Cree-verbal

Sometimes, for me, I need to have a quantitative picture of what's going on before I can feel like I am making reasonable progress.

Call it a trick of the mind if you want but it helps me to know the amount of learning I have achieved, by whatever measure works. In this case, I decided a while back to count the number of verbs I knew. Now, here, "knowledge" is a somewhat ambiguous description because there are times when I know them and times when I could not recall a Cree word to save my life.

Here's a partial list of what I now know as far as Nehiyawewin verbs, each of which have 8 conjugations (I, you, etc...) in 2 forms (independent and subjunctive) — which, in a way, means I know 16 times this amount of words:

dance
sing
live/reside in
sleep
speak Cree
speak English
learn
eat
go
play
cry
drink
walk
run
speak
float
write
read
smoke
sit
stand up
jump
laugh
go home
work
to be named
say
see something
see someone
understand s.o.
tired
hungry
cook

Thirty-four verbs. Multiply that by 16, you (technically) have 544 words. That's a lot in 5 months, I'd say. And I haven't really included the verbs I am still getting to know. And then there are the nouns.

Huh: maybe I ain't doing so bad after all.

ekosi,
Rick