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Is this game working in other languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| vilas Pentaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6960 days ago 531 posts - 722 votes  Speaks: Spanish, Italian*, English, French, Portuguese | Message 1 of 19 25 February 2011 at 9:13am | IP Logged | ||
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According to a researcher at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole
English Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Spanish: Sgeun un etsduio de la uivenrsdiad de Cmabrigde, no ipmotra el odren en el que las ltears etsan ersciats, la uicna csoa ipormtnate es que la pmrirea y la utlima ltera esten ecsritas en la psiocion cocrrtea. El rsteo peuden estar ttaolmntee mal y aun pordas lerelo sin pobrleams. Etso es pquore no lemeos cada ltera por si msima preo la paalbra es un tdoo. Portuguese : De aorcdo com uma pesqiusa de uma uinrvesriddae de Cmabrigde, não ipomtra em qaul odrem as lrteas de uma plravaa etãso, a úncia csioa iprotmatne é que a piremria e útmlia lrteas etejasm no lgaur crteo. O rseto pdoe ser uma ttaol bçguana que vcoê pdoe anida ler sem pobrlmea. Itso é poqrue nós não lmeos cdaa lrtea isladoa, mas a plravaa cmoo um tdoo. Italian: Da uno stdiuo dlela Urtnievrsia di Cmabrigde , l'odrirne dllee letetre in una plaora non ha ipmzotrana, la sloa csoa imtpotanre é che la pimra e l'ulmtia sinao nllea pozisione cortttrea. Tttue le alrte lerette pssoono esrese tttmoalene ddiosriante e tu sraai spmere in grdao di leeggre sezna pbmrolei. Quetso é dvtouo al fttao che il cellvreo umnao non lgege ongi letetra ma la paorla glolabmnete. French: Sleon une édtue de l'Uvinertisé de Cmabrigde, l'odrre des ltteers dnas un mtos n'a pas d'ipmrotncae, la suele coshe ipmrotnate est que la pmeirère et la drenèire soit à la bnnoe pclae. Le rsete peut êrte dnas un dsérorde ttoal et vuos puoevz tujoruos lrie snas porlblème. C'est prace que le creaveu hmauin ne lit pas chuaqe ltetre elle-mmêe, mias le mot cmome un tuot. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 19 25 February 2011 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
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That researcher from Cambridge is a fool, monolingual or both. The point is that if you are REALLY experienced in reading a certain language and knows that language like the back of your hand then you can make good guesses on the fly about the words an unorderly heap of letters might potentially add up to. And then you can choose the most likely solution to the riddle.
The less you know the language, and the less experience you have in reading it, the less chance you have of piecing possible solutions together, and it will certainly take longer time. It is of course interesting in itself that good readers can perform this trick, but it is simply irresponsible to draw any kind of widereaching conclusions from it. Not to speak about pedagogical conclusions about an 'acceptable' number of spelling errors. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5523 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 3 of 19 25 February 2011 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lots of programs which say they'll teach you how to speed-read say that the majority of people actually read the text out in their mind silently while reading; if they can read this at a normal speed, I wonder if that really is the case.
Also I'm curious to see how well this would work for less analyticalish languages. Edited by GREGORG4000 on 25 February 2011 at 4:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| t123 Diglot Senior Member South Africa https://github.com/t Joined 5611 days ago 139 posts - 226 votes Speaks: English*, Afrikaans | Message 4 of 19 25 February 2011 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Iversen: Perhaps reading the research before dismissing someone as a fool would be useful, here is the summary: http://www.mrc-
cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/rawlinson.html and more details here: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/ Anyway, I doubt this works very well for agglutinative languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5173 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 19 25 February 2011 at 6:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder if this is specific to the Latin alphabet.
Can any Arabic speakers identify what this means? أالق احملجيتن يجتوهن للقب طبالرس I see several potential problems already, including but not limited to: 1) The lack of vowels. 2) The constant need to read for context. 3) The trilateral root system. If you switch letters around, chances are you'll end up with a completely different word that does exist. ألاف المحتجين يتجهون لقلب طرابلس This is the original sentence (for the curious) - taken straight from Al-Jazeera.
Good call with agglutinative languages. Ni_na_cho_ki_penda --> Nehcpinkdoniaa? (I don't think so.) Edited by strikingstar on 25 February 2011 at 7:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Marikki Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5495 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Spanish, Swedish Studies: German | Message 6 of 19 27 February 2011 at 1:49am | IP Logged | ||
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This doesn't definitely work for Finnish. Even if there weren't so many long compound words, there are
noun cases, infinitive and partciple verb forms etc. that make words longer but also carry much meaning. Here is one simple example: "I was just about to read something." In Finnish the whole "to be just about to read" can be said simply using the fifth infinitive form for "to read", "lukea". "Olin lukemaisillani jotakin." The same, but the letters mixed -> "Oiln llliikusemnaai jatkoin." Maybe an autistic savant could read this with a glance.. Edited by Marikki on 01 March 2011 at 8:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5034 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 19 27 February 2011 at 1:58am | IP Logged | ||
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The Spanish in the first post was understandable to me. I was rather surprised about it, too!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 8 of 19 27 February 2011 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Amazing! - I had no problem at all reading any of the texts and reconstructing the right spellings, and I never even studied any French, Portuguese or Italian (heavy resemblance, knowledge of the text, etc., I know).
Of course it won't work as well for agglutinative languages, because 'words' work in a different way there. But it is definitely interesting how quickly you can guess and rule out at all 'wrong' possibilities as long as the first and last characters are in place. Now it would be even more interesting to see if this gets increasingly difficult with increasingly long words, as the number of possible spellings grows in a factorial fashion. For example, I think it should be much easier to guess 'fcae' than 'ohoratcedn' under equal conditions simply because 'face' has (2! = 2) possible spellings respecting the first and last letters, while it is (8! = 40320) for 'octahedron'. My guess is that it works that way. Now, I wonder how this thing would work for long agglutinative compounds _if_ the joints were respected... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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