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#45656
Gríofa
Participant

Identifying the idioms in your list would be very useful, but if you segregate them from the “ordinary” sentences, you’ll require the user to have to resort elsewhere when he/she tries to use your list to help decipher an idiomatic sentence they’re having trouble with. But maybe that’s not the point of your list; perhaps you’re focusing on mastering those 350 words?

Thanks for the feedback Cionaodh! The idea of the list is that is should cover very common words, phrases and idioms and is aimed at Irish language beginners. For this list I define “very common” as any word, phrase or idiom that occurs at least 20 times within the list. Anything else should be removed as I want learners to focus on the very common things. For example, the sentence “He keeps coming on to me” would be a very bad sentence to teach a learner of English even though it contains very common words. The problem with it is that it contains the phrasal verb “come on to” which has its own meaning and its use is relatively rarely in English. Such a sentence would be more suitable for advanced learners. In the case of my list “ar bith” and “in ann” occur more than 20 times each so sentences containing them remain in the list.

I know from learning languages myself how frustrating it is when I was thaught things in class when I knew there were more useful words and expressions that I could have been learning instead.

Of course, it is my intention to create additional list in the future for more adanced learners! If you have time to help me identify the phrasal verbs and idioms in my list please let me know. I would be very greatful! 🙂