German Letter Frequencies

All text files provided are encoded in utf-8. The frequencies from this page are generated from about 950 Million characters of German text, sourced from Wortschatz. The text files containing the counts can be used with ngram_score.py and used for breaking ciphers, see this page for details, just substitute out the English ngram file for the one you want. If you want to compute the letter frequencies of your own piece of text you can use this page.

Monogram Frequencies §

German single letter frequencies are as follows (in percent %):

A :  6.34        K :  1.50        U :  3.76
B :  2.21        L :  3.72        V :  0.94
C :  2.71        M :  2.75        W :  1.40
D :  4.92        N :  9.59        X :  0.07
E : 15.99        O :  2.75        Y :  0.13
F :  1.80        P :  1.06        Z :  1.22
G :  3.02        Q :  0.04        Ä :  0.54
H :  4.11        R :  7.71        Ö :  0.24
I :  7.60        S :  6.41        Ü :  0.63
J :  0.27        T :  6.43        ß :  0.15

The german_monograms.txt file provides the counts used to generate the frequencies above:

german_monograms.txt

Bigram Frequencies §

We can't list all of the bigram frequencies here, the top 30 are the following (in percent %):

ER :  3.90        ST :  1.21        SE :  0.83
EN :  3.61        NE :  1.19        IT :  0.81
CH :  2.36        BE :  1.17        DI :  0.81
DE :  2.31        ES :  1.17        IC :  0.80
EI :  1.98        UN :  1.13        SC :  0.77
TE :  1.98        RE :  1.11        LE :  0.73
IN :  1.71        AN :  1.07        DA :  0.72
ND :  1.68        HE :  0.89        NS :  0.71
IE :  1.48        AU :  0.89        IS :  0.70
GE :  1.45        NG :  0.87        RA :  0.69

The german_bigrams.txt file provides the counts used to generate the frequencies above:

german_bigrams.txt

Trigram Frequencies §

We can't list all of the trigram frequencies here, the top 30 are the following (in percent %):

DER :  1.04        INE :  0.48        BER :  0.36
EIN :  0.83        TER :  0.44        ENS :  0.36
SCH :  0.76        GEN :  0.44        NGE :  0.35
ICH :  0.75        END :  0.44        RDE :  0.35
NDE :  0.72        ERS :  0.42        VER :  0.34
DIE :  0.62        STE :  0.42        EIT :  0.33
CHE :  0.58        CHT :  0.41        HEN :  0.31
DEN :  0.56        UNG :  0.39        ERD :  0.30
TEN :  0.51        DAS :  0.38        REI :  0.30
UND :  0.48        ERE :  0.38        IND :  0.29

The german_trigrams.txt file provides the counts used to generate the frequencies above:

german_trigrams.txt.zip

Quadgram Frequencies §

We can't list all of the quadgram frequencies here, the top 30 are the following (in percent %):

EINE :  0.41        NDEN :  0.16        NICH :  0.13
NDER :  0.29        RDEN :  0.16        EITE :  0.13
ICHT :  0.27        NDIE :  0.15        ANDE :  0.13
CHEN :  0.24        ISCH :  0.15        TSCH :  0.12
SCHE :  0.23        ICHE :  0.15        EDER :  0.12
ENDE :  0.20        AUCH :  0.15        DIES :  0.12
LICH :  0.20        ERST :  0.14        NACH :  0.12
SICH :  0.19        SEIN :  0.14        DERS :  0.11
ERDE :  0.18        NTER :  0.14        ESCH :  0.11
INDE :  0.17        NGEN :  0.13        ÜBER :  0.11

The german_quadgrams.txt file provides the counts used to generate the frequencies above: