Re: [libreoffice-users] How to define a dictionary for new language?

There are "official" dialects and then there are those that just 
pronounce the words differently or uses different phrase styles.

As for a language dialect, say using different words, like the various 
non-English languages spoken in the UK, or ones that are based in 
English variants from 500 year ago and never really changed much over 
the years,  these may need to be part of some install of LO.

Look at all the different language dialects that India has.  Only a few 
are part of the "official" list of languages that LO supports.

Regional languages or dialects could be a real "mess" to try and get LO 
to support all of them.

How many languages/dialects are supported right now?  100, 150?

How many thousands are out there that may never be supported due to the 
small market?  I could only guess.

I lady I met was overjoyed when she heard that OOo [before LO ever came 
out] supported Hebrew.  She worked in a tourist center that needed to 
use her English, French, and Hebrew skills to answer questions and 
create documents.

If you want to create a dialect of a language, that is close to the 
"root" language that LO supports, you could create a dictionary that 
uses the "root" language and add the dialect elements.  Look at 
Spanish.  There are about 20 regional dialects that have come out in 
dictionaries for LO based on the country that it is spoken in.  It is 
still Spanish, but with a regional name included as part of the 
dictionary's name.  Spanish - Mexico, Spanish - Columbia, etc..

The hardest part of the whole process it finding the needed 
documentation to create the .aff and .dic files.  When I last searched, 
I came up empty.  So I just used some common sense and used the 
"default" en_US .aff file and then just used a word list of all the 
words with their various prefixes and suffics included.  I ended up with 
over 700,000 of them.  I did have a en_US dictionary that included over 
2 million words and their proper variations, but that seemed to go too 
far.  Some of those really "rare spellings" might be not so popular with 
certain English professors or bosses, even though they were correctly 
spelled.

As for the UK, I saw a person's list of "proper" Shakespearian era 
words.  Someone told me that in that era, they spelled their words 
whichever way they felt like.  So I decided not to make a dictionary for 
that.

But there are other dialects that could be added.  All it takes is some 
willing souls to make it a working project.


On 07/31/2013 10:21 PM, Tom Davies wrote:
> Hi :)
> I still hear a lot of differences in even very common phrases used in different areas of the US.  I think 
> it's inevitable whenever people group together in any way.  The media seems to average things out a bit but 
> it's more like a trading language that doesn't really belong to anywhere and isn't really anyone's 
> "native" language but is added to be all sorts and then made instantly bland.   Baltimore sounds 
> different from other places, even phrases are different.
> Regards from
> Tom :)
>
>
>
>
>
> > ________________________________
> > From: Doug <dmcgarrett@optonline.net>
> > To: users@global.libreoffice.org
> > Sent: Thursday, 1 August 2013, 1:16
> > Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] How to define a dictionary for new language?
> >
> >
> > On 07/31/2013 03:50 PM, Tom Davies wrote:
> > > Hi :)
> > /snip/
> > > In England we have a lot of different types of 'English' some of which are completely incomprehensible to an 
> > > outsider living as far as 30miles away.  None of my family ever understood my Gran for example, but she was 
> > > always there offering cups of tea with a rock-hard scone or porridge only slightly less runny than cement 
> > > (actually it was all good stuff really but don't tell her that).  In the case of cockney that was a 
> > > deliberate attempt to avoid passing anything onto "the old bill" by accident.  Liverpudlian and 
> > > Geordie are perhaps due to different peoples having invaded us at different times and different kingdoms all 
> > > over the place or different tribes claiming different parts.  I'm sure it's much the same in any other 
> > > country.
> > >
> > > Regards from
> > > Tom
> > Is this still true? I am aware that it was true in the past, but I would
> > have thought that with radio, TV and movies, that the local
> > dialects would have mostly disappeared.  But what do I know. sitting
> > here on the other side of the pond, where dialects really have pretty
> > much disappeared.
> >
> > (55 years ago, when I was in the Air Force here, I ran into some boys
> >from the backwoods of Kentucky, and they spoke a dialect that was
> > reminiscent of what you read in Shakespeare. I'm pretty sure that's
> > all gone, now. We get news reports with interviews of the locals from
> > all over the US, and there's very little "drawl" even. Probably those
> > of us in New York or Boston have more of a unique accent today. Altho
> > there is a woman reading commercials on KSEY-FM, in Seymore, TX, who
> > really sounds hillbilly! [KSEY is accessible by the Net, and plays
> > classic country music.])
> >
> > I ask this OT question because I have been interested in language
> > all my life, and I notice accents. And of course, if _you_ can't
> > understand some folks in Merry Olde, surely I couldn't!
> >
> > --doug


--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted