday
66. Tuesday
67. Wednesday
68. Thursday
69. Friday
70. Saturday
71. Sunday
72. 1
73. 2
74. 3
75. 4
76. 5
77. 6
78. 7
79. 8
80. 9
81. 10
82. 11
83. 12
84. 13
85. 14
86. 15
87. 16
88. 17
89. 18
90. 19
91. 20
92. 30
93. 40
94. 50
95. 60
96. 70
97. 80
98. 90
99. 100
100. 1,000