Determine the difficulty of an english word

Question

I am working a word based game. My word database contains around 10,000 english words (sorted alphabetically). I am planning to have 5 difficulty levels in the game. Level 1

Answer 1

I'm not understanding how frequency is being used... if you were to scan a newspaper, I'm sure you would see the word "thoroughly" mentioned much more frequently than the word "bop" or "moo" but that doesn't mean it's an easier word; on the contrary 'thoroughly' is one of the most disgustingly absurd spelling anomalies that gives grade school children nightmares...

Try explaining to a sane human being learning english as a second language the subtle difference between slaughter and laughter.