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Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 10:13 pm
by Ben Hunter
This thread is for discussing Apterous games that use non-English dictionaries (excluding CSW).

Imagning the pronunciation of Innis' guess in round 9 of this French conundrum game made me lol: http://www.apterous.org/viewgame.php?ke ... 4059593587

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 10:16 pm
by Innis Carson
Cheers for bringing that game up, saves me the hassle.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 10:17 pm
by Ben Hunter
Congrats on the highscore, btw.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 10:50 pm
by Jeff Clayton
Ah oui, il est fort ce mec !

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 3:25 pm
by Matt Bayfield
I'm quite pleased with this new record in Dutch 15, although frustrated at missing the 100-point mark when I could have declared GIET or any manner of 3-letter words in round 2, rather than trying to be a smart-ass and playing an English 5-letter word. And this new record in Dutch 9 is quite nice for the darren in round 5.

I'm still yet to get a 9-letter word in any foreign language play. Closest I have managed so far is getting a Chicken for bottling out of BEHOEDING in this round.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 12:32 pm
by Matt Bayfield
Addendum: another new Dutch 15 record, this time creeping over the 100-point barrier thanks to a 9-letter word in round 4, which I'm rather pleased with.

Could have been a higher score though - I misremembered the spelling of FLATER in round 7 when I had other 6-letter words to choose from, and I was very close to picking up the Conundrum. Had I scored in both those rounds, I'd only have been 5 points off my English language personal best. Not sure what that says about the quality of my English language play, mind. Annoyed about missing INGEZOOMD too, considering that I saw ZOOM in there...

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 9:48 am
by Bob De Caux
Managed to get a new high score on German Conundrum Attack which I'm pretty pleased with, although I see Matt B has snaffled my German 9 record

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 6:17 pm
by Simon Le Fort
The game is quite different in German as proper nouns are allowed. For the information of non-German speakers, this is probably because of the fact that, since all nouns in German have capital letters, the distinction between proper nouns and common nouns is blurred or non-existent.

It can be very disconcerting at the start to see that your well-thought-out German gerund for 6 has been beaten by ASTAIRE; or even that the hastily keyed in article has been trumped in DC by, for heaven's sake, LIDL.

After warming up, names like HAYDN and MILTON come as no surprise. But there's more, you can often add an s to get, eg, EIFFELS. That very painful lesson was learnt when, having entered into the fun of things, my EINSTEIN was beaten by EINSTEINS.

There's more. Acronyms. UNESCO, UNICEF - it's like the United Nations in German.

I noticed REILLY very strangely popping up, and then another time MCNEILL. It can be sexist though, with most girls' names allowed but boys' seemingly having a tighter filter.

And so to conundrums. All manner of random words pop up: MILOSEVIC, HOLLYWOOD, MICROSOFT - and most eastern European countries seem to have 9 letters in German.

What puzzles me is why, when there is a perfectly German word available like MAILAND, MILANO and even MILAN are also allowed. I can only imagine MILAN is a soccer team.

All of this means that a fun game in German is open to everyone, even non-Germanists. It's hard not to smile at some of the proper nouns that are thrown up.

Has anyone seen any other funny ones to add to mine?

Is Dutch the same as German with capitals? If it is, is the Dutch game the same as described above?

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 1:50 am
by Alec Rivers
Simon Le Fort wrote:Is Dutch the same as German with capitals? If it is, is the Dutch game the same as described above?
1) Not at all. 2) Not at all.

The Dutch capitalise fewer words than we do. Examples:
  • Monday - maandag
    January - januari
    Middle Ages - middeleeuwen
    Renaissance - renaissance
    Mr. - meneer
    Mrs. -mevrouw
    Victorian - victoriaans
    VAT - btw (but only because it is a common abbrev.)
Other than that, they capitalise the same way as we do: proper nouns, titles (Mayor/President/mayor/president, subject to the same logic as ours), organisations, religions, deities (God, Allah, etc. but not if generic, e.g. "a worshipper of many gods"), nations and nationalities, languages, etc.

One occasional oddity: The capital letter is dropped from certain words when they form a compound: Niewjaar (New Year), but niewjaarsdag (New Year's Day). Also, the word 'U' (formal form of 'you') has recently become 'u'. I wonder if our 'I' will ever become 'i'. Popular usage suggests it might. ;)

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 11:25 am
by Kai Laddiman
Alec Rivers wrote:I wonder if our 'I' will ever become 'i'. Popular usage suggests it might. ;)
i disagree

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 9:21 pm
by Simon Le Fort
Maybe the most important issue hasn't been addressed yet.

