Character Frequencies

Case-sensitive absolute and relative frequencies for all Unicode character types in the Songkorpus — from common German letters and umlauts to digits, non-Latin scripts, and rare special characters. Available for the full corpus and each of the 14 individual archive views. For the rank-frequency distribution of the top characters see Zipf's Law; for a compact 12-character frequency summary see Etaoin Shrdlu.

Linguistic Insights

Orthographic profile

The frequency rank mirrors the phonological-orthographic structure of the language variety. The dominance of e, n, and i in German song lyrics reflects the high frequency of inflectional suffixes and function words.

Stylometry

Character frequency profiles are more topic-neutral than word frequencies and rank among the most robust features for authorship attribution and genre discrimination.

Character frequencies – Full Corpus (all archives)

Character (case-sensitive) Absolute Frequency Relative Frequency
e3,139,2690.134100
n2,110,3420.090147
i2,043,6030.087296
a1,442,7680.061630
r1,388,6530.059319
s1,301,6940.055604
h1,290,6770.055134
t1,257,1620.053702
d1,025,2780.043797
c910,2590.038883
l861,5790.036804
u829,0880.035416
m686,3430.029318
o613,8090.026220
g473,7890.020239
b415,7080.017758
w376,1370.016067
k305,8230.013064
f296,8580.012681
z198,9830.008500
S172,9470.007388
p165,2820.007060
v129,5010.005532
D127,1450.005431
B112,3730.004800
ü109,1660.004663
W101,9530.004355
M100,2140.004281
ä90,4280.003863
I87,8560.003753
H84,9730.003630
y83,6980.003575
K83,1770.003553
A82,9780.003545
G79,2620.003386
F71,3900.003050
L68,0730.002908
T64,0440.002736
E60,1540.002570
j57,6020.002461
ß57,5440.002458
P54,7340.002338
N47,1340.002013
R46,7780.001998
U42,3670.001810
ö40,9920.001751
J37,1130.001585
C31,9550.001365
Z31,5460.001348
V27,6070.001179
O20,3030.000867
x16,5680.000708
07,2100.000308
Y6,0800.000260
15,7560.000246
23,9330.000168
q3,1100.000133
32,6890.000115
é2,2420.000096
Ü1,9810.000085
81,9360.000083
е1,8490.000079
41,7890.000076
61,7580.000075
51,6730.000071
91,6370.000070
Q1,5270.000065
71,4960.000064
X1,1570.000049
Ä1,0680.000046
Ö4710.000020
ı4520.000019
ş4400.000019
ç3750.000016
ë3460.000015
à2550.000011
̈2320.000010
á2210.000009
è2000.000009
о1700.000007
ó1650.000007
í1640.000007
ñ1450.000006
ÿ1360.000006
а1190.000005
š1010.000004
ь1010.000004
т960.000004
ā890.000004
Ç880.000004
ô880.000004
É840.000004
ğ830.000004
ê780.000003
î780.000003
в780.000003
д750.000003
и750.000003
р690.000003
с690.000003
л670.000003
ć650.000003
н590.000003
ц560.000002
у520.000002
к470.000002
ï450.000002
ž450.000002
ы440.000002
м430.000002
â410.000002
č410.000002
ю340.000001
320.000001
я290.000001
ø270.000001
б270.000001
ú260.000001
Ş250.000001
Ø220.000001
Я220.000001
п220.000001
À190.000001
ū170.000001
з170.000001
й160.000001
С150.000001
г150.000001
ч130.000001
Ć120.000001
х120.000001
ō110.000000
В100.000000
Á90.000000
İ90.000000
Š90.000000
ж90.000000
90.000000
ě80.000000
æ70.000000
ù70.000000
û70.000000
ґ70.000000
ī60.000000
œ60.000000
ш60.000000
Â50.000000
ã50.000000
ò50.000000
ň50.000000
ʿ50.000000
́50.000000
Г50.000000
Д50.000000
50.000000
ă40.000000
Č40.000000
ĭ40.000000
П40.000000
ì30.000000
Н30.000000
Т30.000000
Х30.000000
30.000000
Î20.000000
Ż20.000000
ʾ20.000000
̛20.000000
А20.000000
М20.000000
20.000000
20.000000

Click any column header to sort. Default order: descending absolute frequency.

These analyses are based on corpus data as of July 29, 2026.