Live data from Hacker News

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

greatlanguagegame.com

101–110 of 173 posts

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

#101
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…

I hit next twice after guessing correctly, which triggered a Python KeyError.

Traceback: http://pastebin.com/iJ5wfaMe

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

#102

1150 on my second try (thanks ridiculously multicultural upbringing), great game! I got a few immediate repeats of the same language; maybe preventing those would be a good idea?

That's a solid effort!

Pruning immediate repeats is in the todo list, thanks for the recommendation.

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

#103
post #98
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…

Great game! Found a bug though. When the game is over, if you hit the browser back button, it will let you continue the game.

Thanks for reporting it, I'll take a look.

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

#104
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A language is a dialect with an army.

And a navy.

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

#105
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.

Depending on region, it's even hard to differentiate for a native speaker. (I am a native Serbo-Croatian speaker)

Anyways - great game!

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

#107
I think that Czech and Slovak languages are incredibly similar to each other. often times, when reading the instructions on some product in both languages, they differ by one word here and there. I would be willing to guess that no speaker of these languages would be able to differentiate one from the other.

A cool variant on this game could be "guess where this English accent is from."

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

#108
post #75
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…

Great idea, and very fun! I'd love to see a couple of adjustments: First, the scores right now aren't very meaningful. The chance of winning each round is highly dependent on being lucky with the multiple choices (e.g. I'll always be able to guess Spanish vs. anything else, but my if options are two African languages, it's a coin toss). I think the distribution of scores over several games will end up being similar t…

On the first point, the game's randomness is biased towards easier languages earlier, and harder languages later. But I didn't want to bring with me a preconceived notion of what languages people would find hard. If you were to track your maximum score, you'd probably find it trend upwards as you trained. So scores are still useful in that regard.

On the second point -- I completely agree. Validating the samples takes time, but I promise I'll add more as soon as I can.

Thanks for playing :)

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

#110
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.

(Disclaimer: I am a native croatian speaker.) There's a significant difference between croatian and serbian language: croatian language is composed of three dialects and a standard language which are not found in serbian. It was a political movement to merge one of those dialects (shtokavian) with serbian language. So, serbian is somewhat similar to shtokavian but not to other dialects that compose the rest of the croatian language.
Post reply on HN