How many words do you need?

Unread post by **akerbeltz** » Fri May 11, 2012 7:35 pm

I thought I'd share this little fact with you that had me mildy astonished this afternoon. I was processing some folk tales and it turns out that across 25 A5 pages of text, this storyteller only used 632 roots. What I mean with roots is that, for example, using balach, bhalach, balaich counts as one root or chì, chunnaic, faca, faicinn, fhaicinn only count as one root, even though it's a lot more words.

It reminded me of something Niall said at some point, something about terminology overload or rather, the idea of learning a language with a fairly small vocabulary to begin with. Of course Gaelic makes thinks a little more time-intenstive but each root having so many different forms but on the bright side, it seems Niall was right, you can say a lot with relatively few words.

Thrissel · Unread post by **Thrissel** » Sat May 12, 2012 1:40 am

Course you can, as every Beatles fan knows

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Pv9c ... ng&f=false

Unread post by **GunChleoc** » Mon May 14, 2012 7:01 am

Chan eil an ceangal seo ag obrachadh

poor_mouse · Unread post by **poor_mouse** » Mon May 14, 2012 8:56 am

Tha e ag obrachadh agam.

Yet at the same time, McCartney has found much to be proud of in the group's first single 'Love Me Do' (1962): '[That] was our greatest philosophical song: "Love me do/ You know I love yuou/ I'll always be true/ So love me do/ Please love me do". Form it to be simple, and true, means that it's incredible simple'

Fòram na Gàidhlig