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Nouns make up the largest share of TOPIK vocabulary by far: 3,404 words, or about 57% of the entire list. Verbs are a distant second at 1,345, followed by adverbs (393), adjectives (376), bound nouns (130), determiners (69), proper nouns (63), and pronouns (47).
| POS | Count | Share | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noun (명) | 3404 | 57% | 사람 person, human · 때 time, occasion · 말 word, speech |
| Verb (동) | 1345 | 22% | 하다 do, make · 되다 become · 보다 see, look, watch |
| Adverb (부) | 393 | 6% | 그러나 but, however · 또 also, again · 안 not |
| Adjective (형) | 376 | 6% | 있다 exist, be · 없다 not exist, be absent · 아니다 not be, is not |
| Bound noun (의) | 130 | 2% | 것 thing · 수 ability, possibility (as in '-을 수 있다': can, be able to) · 등 etc., and so on (as in 학생, 선생님 등) |
| Determiner (관) | 69 | 1% | 그 that · 이 this, such · 한 a (article) |
| Proper noun (고) | 63 | 1% | 강원도 Gangwon Province · 경기도 Gyeonggi Province · 경복궁 Gyeongbokgung Palace |
| Pronoun (대) | 47 | 0% | 나 I, me · 우리 we, us · 그 that, he/she |
If you break down the full TOPIK vocabulary list by part of speech, nouns take up more than half on their own: 3,404 words, or 57%. Verbs are the next-largest group at 1,345, and then the numbers drop off sharply — adverbs at 393, adjectives at 376, bound nouns at 130, determiners at 69, proper nouns at 63, and pronouns bringing up the rear at 47.
That means eight parts of speech cover the entire list, but two of them — nouns and verbs — account for the vast majority of what you'll actually study day to day. Everything after adverbs and adjectives is a smaller, more specialized set: bound nouns, determiners, proper nouns, and pronouns together add up to a relatively short list, even though each one plays a specific grammatical role you'll run into on the test.
This isn't random — it's just how vocabulary works. Nouns are the words that name people, places, objects, ideas, and events, and TOPIK vocabulary is built to cover a wide range of everyday and academic topics: family, work, health, the environment, media, and so on. Every topic you can be asked about needs its own set of nouns to describe it, which is why the noun category keeps growing while categories like pronouns or determiners stay small and closed.
For you as a learner, this has a direct effect on how your study list is shaped. If you're building flashcards or a vocabulary tracker, nouns will naturally make up the bulk of it, and that's expected rather than a sign you're studying the wrong things. Noun study is really topic study — learning nouns well usually means learning them clustered by subject area, not as an isolated grammar category.
Verbs (1,345) and adjectives (376) together are still far fewer than nouns alone, but they demand more practice time per word. That's because Korean verbs and adjectives conjugate — a single dictionary-form entry can branch out into dozens of forms depending on tense, formality level, and the connective endings attached to it. A noun, by contrast, usually stays close to one fixed form no matter where it appears in a sentence.
This is why treating verbs and adjectives the same way you treat nouns — just memorizing the base form and moving on — tends to fall apart on the actual test. Recognizing 가다 in a reading passage is one thing; recognizing it as 갔었는데 or 가더라도 is another skill entirely, and it's the skill TOPIK questions are more likely to test.
For nouns, study by topic cluster rather than alphabetically or randomly — group words around themes like housing, work, or society, and learn them inside example sentences so you also pick up the particles and verbs that commonly pair with them.
For verbs and adjectives, don't stop at the dictionary form. Drill the common conjugation patterns — past tense, connective endings, honorific forms — using the same handful of high-frequency words until the pattern feels automatic, then apply it to new vocabulary as you meet it.
For the smaller categories — bound nouns, determiners, proper nouns, and pronouns — the low counts (130, 69, 63, and 47 respectively) actually work in your favor: these are short, closed lists you can realistically memorize in full rather than pick up gradually. Many of them also show up frequently despite their small numbers, so treat them as a quick, high-return study block rather than skipping them because the category looks minor. For anything about how these categories are weighted on the actual exam, check the official TOPIK site directly rather than relying on general assumptions.
No — nouns and verbs together make up most of the list (3,404 and 1,345 words), so they deserve the bulk of your time. The smaller categories are worth learning too, but they're short enough to finish quickly once you get to them.
Nouns name the topics themselves — people, places, ideas, situations — so every subject area adds new nouns, while the set of verbs and adjectives needed to talk about those topics stays comparatively limited.
It's better not to. With only 130, 69, 63, and 47 words in bound nouns, determiners, proper nouns, and pronouns respectively, these are quick to fully memorize, and several of them appear often despite the small category size.
Because they conjugate. Each verb or adjective can take many different forms depending on tense, formality, and sentence connectors, so mastering one really means mastering a whole family of forms, not just one word.
Updated: 2026-09-04