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7×a machine that reads images; here, a medical one he sells
Drama · American English
The Pursuit of Happyness: English level and how hard it is to understand
Everyday conversations between a father and his son, plus job interviews and office talk. A B1 learner knows about 98% of the words, one of the highest scores in our list.
Updated
Short answer
The Pursuit of Happyness is best for B1 learners. Across the whole film, a B1 learner knows about 98.1% of the words, and the characters speak at about 148 words per minute (average).
The Pursuit of Happyness in numbers
- Recommended level
- B1
- Speaking speed
- 148 words / min
- Spoken words
- 8,492 in 117 min
- Known at B1
- 98.08%
- Known at B2
- 98.9%
- Different words
- 1,245
Difficulty rank: 7 of 16 in our movies by English level list (everyday words, real-life english).
Beyond the numbers
What makes The Pursuit of Happyness hard (or easy)?
- Some scenes use finance words (stockbroker, brokerage, internship).
- Lots of quick spoken English: “wanna” (24 times) and “gotta” (30 times).
- Emotional scenes are quiet, and voices drop.
The Pursuit of Happyness 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 The Pursuit of Happyness
B2–C2 words that came up more than once in the film. Counts are for the whole movie.
daycare
6×a place that looks after children during the day
stockbroker
5×a person who buys and sells shares for others
internship
4×a training job, often unpaid
dinosaurs
3×large prehistoric animals
gorilla
3×a large ape
brokerage
2×a company that buys and sells shares
someplace
2×American English for “somewhere”
Spoken forms you will hear constantly
yeah ×79hey ×76okay ×53gonna ×40gotta ×30wanna ×24
gonna = going to · wanna = want to · gotta = got to / have to. Textbooks rarely teach them, but films use them all the time.
Vocabulary profile
How common are the words in The Pursuit of Happyness?
Share of all spoken words in each frequency band (A1 = the 5,000 most common words).
A190.75%
A25.07%
B12.25%
B20.83%
C10.35%
C20.33%
Unlisted0.41%
Watching plan
How to learn English with The Pursuit of Happyness
- This is a great film for everyday adult English: work, money, family, and applying for jobs.
- Rewatch the job interview scene and practise the answers out loud.
- Learn the finance words below; the rest of the film is very common English.
In TeakReader you can import the subtitles of any movie, 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 the full English subtitle file for The Pursuit of Happyness (2006, 117 minutes), removed sound descriptions, speaker labels, and character names, and matched each of the 8,492 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. Subtitle files differ slightly between releases, so treat the numbers as close estimates.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is The Pursuit of Happyness good for learning English?
The Pursuit of Happyness is one of the best films for adult learners: about 1,250 different words, mostly everyday ones, and a B1 learner knows about 98% of them. Comfortable at B1. We recommend it from B1.
How fast do they speak in The Pursuit of Happyness?
About 148 words per minute of dialogue, which is average for a film. Everyday conversation is often around 150 words per minute.
How many words do I need to understand The Pursuit of Happyness?
A learner who knows the most common 20,000 English word forms (our B1 band) knows about 98.1% 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 film’s full English subtitle file (8,492 spoken words), removed sound notes, speaker labels, and character names, and matched every word to the same frequency list we use for book levels and TV shows. The level is our estimate, not an official CEFR rating.
Can I study the vocabulary of The Pursuit of Happyness before watching?
Yes. In TeakReader, search for the movie and import its subtitles. You get a list of the words you don’t know yet, with meanings and flashcards.
Ready to read
Learn the words from The Pursuit of Happyness before you watch.
Import any movie’s subtitles in TeakReader and get its unknown words with meanings and flashcards. Free on iPhone, iPad, and Android.