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The Daltaí Boards » Archive: 2005- » 2006 (November-December) » Archive through November 23, 2006 » The 8000/1000 statement « Previous Next »

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Kevin M. Keighran (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Saturday, November 18, 2006 - 02:37 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

Folks,

I can't find any search option for your forums, so I will pose my question;

I once read that Brian O'Nolan made the assertion that the vocabulary of the Irish peasant was @ one time 8000 words, while that of his/her English peer was 1000,

I am seeking verification of (or, @ least a source for) the assertion..

Does anyone know anything about this?

Yes, I am Irish, no, I don't speak Irish (but am thinking about it), yes, I do languages research (but it's primarily on Math' & Computing)...

All assistance appreciated on the question,

Kevin.

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BRN (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Saturday, November 18, 2006 - 03:56 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

Well in 'Growth and Structure of the English Language by Otto Jespersen (the only book I have suitibly to hand), he has some things to report on this notion of peasant vocabulary:

"Max Muller says that the average farm-labourer uses only 300 words, and Wood that 'the average man uses about five hubdred words'....but both statements are obviously wrong. One two-year-old girl had 489 and another 1,121 words (see Wundt [Wilheim Wundt the early psychologist, i'd say]), while Mrs. Winfield S. Hall' boy used in his seventeeth month 232 different words and, when six years old, 2, 688 words at least...

In the next page he mentions a writer who, using a dictionary, testing words at random, and working out the proportion from that, found that unskilled people (this was early 20th century) had between 25,000 and 50,000 words.

Unreferenced quote form Yahoo Health: "An explosion of speech and language development takes place between ages 2 and 5. Your child's vocabulary expands from around 150 words at 24 months to around 14,000 words at 5 years."

I guess the sort of statments of 1000 and 8000 arose in an era when language as used as an even more extreme marker of class than today. The more educated one was, the greater the vocabulary, presumably.

Sounds to me like the musings of windbags. Many British in the 19th century refused to accept Irish was a Europea n langauge in order to rationalise marginalisation

Maybe a linguisit can chime in, but in my opinion, with such little flexion, it is English that is the more remote

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Aonghus
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Username: Aonghus

Post Number: 4163
Registered: 08-2004


Posted on Saturday, November 18, 2006 - 04:12 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

quote:

I can't find any search option for your forums,



There is a search option on the menu to the right.

Brian Ó Nuallain, as Myles na gCopaleen, made several such statements. But he was being a satirist rather than a scholar.

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Kevin M. Keighran (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Saturday, November 18, 2006 - 04:59 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

Folks,

I've found this link, which suggests the figure was 3500, & I am sure that I've seen some previous citation that seemed credible (i.e: peer-reviewed)..

https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0410&L=gaelic-l&T=0&P=1909

As I recall, the first time I saw the reference outside of na gCopaleen's work it was about 18th or 19th century Ireland..

I do not understand what you mean by 'remote', is it that you expect the English figure is too low (relatively or otherwise?)?

I found the search (on the left of my screen), cannot figure out why I didn't see it first time...

Thanks for you assistance..

K

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Riona
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Username: Riona

Post Number: 692
Registered: 01-2006
Posted on Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 01:01 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

That just doesn't seem right. I haven't any credibility in linguistic matters but that seems like a really low figure, for either language.

Besides, peer-reviewed articles are overrated.

Beir bua agus beannacht

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Mac Léinn na Gaeilge (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 01:49 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

This is one of the most interesting subjects to me regarding the learning of the Irish language. I feel that the most important way, at least at my level, to becoming semi-fluent in Irish is to increase my vocabulary. For example, whenever I try to read Irish literature, I'm always looking up words in the dictionary and spend more time doing that then actually reading the book. A perfect example is the Irish translation of the Harry Potter book. I wish I could magically list and then count all the different words in this book. The next step would then be to memorize all or most of them.

Growing up learning English, I would often read such books as "Word Power" or the Reader's Digest's section on vocabulary improvement. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's not only how many words you know, but which words a beginner like me decides to learn and memorize.

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BRN (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 02:17 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

"I do not understand what you mean by 'remote', is it that you expect the English figure is too low (relatively or otherwise?)? "

I meant that English is not very flexional, which means it has diverged from it's IndoEuropean roots farther than Irish, in that respect. Thus, by the logic of who is more 'Aryan', irish is. Hence the racist argument, by its own terms of reference is nonscence.

Peer review is a safe guard, however flawed, that is at least better than what occurs with none at all. Example from (dicussion section of) Wikipedia, and stated with full authority and force of expression:

"modern Scottish "Gaelic" words like Srath, Inbhir, Beinn ... etc, do not exist in Irish and can only be explained by a "Pictish" inheritance.

Is that so?

I won't comment on it further, but figures of a few hundred to a few thousand appear to me designed to denigrate the rural poor, traditional speakers, of a minority language. 3,500 words is shockingly poor -it is also a very Anglo preoccupantion, as if we take the irish verbal system and look at the ways one root can be modifed, are we dealing with 1 word or a few dozen (say in Munster)? A quick count of bí in all its southern inflection is about mid thirties for different forms. Linguists use a term 'lexeme' to cover this cluster of related forms.

