DELE B1 Vocabulary List (Intermediate Spanish)

DELE B1 is the threshold diploma, the point at which a candidate can deal with most situations that arise while travelling, describe experiences, and give brief reasons for an opinion. It is the level where the subjunctive appears in earnest, quiero que vengas and espero que tengas razón, and where por and para stop being interchangeable.

For candidates preparing DELE B1. Maps to CEFR B1.

About DELE B1

DELE B1 is the threshold diploma, the point at which a candidate can deal with most situations that arise while travelling, describe experiences, and give brief reasons for an opinion. It is the level where the subjunctive appears in earnest, quiero que vengas and espero que tengas razón, and where por and para stop being interchangeable. The vocabulary broadens into work, health, feelings and abstract opinion. The exam tests all four skills and, again, does not expire.

Who this list is for

DELE B1 is sometimes accepted for undergraduate entry at universities in Spanish-speaking countries and is a common requirement in customer-facing work where Spanish is used but not written formally. It suits learners who can hold a real fifteen-minute conversation and follow a slow news segment but still lose an argument to their own vocabulary. People whose partner speaks Spanish often sit here: fluent in the kitchen, stuck in an office.

How to study

The subjunctive is learned through exposure rather than through rules, so at B1 the highest-value habit is daily input in Spanish rather than more grammar drilling. Use spaced repetition for por and para in whole example sentences, never as an abstract rule, because the choice is idiomatic and the rule has too many exceptions to carry into an exam. Write a short journal entry weekly and have it corrected; B1 writing is scored on whether the message survives, and errors that break meaning cost far more than errors that do not.

The list (1725 words)

Some example sentences come from the Tatoeba Project (tatoeba.org), CC BY 2.0 FR. The rest were written for MindDory. Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR.

Where do the words after this list come from?

A list has an end. The words you keep for good usually turn up somewhere else — in a page you read, a show you watched, or a conversation you had — one at a time, and rarely at the level you planned for.

MindDory connects to Claude, Cursor, and other assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol, so a word you meet while you are chatting is saved to your deck as a flashcard without you leaving the conversation. There is no copy and paste, no CSV export, and no browser extension.

How the assistant connection works

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