If someone tried to invent a code where they simply replaced every English word with another word, the code could be cracked (given a large enough sample) by comparing frequencies of English words to the frequencies of the code words. For example, since "the" is the most common English word and if a code-breaker were able to figure out that "dragef" is the most common code word, the code-breaker could know that "dragef" means "the."
The frequencies of each word in the code language will be the same as the frequencies of their corresponding words in English. So, I wonder, is the same true for other real languages? I realize that, because a word from one language rarely has an exact equivalent in another language, the frequencies won't be as exact as the code language's. But in general, do the frequencies of most words in English match up with the frequencies of their corresponding words in most other languages?
How close are the frequencies of corresponding single words across multiple languages? How close are the frequencies of corresponding pairs of words (for example, the frequency of "John walks" in English and it's equivalent in another language) across languages? Could one theoretically learn a language by comparing the frequencies of words and words in context to that of a known language (mixed with a bit of trial and error in trying to find a definition for each word that fits every context)?