From: Ramón Flores (fa2ramon@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 06:09:51 EDT
Barbarism is a problem that manly concerns to minority
languages, i.e. languages that are competing, in the
same territory, with a more powerful one, called "roof
language", for example:
In Wales, Welsh is the minority language and English
is the roof one.
In Catalonia, Catalan is the minority language and
Spanish is the roof one,
In New Mexico, Spanish is the minority language and
English is the roof one,
In Gascony, Occitan is the minority language and
French is the roof one,
In Louisiana, French is the minority language and
English is the roof one.
When two languages compete in the same territory comes
up interferences, but they are not symmetric. The roof
language is weakly affected but the minority one can
be strongly affected, and can disappear (glottophagy).
One of these interferences is barbarism.
As nowadays English is the roof language everywhere, I
can understand that for a person whose native tongue
is English the concept of barbarism is quite alien.
But for many cases barbarisms is a serious problem.
And a tool that allows to avoid them is a useful one.
----------------
Jordi Mas wrote:
> Does anybody have a problem with me implementing
> this? Any other languages were this can be useful?
>
IMHO most users of minority languages will found
useful this tool. At least galician user will found.
(I am the galician translator of Abiword, and one of
the authors of the galician dictionary).
> Well, the most popular commercial Catalan spell
> checker (WordCorrect) has a barbarism correction
> feature, that's why I tough that it would be cool
> to have it in Abi also.
There also is a galician spell checker (Galgo) that
corrects barbarisms.
----------
Dom wrote:
> Your English barbarism links add something very
> important to this discussion - that a good barbarism
> tool will need something that spell checking tools
> lack, and that grammar checkers have, namely
> context.
Perhaps a perfect barbarism tool will need context.
But I think it is possible to make a good one
without context.
---------
Dom wrote
> Your "barbarism" suggestion seems to be more of a
> grammar issue than a spelling one.
Jordi wrote:
> What we probably need to do is start designing a
> grammar checker framework, complete
> with a plugin interface for extensions, and design
> the barbarism checker as a plugin for it.
IMHO barbarism correction is something more that
spelling, but much less than grammar. To make a
general grammar checker that can check different
languages is a huge task. But to modify one spell
checker to correct barbarisms seems much more
easier.
----------
Dom wrote:
> There is a huge difference between being a plugin
> and not being useful at all. Some features are best
> implemented inside of Abi. Some features best live
> as add-ons. Sometimes the line is blurry.
As a user of a spell checker that corrects barbarisms,
I think that the right place for this tool is inside
the spell checker, and not as a add-on. It is nor
very useful to check barbarisms only.
----------
Dom wrote:
> If this is a spelling problem, I'd like to see
> such a feature moved into ispell or aspell.
Alan wrote:
> The Gnu Aspell people probably have a better idea
> of where this fits in to the scheme of things.
This is a good point, I think that the right site to
implement this feature is at the spell checker, so
in ispell or aspell. But as far as I know the
development of ispell is stopped, and Abiword uses
ispell dictionaries not aspell ones. Moreover, at
least in windows, Abiword can only use ispell, I
think. Perhaps, now that aspell can be compiled in
windows, it is time to use aspell in windows too.
Bye
Ramon
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