German conjunction · CEFR A2
sondern
Meaning in English: but (rather)
Example
Das ist kein Tee, sondern Kaffee.
That's not tea but coffee.
How common is sondern?
sondern is number 157 of the 5,000 most common German words. In the texts the list is counted from it appears 549 times per million words — about once every 1,800 words.
Know every word down to this one and you recognise about 48% of the words in an ordinary German text. A2 means an elementary word, usually learned in the first year.
Next to it in the frequency list
In these word lists
- The 500 most common German words#157
- The 1,000 most common German words#157
- The 5,000 most common German words#157
- German A2 vocabulary#24
Translations, levels and examples were written with AI help and are awaiting review by a native speaker — how the list was made.