http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list
Holman et al. (2008) found that in identifying the relationships between Chinese dialects the Swadesh–Yakhontov list was less accurate than the original Swadesh-100 list. Further they found that a different (40-word) list was just as accurate as the Swadesh-100 list. However, they calculated the relative stability of the words by comparing retentions between languages in established language families. They found no statistically significant difference in the correlations in the families of the Old versus the New World.
The ranked Swadesh-100 list, with Swadesh numbers and relative stability, is as follows (Holman et al., Appendix. Asterisked words appear on the 40-word list):
1. 22 *louse (42.8)
2. 12 *two (39.8)
3. 75 *water (37.4)
4. 39 *ear (37.2)
5. 61 *die (36.3)
6. 1 *I (35.9)
7. 53 *liver (35.7)
8. 40 *eye (35.4)
9. 48 *hand (34.9)
10. 58 *hear (33.8)
23 *tree (33.6)
19 *fish (33.4)
100 *name (32.4)
77 *stone (32.1)
43 *tooth (30.7)
51 *breasts (30.7)
2 *you (30.6)
85 *path (30.2)
31 *bone (30.1)
20.  44 *tongue (30.1)
21.  28 *skin (29.6)
22.  92 *night (29.6)
25 *leaf (29.4)
76 rain (29.3)
62 kill (29.2)
30 *blood (29.0)
34 *horn (28.8)
18 *person (28.7)
47 *knee (28.0)
30.  11 *one (27.4)
31.  41 *nose (27.3)
32.  95 *full (26.9)
33.  66 *come (26.8)
74 *star (26.6)
86 *mountain (26.2)
82 *fire (25.7)
3 *we (25.4)
54 *drink (25.0)
57 *see (24.7)
27 bark (24.5)
96 *new (24.3)
21 *dog (24.2)
72 *sun (24.2)
64 fly (24.1)
32 grease (23.4)
73 moon (23.4)
70 give (23.3)
52 heart (23.2)
36 feather (23.1)
90 white (22.7)
89 yellow (22.5)
20 bird (21.8)
38 head (21.7)
79 earth (21.7)
46 foot (21.6)
91 black (21.6)
42 mouth (21.5)
88 green (21.1)
60 sleep (21.0)
7 what (20.7)
26 root (20.5)
45 claw (20.5)
56 bite (20.5)
83 ash (20.3)
87 red (20.2)
55 eat (20.0)
33 egg (19.8)
6 who (19.0)
99 dry (18.9)
37 hair (18.6)
81 smoke (18.5)
8 not (18.3)
4 this (18.2)
24 seed (18.2)
16 woman (17.9)
98 round (17.9)
14 long (17.4)
69 stand (17.1)
97 good (16.9)
17 man (16.7)
94 cold (16.6)
29 flesh (16.4)
50 neck (16.0)
84.  71 say (16.0)
85.  84 burn (15.5)
86.  35 tail (14.9)
87.  78 sand (14.9)
88.  5 that (14.7)
89.  65 walk (14.4)
90.  68 sit (14.3)
91.  10 many (14.2)
92.  9 all (14.1)
93.  59 know (14.1)
94.  80 cloud (13.9)
95.  63 swim (13.6)
96.  49 belly (13.5)
97.  13 big (13.4)
98.  93 hot (11.6)
99.  67 lie (11.2)
100.  15 small (6.3)