In spite of various exotic-sounding surnames, German, French, Welsh to name a few, we handful players all seem to be English native speakers; one German native doesn't play very often in German.

It can only be a matter of time before native speakers emerge and we all get thrashed.

What do you think will happen?

Is any filter in place or desirable?

Are there (m)any non-native English speakers who put up a good show in English on a regular basis?

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 11:33 pm
by Karen Pearson
I just want to say how much I'm enjoying the new Spanish variant. Thanks Charlie. I'm pretty crap but it's fun. It allows all sorts of complicated verb forms so my conjugation of things like imperfect subjunctives is going to have to improve.

One thing I've noticed is that it doesn't allow diminutives. So, whereas Kirk got a pencil in the English game for 'casitas', this probably wouldn't be allowed in Spanish as it's the diminutive of 'casa'. I've had 'copitas' disallowed for example, which is fairly commonly used (as in a small glass of sherry) - although personally I prefer a large glass wherever possible. This isn't a criticism, merely an observation.

One question though, does anyone know how to type N with a tilde over it? I usually type the rest of the word and the click on the letter in the selection.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:27 pm
by Dinos Sfyris
Karen Pearson wrote:One question though, does anyone know how to type N with a tilde over it? I usually type the rest of the word and the click on the letter in the selection.
Alt+164 works in word. Not sure about on Apterous though.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:39 pm
by Alec Rivers
Dinos Sfyris wrote:
Karen Pearson wrote:One question though, does anyone know how to type N with a tilde over it? I usually type the rest of the word and the click on the letter in the selection.
Alt+164 works in word. Not sure about on Apterous though.
This should work at least on all Windows systems, but you need to use the digits on the number pad, not along the top of the keyboard. On some laptops it requires FN (or similar) to be pressed as well.

EDIT: If Alt+164 doesn't work, try Alt+0241.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2010 12:50 pm
by Karen Pearson
Dinos Sfyris wrote:
Karen Pearson wrote:One question though, does anyone know how to type N with a tilde over it? I usually type the rest of the word and the click on the letter in the selection.
Alt+164 works in word. Not sure about on Apterous though.
It does indeed work. Thanks!

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 4:03 pm
by Alec Rivers
A general tip re foreign character codes, for those who don't know. On Windows systems, you can find all the codes in Character Map. The quickest way to get it is:
  • • Hold the Windows key (between Ctrl and Alt) and press R. The 'Run' box will appear.
    • Type charmap and press Enter
If you prefer, you should also find it in the Start menu: Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Character Map.

You can of course add a shortcut to your desktop and/or quick-launch.

At the top, a standard font should already be selected. If not, then Arial is fine. Lower down, select the Windows: Western character set. That way you'll get the standard codes to use with Alt, rather than Unicode ones.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 5:31 pm
by Simon Le Fort
You know things are going badly when you find yourself looking across after a few rounds to see which language dictionary is installed.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 6:54 pm
by Charlie Reams
Simon Le Fort wrote:You know things are going badly when you find yourself looking across after a few rounds to see which language dictionary is installed.
Heehee. I occasionally fail to notice non-standard variants until the end of the round, and I imagine the problem is even worse if you regularly dictionary-surf. Maybe the interface needs to look more definitively different, or something.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 8:57 pm
by Alec Rivers
Charlie Reams wrote:
Simon Le Fort wrote:You know things are going badly when you find yourself looking across after a few rounds to see which language dictionary is installed.
Heehee. I occasionally fail to notice non-standard variants until the end of the round, and I imagine the problem is even worse if you regularly dictionary-surf. Maybe the interface needs to look more definitively different, or something.
Maybe make the background a faded image of the appropriate national flag.

EDIT: I'll do them for you, if you like. Just let me know the dimensions. Sample @ 80% transparency:

Image

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Fri Mar 05, 2010 10:51 pm
by Charlie Reams
Alec Rivers wrote:Maybe make the background a faded image of the appropriate national flag.
Background of the chat box, you mean? That could work.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 12:27 am
by Alec Rivers
Charlie Reams wrote:
Alec Rivers wrote:Maybe make the background a faded image of the appropriate national flag.
Background of the chat box, you mean? That could work.
It could, although I was thinking along the lines of:

Image

Image

Image

.. although I suppose some might say it is off-putting. (The transparency of these is 65%, by the way.)

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 11:24 am
by Simon Le Fort
Oh, I'm sorry, you've all gone to such bother to reply. Maybe I wasn't clear.

I was actually just saying that when I start a game and find myself on something pitiful like 6-0 after 4 rounds, I notice I always glance across to see which language I have selected, hoping for a technical error.

