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The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

greatlanguagegame.com

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Re: The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

#131

Post by jessaustin »

jpatokal wrote: post #39

850. It would be a bit nicer if the randomly selected other language choices came from different language families: one of the three I got wrong was Bosnian vs Croatian, even though the difference is arguably a political construct (just don't say that to a Bosnian or Croat...). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_standard_Bosnian... The difference between Punjabi and Hindi is also pretty subtle. Mistaking Tha…

Bosnian was certainly the tricky one for me: is it really the same clip every time? The first time I missed it, I thought I heard "bagus" so I guessed Malay. The second time I missed it I guess I really have no excuse! Still I got 600, and I don't feel bad for not being able to distinguish Gujarati from Punjabi from Urdu. It's been some time since I heard any of those languages spoken.

Re: The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

#132

Post by jessaustin »

lake99 wrote: post #127
troels wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the Kannada one tripped me up too. I figured it must've been some inuit language - Only afterwards did I realise it's an Indian language (No, the other kind of indians). And good luck distinguishing between scandinavian languages if you're not native. I'm Danish and I sometimes confuse Swedish with Norwegian.

I don't know how much of an exposure you have to various cultures, but I hope you keep in mind that many Indians find it offensive when you call them "the other kind of indians". I'll put it in a manner you can understand. I see that you're Dane. I suppose the US has a significant populace with Danish ancestry. How would you like it if they refer to you as the other kind of Dane. I've also come across anecdotes where…

...the other kind of indians.

In an American context, it is understandable to think "Indian" signifies "American Indian". Now that East Indian immigration verges on outnumbering American Indians, that will probably change, but it's pretty silly to get offended by historical geographical misunderstandings. I mean, let's vilify Columbus for the right reasons. Besides, what's wrong with Native Americans? Why would it be a put-down to share a name with them? It's not like someone called you "French". b^)

...learn to speak English properly.

It is a truth universally acknowledged among speakers of English who've spoken with many other speakers of English, that the worst English-speakers are the English. I find the Irish to be the most intelligible and melodious, especially those Irish who have lived overseas. "BBC" English, however, is not the way that most English people speak, and besides the UK has no monopoly on that dialect.

Re: The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

#134

Post by MasterScrat »

lars512 wrote: post #56
bluesmoon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same here. 522 error. reposting has no effect. still 522s or Method Not Allowed errors.

Thanks guys, apparently my server is overloaded: https://support.cloudflare.com/entries/23670002-Error-522 I'll see what I can do about it.

Is loading an intermediate page to tell if the answer is correct really worth it? I would do that client-side, save the loading time and bandwidth...

Re: The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

#136

Post by ivanhoe »

lars512 wrote: post #9
gamegoblin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encountered a whole lot of lag. Some buttons took 5+ seconds to respond.

Yeah, sorry about that. I'd planned a little more infrastructure work before submitting it to HN. Wish me luck :)

you could just add some simple loading animation gif, to make it clear that buttons are working...

Re: The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

#137

Post by tripzilch »

unhammer wrote: post #123
mrich wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! One suggestion: Add a wikipedia link to the language that is displayed when the player gets it wrong, that way you can quickly read up on where it is spoken etc.

Actually, after each try you could have a snippet about each language, e.g. Kannada Primarily spoken in: India # of speakers: 38 million Language family: Dravidian Writing sample: ದಯವಿಟ್ಟು ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡ ಲಿಪಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಮಾತ್ರ ಬರೆಯಿರಿ Is awesome because: Reduplication! You write the word twice, replacing the start of the second one with 'gi-', to get "and related things". So if "books" is 'pustaka', "books and r…

Oh that's a great idea, very educational and I'd love reading stuff like that while playing this game!

(Especially since you have to wait quite a bit before the next sample loads. Which, as some others have pointed out, shouldn't have to be that slow. How many minutes of audio does this game have in total? I think using a modern codec (say OGG or AAC, not MP3) you could go with a pretty low bitrate (VBR), would it be feasible to just load all the clips in one chunk and play slices of that?)

Another idea for extra information: show on a world/continent map where this language is spoken. I expected to do really bad at this game since I am awfully bad at geography. But it turns out I'm doing pretty good (15/15, still got 3 lives, but I'm taking a break), since I'm pretty good with language I guess (even though I only speak NL/EN/DE and a bit FR), I know enough about others to make an educated guess. And of course you don't need to know where something is to guess the language :) Seriously, ask me to point those places on a map and I'd fail miserably--hence showing the location(s) where it's spoken would be a welcome training for me :)

To the maker of this game: great work! Love it!

Re: The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

#138

Post by saraid216 »

radikal_shit wrote: post #91
lars512 wrote: post #3

Hi guys, I'm the author. Here's a related blog post I did introducing the game: http://quietlyamused.org/blog/2013/09/01/introducing-the-gre... Feedback's much appreciated, and if you encounter any bugs, please report them via email to lars+glg@yencken.org If there's a language you'd like to see that's missing, consider helping out by finding some good quality language samples or news podcasts in that language and em…

Hi, great game. A little suggestion. Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian languages are too similar to differentiate for non native speakers. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian . Basically, the division is more political than linguistical.

I'm personally bothered that I haven't seen Mandarin, even though I've seen Cantonese a few times. :P

Re: The Great Language Game: How many languages can you distinguish between?

#139

Post by saraid216 »

jessaustin wrote: post #132
lake99 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how much of an exposure you have to various cultures, but I hope you keep in mind that many Indians find it offensive when you call them "the other kind of indians". I'll put it in a manner you can understand. I see that you're Dane. I suppose the US has a significant populace with Danish ancestry. How would you like it if they refer to you as the other kind of Dane. I've also come across anecdotes where…

...the other kind of indians. In an American context, it is understandable to think "Indian" signifies " American Indian". Now that East Indian immigration verges on outnumbering American Indians, that will probably change, but it's pretty silly to get offended by historical geographical misunderstandings. I mean, let's vilify Columbus for the right reasons. Besides, what's wrong with Native Americans? Why would it b…

> Why would it be a put-down to share a name with them?

The put-down is that Asian Indians are "the other kind", which implies second-class.

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