Reserved Keywords of the Python Language

If you have reached this page, you have probably already started to learn to code using a high-level programming language such as Python, JavaScript, C, php or Ruby. But what does “learning a new programming language” involve?

Learning a programming language is, to some extent, like learning a foreign language. It will require you to learn the words this language is made of. The good news is, unlike modern languages such as English, Arabic, French or Mandarin, programming languages have a very limited number of words for you to learn: these are the reserved keywords and built-in functions of the language.

Let’s compare different programming and non-programming languages!


English?
🗩
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English language contains more than 170,000 words!


Python?
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Python v3.6 contains exactly 33 reserved keywords and 71 built-in functions.


Hindi?
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It is estimated that the Hindi language contains between 150,000 and 185,000 words.


HTML?
💻
The HTML (version 5.2) language contains 142 different tags.


CSS?
💻
The CSS (version 3.0) language contains around 520 distinct properties.


French?
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According to the Larousse dictionary, the French language has approximately 135,000 words.


Java?
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Java contains exactly 53 reserved keywords with an additional 4,000 built-in functions in the JDK.

It is believed that to be able to be able to take part in every day conversations in a foreign language, you need to know around 2,000 to 3,000 words. To be fluent in a language, you would need to know between 5,000 to 10,000 words!

Luckily, to become a proficient programmer using a programming language, you do not need to remember that many words!

As you have started to learn Python, you can test yourself to see how many of the reserved keywords and built-in functions you can remember by completing the quiz below!
Python QuizOpen in New Window

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