Now and again I do sometimes find I have dragged across the wrong dictionary selection and am in the wrong language. But unfortunately most times the cringe-worthy truth is that I am simply playing abysmally.

Speaking for myself, I am perfectly happy with the way things are, but any prettification as suggested can only be for the better.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 12:55 pm
by Alec Rivers
Alternatively:

Image

Image

Image

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 1:38 pm
by Charlie Reams
Alec Rivers wrote:Alternatively:
Much nicer. If you email me (charliereams3@gmail.com) the flag images for the 8 languages we currently support, I'll make sure this gets into the next version.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:21 pm
by Alec Rivers
Charlie Reams wrote:
Alec Rivers wrote:Alternatively:
Much nicer. If you email me (charliereams3@gmail.com) the flag images for the 8 languages we currently support, I'll make sure this gets into the next version.
I have them as vector drawings so I can render them perfectly at any size. To avoid bitmap resizing artefacts, just let me know the exact dimensions needed and I'll send those ready-made.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 6:46 pm
by Charlie Reams
It's 148x136.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 7:42 pm
by Alec Rivers
Charlie Reams wrote:It's 148x136.
I've sent two sets - normal and faded. Info in email.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 11:40 pm
by Alec Rivers
Can we challenge foreign lexicons? In Dutch, I was very surprised to have BLAFJES disallowed. BLAF is bark (of a dog, etc.) and is both a verb and a noun. The diminutive of the noun is, naturally, BLAFJE. The plural is formed with -S as expected. Plenty of hits on google.nl and there's even a website, blafjes.nl, for dog products.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Fri Apr 09, 2010 10:53 am
by Simon Le Fort
It is frustrating Alec. I would agree that words like these should be added to the Apterous dictionaries, if seconded by another player and excluding any chance of retrospective score changes.

In general, the Apterous foreign language dictionaries I am using at the moment are very good and when I have questioned a disallowed word I have usually checked in my dictionaries to find I was wrong, so it's very educational.

The occasional one still leaves me unsure, and it would be good to have a place to discuss and either get correction from another player or to have it added to the listings.

Some fun French words thrown up today by French DC:

MONGEROLS (not sure what this is all about...)
OXTAILS
BOGHEADS

Less fun today was Prune's CERUMENS which beat my EMINCES and cost me a score of 138 in French Letters Attack. Seems to mean a plural form of earwax. Double yuk!

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 6:51 am
by Karen Pearson
Nice to see Portuguese added to the list of languages. I only did Portuguese for a year and that was over 20 years ago so it's a bit of a struggle but I'm sure some of it will eventually come back.

The accents, tildes, umlauts over the vowels seems to make things much more difficult however. They don't appear in the Spanish version and I'm not sure if they appear in French. I know some of them have specific purposes but I wonder if it doesn't make the game impossibly hard. Can they be changed or does that involve major work?

Maybe someone with a better knowledge of Portuguese could give a view on whether they are strictly necessary. FWIW, my (possibly incorrect) take on them is that an acute accent is used, as in Spanish, to show where the stress goes on a word that does not follow the normal patterns; the grave accent is used where two words run into one (a + aquela for example becomes àquela - so if you have an 'à' in the selection you couldn't make 'aquela'), the umlaut is probably used when you want to make a hard 'g' sound before an 'i' or an 'e' as in Spanish (but I may be wrong).

Any clarification from someone with proper knowledge (as opposed to mine which is mostly based on my knowledge of Spanish) would be good!

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:02 am
by Charlie Reams
Based on the limited research I did, the ü has been largely phased out in Portugal, and is retained mainly for compatibility with Brazilian and other colonial names, but there were a handful of words that contained it so I put one in the deck. I'm not sure about the other accents. Judging by Portuguese Scrabble, you can drop most of them without anyone minding, except possibly ç. I know at least a few (Brazilian) Portuguese speakers, so I will inquire. Meanwhile enjoy a rare taste of authenticity :)

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 9:16 am
by Karen Pearson
Charlie Reams wrote: Meanwhile enjoy a rare taste of authenticity :)
Am already enjoying it immensely. It's forcing me to rake through seized-up parts of my brain to try to remember the pitifully few words I know. The good thing is, I can only improve! :)

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 7:58 am
by Karen Pearson
Sorry to drag this up again but....

With the new Word Stats, we can see that the most common maximum in Portugues is a 3 letter word (meaning Yes). You have to go all the way down to 16th to find the first 7 letter word. I'm pretty certain that this is due to the accents on the vowels. Any chance of losing at least the straight acute accents please?

What do the other Portuguese players think?

