Added the Buzan list and the semantic primitives list to ProVoc for vocabulary drilling. This provides a total of 190 core words. This number, however, includes the duplicates; some words need to be removed from one list or the other to provide one cohesive list. Also, I need to categorize each entry by word class for sorting purposes.
Learn the basic Shiyeyi words
The productivity website MindTools, on its page How to Learn a Foreign Language, says that 50% of daily conversation is composed of 100 words. This is an idea from Tony Buzan's book Use Your Memory.
While the list is English-centric, it can provide a launching point for determining Shiyeyi equivalents. Determine and learn these 100 words or the Shiyeyi equivalent forms of expression of the concepts that they embody.
Another related idea is that of semantic primitives, as an idea in NSM, from the field of semantics. The basic idea is that every language will have the same kinds of fundamental concepts expressed in their language somehow, whether by individual words or phrases, morphology or by grammatical structures. These fundamental concepts can be used to define more complex concepts. Therefore, one should (theoretically) be able to find an equal expression of the English semantic primitives in any language that they want to learn and use these to find out the meanings of other, more complex words. With that in mind, I have collected semantic primitives for a couple of the Botswana languages, Setswana and Shiyeyi.
There is some overlap between a Buzan's list of 100 words and the semantic primitives list but, together, these two should provide a solid starting point for basic vocabulary building.