Snowed in today?
Here's a fun way
to spend the day:

9700 Irish Nouns

http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~carnie/publications/PDF/DeclBook/6.LongList.pdf

Cool link! Go raibh maith agat a Mhaidhc! I noticed that the author, Andrew Carnie, also has compiled a list of 1200 Irish nouns, with all of their declensions at
http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~carnie/publications/PDF/DeclBook/5.1200irishdecl2% 20copy.pdf

Not only is Professor Carnie a prolific writer, but he also has a keen sense of humor, as evidenced in this excerpt:

quote:

It make strike the native speaker reading th[is] as very odd to see some of the
plurals in this list, particularly in the vocative case. Similarly some of the vocative
case forms may seem unattested. For example, one never really hears, even in English,
a person addressing a multitude of bicycles: “Oh Bicycles!” (a rothara). This is
distinctly strange, and upon hearing this a nearby listener might reach for the phone
to call the authorities that someone mentally unsound was loose in the park.

A Mhícheál,

And to all who read this Happy Valentine's Day...

While I may not be seeing the snowfall that some of the other places are in the world are right now...I am being affected by the cold. In fact, my car is frozen solid and I am missing school right now ;-(

I visit Mr. Carnies site often as I find he has done wonderful publications for Irish. Granted most them are a little above my head, it is still nice to see someone in the US working so hard on the language.

If I am not mistaken, the 1200 nouns is actually part of the 9700 nouns project. The 1200 nouns are the one the he started with because he thought that these were the 1200 most common found in most Irish language corses on the market.

I love the format, as I said before in another post, that is almost exactly how I make all my vocabulary cards also...

I had a little trouble with is when I fist began because the courses I am learning with tell me something like the word for time is "am" and forgets to mention that 70% of the time it will not look or sound like "am." Instead we are left with the following:

an t-am na hamanna
an am na n-amanna

I think a great Irish product idea, and I am not saying that just because this is how I do it ;0)...would be the creation of vocab cards in this format:

am
nm3

an t-am na hamanna
an am na n-amanna

And on the back have the word time.

múin
v1

mhúin
múineann
múinfidh
ag múineadh

And on the back have the word to teach.

This way you get to see the word in all its forms which keeps the number of vocab cards down and allows a person to concentrate on the head word while still being shown the patterns.

In fact, since Mr. Carnie has already done the work for the nouns, I wrote him an email a while back to see if he would be interested in such an idea. But I never received a reply :0(

Three or four years ago when I started studying in earnest, I kept cards too. Before long I had a huge stack and soon gave up. However, I found that I learned the most by doing them. I wrote the Irish on one side and the phonetics with meaning on the other. I keep thinking that I am going back to doing cards again.

My latest project involves taking all the vocabulary in Beo, a book our Irish class is now using, and compiling an Excel spreadsheet of the Gaeilge agus Béarla along with a reference to the pages where the words are listed. The book itself came with no Foclóir at the end. I am now proofreading my entries. My plan is to post it for all to use as long as there are no copyright issues. There are a more than a thousand entries. Knowing these words may allow for a basic conversation on an intermediate level.

Your idea appears to be one well worth pursuing. Had you tested it by doing a selection before going full throttle? And I hope your car will go full throttle too by unfreezing soon.

Le meas,

Maidhc

A Mhaidc,

I finally got the meaning of the title of this thread - we only need to learn 9700 words today?

Scríobh tú: My plan is to post it for all to use as long as there are no copyright issues. There are a more than a thousand entries

I think that that's a great ider! I had compiled a list of some 100 "must-know" verbs," for the Irish Linguistics Yahoo Group, which I'd like to augment some day. Your list of some 1,000 words sounds like it might fall into the category of "must-know" nouns. Céard a smaoinaoínn tú faoi sin? Would you consider them "must-know?"

Mac

A Mhac,

Your list of some 1,000 words sounds like it might fall into the category of "must-know" nouns. Céard a smaoinaoínn tú faoi sin? Would you consider them "must-know?"

Níl a fhios agam, ach níor cheap mé go léir. There are duplicates in usage in the entries, different tenses of verbs, different pronouns with the same verbs, and so on. There are nouns that people in intermediate school might use but not elsewhere. The children in the text are in their early teens. I put the list in Excel so I could manipulate each of the columns for Irish and English.

Yes, indeed, I was alluding to your earlier posts about words one would need to know to carry on a basic conversation. Building a common vocabulary is one of the goals of my Irish class group. The exact number of words may be debatable but the range should be definable. And the common vocabulary may depend on the group as well.

Maidhc

"A Mhaidhc! Dinnéar!" arsa mo bhean chéile.

Anois tá mé ag dul sa chistin.

A Mhícheál...

