[language, technology] small delight
Dec. 26th, 2023 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I have for many years now used the Swype keyboard for text input on my auxiliary internet device. Languages I have installed are English (UK), French, German, Irish, and Turkish.
One of these languages is not like the other, not merely in that it's not Indo-European but in specific that it's an agglutinative language.
The way this is handled in predictive text (1) makes a lot of sense and (2) is brilliant.
For four of these languages, if a word isn't in the dictionary (whether because it came pre-entered or because I saved it myself later), predictive text won't ever suggest it. "Stork" can be in the dictionary, but if it's only there in the singular I can swipe that shape + "s" and I'll never get "storks" suggested.
By way of contrast, have a word I used as demonstration to A the other night: duşmanlarımdan. "Duşman" (enemy) is in the pre-loaded dictionary; even duşman+lar (enemy + plural: enemies) might be. But duşman+lar+ım (enemy + plural + first person singular possessive: my enemies) isn't, and duşman+lar+ım+dan (enemy + plural + first person singular possessive + ablative: from my enemies) definitely isn't. The fundamental nature of the language, though, is that you do just Build Words like this, so rather than try (and fail) to preload All Possible Words or even a reasonable subset of them, the Turkish keyboard layout has instead been written to make predictions based on what set of base word plus standard morphemes you've swiped over. It's lovely.
(The target sentence in question is "duşmanlarımdan kaçabilirdin", "you could have escaped from my enemies". "kaçabilirdin" breaks down to kaç-a-bilir-din: "kaçmak" is to flee or escape, and gives "kaç"; "a" is a buffer vowel, which follows vowel harmony; "bilir" is to be able; "din" is the second person singular past tense indicator.)
(no subject)
Date: 2023-12-27 12:24 am (UTC)I don't have a good handle on agglutination vs ... fusion? the other thing polysynthetic languages can be, so not sure if relevant (and don't know enough about/of the languages in question to judge anyway), but sometimes I think I want to poke at polysynthetic Greenlandic or Inuktitut someday. too many languages, too little lifetime...
(I think I was unable to find the Proper Swype keyboard a couple years back when I got this phone but I currently have: English/German/Spanish QWERTY, Greek (largely though not exclusively for math purposes), Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, and IPA. Except a little very rusty Russian I don't speak a substantial amount of the non-Latin-alphabet ones but sometimes I end up discussing words or like, looking up songs in them.)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-02-13 11:20 am (UTC)