Edit: Have just noticed there are a couple of two-letter words on the list too.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 5:18 pm
by Charlie Reams
Karen Pearson wrote:Sorry to drag this up again but....

With the new Word Stats, we can see that the most common maximum in Portugues is a 3 letter word (meaning Yes). You have to go all the way down to 16th to find the first 7 letter word. I'm pretty certain that this is due to the accents on the vowels. Any chance of losing at least the straight acute accents please?

What do the other Portuguese players think?

Edit: Have just noticed there are a couple of two-letter words on the list too.
I asked a Portuguesophone about this and she said that yes, you could drop the accents. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 7:16 pm
by Karen Pearson
Charlie Reams wrote:
Karen Pearson wrote: Any chance of losing at least the straight acute accents please?


Edit: Have just noticed there are a couple of two-letter words on the list too.
I asked a Portuguesophone about this and she said that yes, you could drop the accents. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Excellent news! Thanks Charlie. No rush - I'm playing mostly Spanish at the moment. Though will be passing through part of Portugal in a few weeks time so am hoping to pick up a few useful Portuguese words (as my vocab is pretty shit!).

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2010 11:22 am
by Simon Le Fort
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2010 11:45 am
by Michael Wallace
Simon Le Fort wrote:I am just wondering why German maximums have become so low on such a regular basis, at least for me. Does anybody know? Something has certainly changed.
Were you regularly getting higher maximums in the past? Looking at the stats page for German 15 there have only been 7 maximums of 140 or greater, and these are fairly evenly spread across the year (January, March, March, March, May, June, September). There's a stats page somewhere on apterous that tells you have often a record is breakable, but I can't find it.

But yeah, your numbers don't strike me as particularly surprising, setting high scores is arguably as much about grinding until you get a good chance as they are about being awesome at the game.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2010 12:39 pm
by Simon Le Fort
Thanks Michael, you're right.

I'm going to delete my post as it no longer has any sense.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2010 1:28 am
by Miriam Nussbaum
Alec Rivers wrote:Can we challenge foreign lexicons? In Dutch, I was very surprised to have BLAFJES disallowed. BLAF is bark (of a dog, etc.) and is both a verb and a noun. The diminutive of the noun is, naturally, BLAFJE. The plural is formed with -S as expected. Plenty of hits on google.nl and there's even a website, blafjes.nl, for dog products.
Well, this kind of thing happens in Finnish all the time. I'm not surprised – with 15 cases for each of 2 numbers, plus possessive suffixes and sentence particles, the dictionary would have to be prohibitively large (I'm guessing, given the reservations about Apterous in Latin). At the same time, though, it's annoying not to be able to declare most pronouns, and that weird things happen like LEHMÄT 'cows' being in but LEHMÄ^ 'cow' not.

I think someone mentioned in the Latin discussion that on Des chiffres et des lettres, not all the inflections of a word are acceptable. I tried Googling for this, but couldn't find the rule. Anyone know what it is? If something like this were adopted for the Finnish lexicon, it might become more manageable while still having logical rules for what is acceptable (rather than just having to memorise "the genitive plural of this word is in but the illative singular isn't; that word is in in the partitive but not the nominative…").

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 9:29 am
by Simon Le Fort
French

Thanks for the lesson many months ago about the future of NOYER being NOIERAI; it works! NOYERAI isn't accepted. I think it was Karen who explained it.

I feel like I have gone back to square one as DC today offered both LAIERAI and LAYERAI.

Can anyone elaborate?

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 9:29 am
by Simon Le Fort
French

Thanks for the lesson many months ago about the future of NOYER being NOIERAI; it works! NOYERAI isn't accepted. I think it was Karen who explained it.

I feel like I have gone back to square one as DC today offered both LAIERAI and LAYERAI.

Can anyone elaborate?

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 12:57 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Simon Le Fort wrote:French

Thanks for the lesson many months ago about the future of NOYER being NOIERAI; it works! NOYERAI isn't accepted. I think it was Karen who explained it.

I feel like I have gone back to square one as DC today offered both LAIERAI and LAYERAI.

Can anyone elaborate?
I suppose someone would have to manually find all the things that this principle (whatever it is - it's French so I dunno) applies to.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:45 pm
by Rhys Benjamin
Not sure if this is the right place, but my ancestors are from Wales so there are a few Welsh speakers in my family still!

Enough to know that LL is a single letter.

Re: Foreign dictionary Apterous

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 9:27 pm
by Matt Bayfield
A big thumbs up for the latest language on apterous. Thank you to Hywel and Charlie and anyone else who helped to make it happen.