basic word list

[Don Killian]

Dear Mary,

I worked with a group of Central Khoesan speakers in South Africa, and I 
have to say that it would be difficult to give any sort of word list. 
Many people did know the numbers and some important cultural concepts, 
but it was often the ability to describe day to day things which was 
lacking. English was also quite often lacking comparable words for 
elicitation, so words like 'kx'o, to eat meat' simply wouldn't be asked 
about and you wouldn't know whether they're missing it or not.

If your primary objective is to see whether a language is in decline, 
then at least personally I'd feel it's more important to examine 
communicative competency than lexical borrowing. How well are the 
speakers able to describe something monolingually?  Assuming they're 
still in their native environment, are they capable of discussing day to 
day situations (in which they normally would use their language) without 
code switching?

Barring being able to do that, the Swadesh list is probably your best 
alternative.

All the best,

Don

On 05/25/2010 01:16 AM, Mary Holbrock wrote:
> can anyone direct me to what might be considered a basic word list that
> people should know in their native language?  or word categories
> perhaps? in other words, if speakers of a given language no longer know
> family member words or numbers, might the language be considered to be
> in decline? thanks for any help in this area