Mo leithscéal,firstly,as I know there was already a thread on this topic but cannot find it.

Apparently BBC World Service Radio broadcasts a specially devised type of English for listeners with limited comprehension of the tongue.It consists of only 1500 words and the prorammes are read out at a slightly slower speed than their usual transmissions.

The Dalai Lama is said to have learnt English in this fashion.What the breakdowwn wpould be as between nouns,verbs,adjectives etc.I have no idea.Anyone else heard of this?

Not that I want to accelerate 'domain loss' in the Irish language,but it would be fierce handy to know what 'our 1500'would look like.

An tAthair Colmán Ó hUallacháin, nach maireann, organised such a survey about 30 or 40 years ago and published the results in Buntús Gaeilge (??). The course Buntús Cainte is based on it. He also founded Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann ainneoin patfhuaire an Rialtais. Eventually, about 5 years ago (??) it was closed down.

Taidhgín, what was the basis of opposition to the Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann? It published a brilliant book Gaeilge Chorca Dhuibhne, and it is a shame more were not produced of similar length. I can't understand why the government would object to the Institute?

quote:

. I can't understand why the government would object to the Institute?

The beancounters couldn't see the value. And as for teh Department of Education and Science....

There were management problems which provided the opportunity for the axe men.

MacDara,
Here is Kevin Scannell's word list.

http://borel.slu.edu/obair/freq-ga.txt

Here are the links to the previous threads.

http://www.daltai.com/discus/messages/13510/28776.html?1194598189

http://www.daltai.com/discus/messages/20/50060.html?1263849419


I don't know if the ideal 1500 is out there. I took Kevin's list, and a list I created, and compared. The top words are very similar. The list I created was taking blogging texts and running them through the Simple Concordance Program.

http://www.textworld.com/scp/

Now this reflects written Irish instead of spoken Irish, but does give some indication of the most common words. Particularly I compared Kevin's with blogging to try to balance out maybe some of the officialese. (Blogging tends to reflect the everyday language a little better.) As it turns out, there resulted the expected words which most of us become aquainted with pretty quickly when studying Irish. Looking at the list, I ended up thinking that it would be, for me, a better use of my study time to read texts and pick up words through that method. But for first steps, it helps a lot.

I have consulted the link http://borel.slu.edu/obair/freq-ga.txt and some words are repeated at different frequencies as they are in case-insensitive. For example, "Agus" has a frequency of 1663 and "AGUS", 20.

The same with other couples mujas: a/A, á/Á, Abair/Abair, Abhain/abhain, Ach/ach, etc..

Someone can confirm if it is a problem of encoding the caràcters (I work with Linux) or is there another explanation?

Mikel

Note on Kevin's original post: "Didn't take capitalization or mutations into account at all - these are raw word counts as they appear in the corpus."

I suspect Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann was founded at a time when the Government wanted to back away from teaching all children through Irish in Junior and Senior Infants and give up the effort to revive Irish as a dominant language. As is usual with politicians seeking re-election they portray such an abandonment of policy as a wonderful step forward. On this occasion they proposed using the new gimics of audio-visual media and "language laboratories" to teach much more Irish in a better happier way while reducing the time allocated to it and abolishing the Coláistí Ullmhúcháin that were producing such dedicated fluent Irish speakers that there was a danger that the clamour for more and more Irish might become a serious issue. Better to clip the roots. Instead of the Coláistí Ullmhúcháin poor Fr Colmán Ó hUallacháin with his enthusiasm was introduced to the media with a fanfare while the old successful colleges and methods were quietly abandoned. Fr Colmán was left like a beached whale pleading for funds for the Institiúid Teangeolaíochta but the moment had passed. The objectives had been achieved. Soon "free education" would put the caidhp báis on the old revival movement and there would be nothing left except everyone professing undying love for the Irish language.

The Government of Ireland had little interest in Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann. It served a purpose and produced such gems as "Voix et Images de France" from which I learnt my French. I imagine Fr Colmán and his family and friends ended up disappointed and bitter when they realised the use that had been made of them. I think he died young. Go dtuga Dia suaimhneas síoraí dá anam uasal Gaelach. He wrote a book on the issue: THE IRISH AND IRISH. I bought it recently, read half of it, skimmed through the rest, and mislaid it among the incredible clutter that has accompanied me throughout my life.

Sean:

What do the symbols etc. mean for example down at word number 8 and 11 on Scannell's list? I'm trying to figure out what words those would be.

#8: sé
#11: é
#14: bhí
...

Más Firefox atá agat, déan View > Character Encoding > Unicode (UTF-8) agus feicfidh tú iad.

And on IE: View -> Encoding -> UTF 8

>> I suspect Institiúid Teangeolaíochta Éireann was founded at a time when the Government wanted to back away from teaching all children through Irish in Junior and Senior Infants and give up the effort to revive Irish as a dominant language. As is usual with politicians seeking re-election they portray such an abandonment of policy as a wonderful step forward. On this occasion they proposed using the new gimics ......

- An-ráite a Thaidhgín. An-tuisceanach ar an gcaoi ar múchadh agus ar cailleadh glúin go leith de chur chun cinn na Gaeilge. Tharraing an chleasaíocht sin ionsaí Uí Chadhain ar Ó Fachtna i nDún Dealgan agus is sna cúinsí sin is féidir meabhair cheart a bhaint as.

Maith agaibh.Oddly enough I've not read/listened to Buntús Cainte,although it is very popular.Having worked through Teach Yourself (O Se agus Shiels) and Progress in Irish (O Ghráda) I sort of veered off into amhráin agus scéalta,some on CD and most with a Munster blais.Fr.Colman's work has not all been in vain,judging by the number of people I met over in England who were studying Buntús Cainte.I must have a look at it.