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 would guess that the grade at wich the word is introduced into normal students vocabulary is a measure of difficulty. Next would be how many standard rule violations it has. Meaning your words that have spellings or pronunciations that seem to violate the normal set off rules. Finally.. the meaning.. can be a tough concept. .. for example ... try explaining abstract to someone who's never heard the word.