I think the trouble with a "must know" vocab is that it differs for each language. So how can one assign a 1000-3000 or whatever "must know" vocabulary?

When I go to the book store I always see these decks of vocabulary produced by Sparknotes for Latin, Spanish, German, French, and Italian. And they all say that the words included in these decks are the essential words needed to know for placement exams for colleges. Each deck has 1000 cards, which is great when you think about it, until you realize that in a deck of 1000...100 of them are numbers and there are many repeated nouns. And if you are dealing with a language like Spanish that have a male and female forms...you really only get a vocab list of about 400 ;0(

I have often thought about making vocab cards for Irish. I am not fluent or even very good at Irish yet...but something I have done, is make what I think is a good vocab card in the format I used above. After finishing, the Teach Yourself Irish and Learning Irish, I now have a deck of Irish vocab cards somewhere around the 2300 range. Including nouns, verbs, preposistion pronouns, adverbs, and adjectives.

I wouldn't want to make a "must know" vocabulary product. Rather I think it is more useful to make a vocab product that can be used to help support the major learning resources out there already. The only problem is, that with Learning Irish, I kept running into dialect variations so I went with the standard entries.

For instance in Learning Irish lesson 4, we are told that the word for auction is candáil, but I went with the word ceant.

A Do_chinniúint,

Wow! You have 2300 cards and you have finished TYF and LI too. I wish I could say the same for me.

I do not believe that there is a one-size-fits-all must-know list for all purposes. I am addressing the need for the people in my Irish class to have a common vocabulary. Our Irish class has been looking at building a common knowledge of words to conduct a basic conversation. If each one of us in the group knows that "cat" in English is "cat" in Irish then we can begin to talk about a cat in both languages. There could be other words for cat in the different dialects or other terms for cat too, but knowing that "cat" is "cat" gets us started.

Each of the basic learning tools (Buntús, PII, etc) that we use has a vocabulary list. The words overlap in many cases. Eventually, a range of words develops that our group can agree upon to use in our conversations. In time we learn new words and forget words we might have known but no longer use.

However, I do not object to dictionaries of vocabulary words based on different aspects. For example, An Gúm produces a series of dictionaries for numerous subjects.

And, of course, this is only one aspect in learning to use the language. We need to tackle all those other areas we have discussed on this board as well.

Thanks for giving me two more words to add to my own vocabulary list. Auction: candáil and ceant. When the day comes for my family to auction off all my language material, these words will come in handy.

Maidhc

Scríobh Do Chinniúint: I now have a deck of Irish vocab cards somewhere around the 2300 range. Including nouns, verbs, preposistion pronouns, adverbs, and adjectives.
Maith thú a Do Chinniúint! I think that's the way to go - have cards for all parts of speech that give the learner a basic grasp of the language. Some months ago, we got into an interesting discussion of how many words are needed to have a basic working knowledge of Irish. The thread can be found at:

http://www.daltai.com/discus/messages/13510/18590.html?1152636149

I thought the conversation was very interesting and estimates of a working knowledge ranged from 2,000 to 10,000 words, which was very encouraging to me since I thought one needed on the order of 50,000 words or more!

I know that the term "must-know" sounds somewhat excessive, but I use it for lack of a better term. Maybe "would-want-to-know" is a better, albeit, much longer alternative. Someday, though, I would like to see lists the cover each part of speech, as Do Chinniúint has already started, available to beginners so that they can focus on what it takes to have a fundamental, working knowledge of Irish.

A Mhaidc, I think that what your class is doing is also very productive and hope that you keep us abreast of your progress.

(Message edited by mac_léinn on February 15, 2007)

quote:

an t-am na hamanna
an am na n-amanna

Genitive singular of "am" is "ama".

Fear Na mBróg,

Sorry...I know that, sometimes what I want to type and what I type are two very different things ;0)

GRMA

Mac Léinn,

Actually...I am working on just that. Right now, I am in the process of of converting my cards to a re-usable form for others as we speak.

Basically, what I am doing is formatting a word document to the 3 x 5 index card settings landscaped with all margins at .5 inches or 1.3 centimeters. Most new printers are capable of printing on a 3 x 5 index card with little trouble, and what you get is a very nice looking vocab card. Although mine is pretty plain with the Times New Roman font, one could make a very pretty card if they wanted to.

The problem is me finding time to sit down and type them all in. I have to make each card seperately. So you have to be patient when doing this if you want them to look nice.

When I get them completed, maybe this site can create a vocab section or something where a person can get the word documents from here and print them at home?

I have a long way to go, I won't lie...and I would like for them to be viewed by more advanced speakers just to make sure they are correct. But every little bit helps and who knows, this just might be the motivation I need to finish this little project of mine ;0)