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

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

#151

Post by jessaustin »

lake99 wrote: post #146
jessaustin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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…

> ... by historical geographical misunderstandings If only it were just historical ! > Besides, what's wrong with Native Americans? Nothing! That's an excellent term. > Why would it be a put-down to share a name with them? I never said anything about it being a put-down. To me, it's just annoying when people write "Indian" and assume that it will be understood to mean "Native American". My point (with bringing up Dan…

Historically, "East Indian" meant something else entirely.

Is that also "annoying" to you? After all, some hillbilly somewhere might not appreciate the many nuances of differing cultural practices between Sumatra and Tamil Nadu. Worse yet, she might not even care! Is there any aspect of any European language that doesn't annoy you?

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

#152

Post by clueless123 »

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…

Where can we see the list of all the languages available? Is Quechua available? (Peruvian/Bolivian and the incas native language )

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

#154

Post by lake99 »

jnbiche wrote: post #149
lake99 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... by historical geographical misunderstandings If only it were just historical ! > Besides, what's wrong with Native Americans? Nothing! That's an excellent term. > Why would it be a put-down to share a name with them? I never said anything about it being a put-down. To me, it's just annoying when people write "Indian" and assume that it will be understood to mean "Native American". My point (with bringing up Dan…

Regarding Caucasian, why would you get annoyed? Words can and often do have multiple appropriate meanings. One of the wonderful things about natural language is our ability to distinguish among different word meanings based on context. Anyone who insists upon only a single meaning for each word will have a considerably poorer vocabulary because of it. Furthermore, if you're going to rule out all words with spurious e…

> Words can and often do have multiple appropriate meanings.

You seem to greatly overestimate our ability to distinguish among different word meanings based on context. The meanings are not all appropriate when they conflict. I first discovered this conflicting meaning of "Caucasian" when discussing something with a Polish friend. Unlike me, he did not default to the popular American meaning of "Caucasian". That led to us misunderstanding each other for a few minutes. "Indian" has caused me enough headaches online. I'll reiterate: not everyone defaults to popular American (mis-)usages.

Leave aside the matter of popular usage for the time being. Do you also think that if population geneticists were to use all these conflicting meanings, it would cause them no problems at all?

I hope my explanation also disabuses you of the notions that I'm "[insisting] upon only a single meaning for each word" or trying to "rule out all words with spurious etymologies". Don't worry about me having a considerably poorer vocabulary; I do extremely well on most tests. When I write, people may have trouble understanding my point, but it's never been because I used to wrong words. Addendum: if it were to turn out that I have used the wrong words, I'd learn, and correct myself.

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

#155

Post by lake99 »

jessaustin wrote: post #151
lake99 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... by historical geographical misunderstandings If only it were just historical ! > Besides, what's wrong with Native Americans? Nothing! That's an excellent term. > Why would it be a put-down to share a name with them? I never said anything about it being a put-down. To me, it's just annoying when people write "Indian" and assume that it will be understood to mean "Native American". My point (with bringing up Dan…

Historically, "East Indian" meant something else entirely. Is that also "annoying" to you? After all, some hillbilly somewhere might not appreciate the many nuances of differing cultural practices between Sumatra and Tamil Nadu. Worse yet, she might not even care! Is there any aspect of any European language that doesn't annoy you?

> some hillbilly somewhere might not appreciate the many nuances of differing cultural practices

Are you seriously offering that as your reason too? That some hillbilly does it?

I'm done here.

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

#156

Post by pbhjpbhj »

i-blis wrote: post #122
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #111

Can someone verify the Turkish sample ( http://media.greatlanguagegame.com/samples/752c4c30d475748a3... )? I've only been there on holidays but it doesn't sound right to me, perhaps it's just the low quality of the sample but the phonemes seem far more 'Eastern' to me.

Definitively Turkish. And pretty standard dialect.

Cool, thanks.

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

#157

Post by lars512 »

tripzilch wrote: post #141
tripzilch wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 15/15, still got 3 lives .. and then I got 3 wrong in a row :) so, 750 points. Question to the author: last one I got wrong was Turkish. I would've definitely considered that if I had seen the option, but I don't remember I did. I probably just overlooked it. But it would be nice if it'd show all the options with the wrong one red and the right one green or something, just to comfort any thoughts of "was that a bug…

That's a good suggestion, I should layout the same buttons but with the incorrect one marked. Thanks!

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

#158

Post by lars512 »

nkoren wrote: post #62
lars512 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Infrastructure is good, but some of the lag could be fixed with code. For example: the page should already know whether a given answer is correct, and give a response without needing to hit the server at all. This would give you instantaneous feedback, which the user can digest while the next audio file is cached. As it is, having to wait 5-10 seconds for my button-presses to register is really killing the enjoyabili…

Try it again today, when the servers are actually running smoothly. You'll find the experience different.

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

#159

Post by lars512 »

saraid216 wrote: post #138
radikal_shit wrote: post #91

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.

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

Mandarin's in there, keep at it!
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