Do you count the lemma (i I may be allowed to apply the term to an irish discussion, the canonical form, say 2nd person imperitve in irish for the verb) or lexeme? If a lexeme contained 36 forms in say langauage x, then if we have 100 verbs, that is 3600. A more realistic number for native speaker verbs would be more..http://www.englishirishdictionary.com/ has 768, so we courld have 768 by 36 =27648 different *potential forms*.

Nouns can be inflected, so we have them to consider...natives with fit in new words into those paradigms, if possible...

I think it is weak ground as a) no native, unless they had developmental problems, would have so few words b) what is a word is not set in other languages by English standards, c) saying irish peasants have more words than english ones is simple one-upmanship. No Irish nor English person should ever have been a peasant, but the fact they were, should not have been used in such armchair arguments by the very people who benifitted from their poverty, and yet amazingly, are trusted by valid sources even today d) from my point of view I feel these are old, outdated, pre-scientific arguments, which fall apart when one does the simple act of testing them

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Aindréas
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Username: Aindréas

Post Number: 185
Registered: 09-2005
Posted on Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 02:50 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

The vocabularly of an ordinary adult being 1000? What? Jean Aitchison in Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon gives the capacity of college graduates with Bachelor of Education degrees at 50,000. Word being defined as lexeme or dictionary entry (sing, sings, sang, sung are all one word). Robert Waring says that a 5 year old native speaker of English has at least 4,000.

So we're putting the vocabulary capacity of an English peasent at one quarter of a modern five year old's? Eh ...

Coimhéad fearg fhear na foighde.

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Mac Léinn na Gaeilge (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 01:16 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

Scríobh Aindréas: Robert Waring says that a 5 year old native speaker of English has at least 4,000.

I would love to be able to speak as well as 5 year-old native IRISH speaker. I've been working on a list of must-know verbs, which so far totals about 100. Is there such a thing as a list/dictionary of must-know words (nouns, prepositions, adjectives, etc) that would provide one with the vocabulary level of a 5-year old Irish speaker?

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Domhnall_Ó_h_aireachtaigh
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Username: Domhnall_Ó_h_aireachtaigh

Post Number: 107
Registered: 09-2006
Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 03:21 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

There probably is no such a compilation already written for Irish, but the word frequency list for languages generally has been established for decades.

Here are some iteresting sites on this topic, although I can't find an authoritative frequency roster... let me check with the lang. dept. at my alma mater and get back on this.

http://www.wordcount.org/main.php

http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Teach/English-3000-common-words.html

http://www.myenglishlessons.net/most_common.htm

Other commonly available books, such as the Oxford series "10,000 French Words" arrange common words by topic, so if you were feeling particularly generous you could start with that as your base and create one for Irish!

C'mon man, you know you wanna.

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Dennis
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Username: Dennis

Post Number: 1922
Registered: 02-2005


Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 - 04:57 pm:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

quote:

There probably is no such a compilation already written for Irish, but the word frequency list for languages generally has been established for decades.

Your newly arrived Buntús Cainte is actually based on research on word and structure frequency published in Buntús Gaeilge in 1966.

BUNTÚS GAEILGE, Ó hÚallacháin, Ó Domhnalláin, MacÉinrí agus Ó Crualaoich, Réamhthuarascáil ar Thaighde Teangiolaíochta. Baile Átha Cliath; Rialtas na hÉireann, 1966.

Ní fhaca mé an leabhar seo riamh, áfach.

Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.

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BRN (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 08:50 am:   Small TextLarge TextEdit Post Print Post

"This is one of the most interesting subjects to me regarding the learning of the Irish language. I feel that the most important way, at least at my level, to becoming semi-fluent in Irish is to increase my vocabulary."

I'm doing a little restoration on an old mill/grain house, but want to do it as naturally as possible, so I am experimenting with cob, and lime etc.

Now I know the components of the mortar must be in proper proportion for them to work. Concrete is not cement, but cement is needed in concrete.

I tried to simulate have a full 100% vocab, by looking up two words in a dictionary at random. ealú (evasion, escape), and púca (ghostie, hob-goblin), both m4 in the common declension system.

Since you now know the two words, what can you do with them. Not a lot if nothing is known about declining them, or word order etc

ealú phúca (goblin evasion)
ealú an phúca (evasion of the goblin)

púca ealú (goblin of evasion)
púca an t-ealú (goblin of the evasion)

My concern are these:
ealú phúca (goblin evasion)
ealú an phúca (evasion of the goblin)

ealú phúca (goblin evasion): evasion by someone of a goblin, a general game or tendancy involving evasion, evasion by the goblin of a human or other creature

ealú an phúca (evasion of the goblin): given the genetive is used, it might be more likely that it is 'evasion by the goblin', but I'm not sure fully.

So, more then vacab, I think anyway



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