dude
39×informal word for a man or friend
Sitcom · American English
How I Met Your Mother: English level and how hard it is to understand
Like Friends but faster, with more slang and many jokes built on wordplay, made-up words, and New York life.
Updated
Short answer
How I Met Your Mother is best for B2 learners. In 12 episodes we measured, a B1 learner knows about 95.9% of the words, and the characters speak at about 157 words per minute (fast).
How I Met Your Mother in numbers
- Recommended level
- B2
- Speaking speed
- 157 words / min
- Words per episode
- 2,697
- Known at B1
- 95.87%
- Known at B2
- 96.87%
- Different words
- 3,385 in 12 episodes
Difficulty rank: 6 of 11 in our TV shows by English level list (fast jokes and slang).
Beyond the numbers
What makes How I Met Your Mother hard (or easy)?
- Characters invent their own phrases and rules, and the jokes depend on them.
- Lots of informal words: dude, bro, sucks, kinda.
- The story jumps back and forth in time.
How I Met Your Mother is mostly American English. Accent and speed matter as much as vocabulary: if you know the words but can’t catch them, turn on English subtitles and slow down.
Learn these first
Useful words from How I Met Your Mother
B2–C2 words that came up again and again in the episodes we analysed. Counts are for the 12 episodes.
brunch
17×a late breakfast and lunch together
pumpkin
17×a big orange vegetable
bro
11×informal: brother, close friend
limo
8×a long luxury car (limousine)
gravy
7×a sauce made from meat juices
shotgun
5דcall shotgun”: claim the front seat
bunk
4×a narrow bed, often one above another
Spoken forms you will hear constantly
yeah ×200okay ×148hey ×139gonna ×109uh ×88dude ×39
gonna = going to · wanna = want to · gotta = got to / have to. Textbooks rarely teach them, but TV uses them all the time.
Vocabulary profile
How common are the words in How I Met Your Mother?
Share of all spoken words in each frequency band (A1 = the 5,000 most common words).
A186.85%
A25.31%
B13.71%
B21%
C10.92%
C20.8%
Unlisted1.41%
Watching plan
How to learn English with How I Met Your Mother
- Watch Friends first if it feels fast. Then come back.
- Write down the made-up phrases. They are part of the fun and appear again later.
- Learn the American food and city words below (brunch, limo, gravy).
In TeakReader you can import the subtitles of any episode, see the words you don’t know yet, and study them as flashcards before you press play. How it works
How we measured it
We took English subtitles for 12 episodes spread across the first seasons (S1E1, S1E6, S1E11, S1E17, S1E22, S2E5, S2E11, S2E16, S2E21, S3E5, S3E10, S3E15), removed sound descriptions, speaker labels, and character names, and matched each of the 32,368 spoken words to the same frequency list we use for classic book levels. Speaking speed is spoken words divided by the time the subtitles are on screen. Only statistics and single words are shown here.
The recommended level is our estimate from vocabulary, speed, and style, not an official CEFR rating. Later seasons can be easier or harder.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is How I Met Your Mother good for learning English?
How I Met Your Mother uses everyday vocabulary but faster speech and more slang than Friends. It is a B2 show: at B1, watch with English subtitles and expect to miss some jokes. We recommend it from B2.
How fast do they speak in How I Met Your Mother?
About 157 words per minute of dialogue, which is fast for TV. Everyday conversation is often around 150 words per minute.
How many words do I need to understand How I Met Your Mother?
A learner who knows the most common 20,000 English word forms (our B1 band) knows about 95.9% of the words spoken. Research on listening suggests that knowing about 95% of the words is enough to follow most of what is said, so subtitles help until you reach that point.
How did you measure this?
We analysed the English subtitles of 12 episodes from the first seasons (32,368 words), removed sound notes, speaker labels, and character names, and matched every word to the same frequency list we use for book levels. The level is our estimate, not an official CEFR rating.
Can I study the vocabulary of How I Met Your Mother before watching?
Yes. In TeakReader, search for the show, import an episode’s subtitles, and you get a list of its words you don’t know yet, with meanings and flashcards.
Ready to read
Learn the words from How I Met Your Mother before you watch.
Import any episode’s subtitles in TeakReader and get its unknown words with meanings and flashcards. Free on iPhone, iPad, and Android.