tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post5977643901991418891..comments2023-10-23T11:13:35.712-04:00Comments on Games with Words: Which English: The Science, Part 1Edwardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04295927435118827266noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-25636047415063379552016-02-13T13:35:31.427-05:002016-02-13T13:35:31.427-05:00@Devin - The paper is still under review. Once it ...@Devin - The paper is still under review. Once it has been published, we'll be able to release the data.GamesWithWordshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15107067137612954306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-61398968780091032952016-02-06T03:02:10.170-05:002016-02-06T03:02:10.170-05:00I took the quiz on an Android phone and was not ab...I took the quiz on an Android phone and was not able to get past the question about what countries I have lived in. No matter if I picked the countries from the meny or typed their names, they wouldn't stick. I also tried to enter only one country, but it still wouldn't accept it, so I never managed to get to the next page.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-45097993659285279242015-12-05T17:32:09.580-05:002015-12-05T17:32:09.580-05:00"Yes, we definitely plan on releasing an anon..."Yes, we definitely plan on releasing an anonymized version of the dataset. "<br /><br />Any update on this?Devin Denishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06722534631629774953noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-92143848706808480202015-11-08T10:56:12.472-05:002015-11-08T10:56:12.472-05:00I see that other people have gotten "Singapor...I see that other people have gotten "Singaporean" as a result for English dialect. However, I'm native Singaporean and didn't get that result... Although it did guess that English is my first language.<br /><br />My results:<br />Our top three guesses for your English dialect:<br />1. Welsh (UK)<br />2. English (England)<br />3. South African <br /><br />Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:<br />1. English<br />2. Norwegian<br />3. Swedish Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-51270973221608604212014-07-12T14:21:12.816-04:002014-07-12T14:21:12.816-04:00A note about your use of English in the quiz. The...A note about your use of English in the quiz. The United Kingdom is made up of four countries, NOT four regions. I am Welsh and if asked which country I come from/live in, I will always answer Wales. I will never answer the United Kingdom. I compromised this principle when doing the quiz, but under protest.Ioan ap Iagonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-10599495573475669672014-06-30T13:26:37.201-04:002014-06-30T13:26:37.201-04:00I just want to share an interesting finding..
My ...I just want to share an interesting finding..<br /><br />My first try:<br />Our top three guesses for your English dialect:<br />1. Singaporean<br />2. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics<br />3. Welsh (UK)<br />Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:<br />1. Russian<br />2. Finnish<br />3. Spanish -<br /><br />I speak Mandarin and my first teacher, at 10, was Canadian (for about 2 years). Then, turning 13, I became very intersted in American hip hop, and the passion lasted for 3 or 4 years. After going to university at 19 I studied English literature and Spanish language and literature for 4 years. I learned a bit of Russian but was never able to pick it up. I, however, had a very close friend whose native language is Bulgarian and Russian, and she's been living in Finland for 7 years or so and speaks Finnish. We communicate in English and it seems like she might have affected my English grammar somehow, assuming the test is accurate, even though I have lived in Taiwan all my life. I am now 24 and I met her only 4 years ago.<br /><br />Out of curiousity I retook the test for 3 times; the results were largely different. I admit that each time the answers were a bit different because I was not very sure on a few options or because I realised I overlooked a few grammar mistakes. I also left some questions blank, something I did not do the fist time. Not sure how that might affect the results.<br /><br />On a final note, I am glad that you reminded me about the declining learning curve. I really need to step up the game and go for the languages I want to learn before it's too late! Thank you for finishing the long paragraphs and I wish you success on your research.Hsunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-57824257852706065122014-06-26T09:05:53.471-04:002014-06-26T09:05:53.471-04:00@AlanL - I don't know. That sounds like an eff...@AlanL - I don't know. That sounds like an effect of your experience on your understanding of grammar. Seems like something we actually want to pick up on in the quiz, right? If you hadn't been exposed to those dialects, you'd find those sentences bad.<br /><br />@Sam -- There are definitely differences between written and spoken language. It's harder to study spoken language, though, and not just on the Internet. It's much harder to analyze the results. So we know a lot more about written communication. GamesWithWordshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15107067137612954306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-72609656402362840472014-06-26T06:44:26.288-04:002014-06-26T06:44:26.288-04:00Thanks for a fascinating study. A couple of quest...Thanks for a fascinating study. A couple of questions:<br /><br />1) It would be interesting to see the effects of other languages learned. I'm a native speaker of American English, but have studied German (and learned a lot about English grammar in the process.) "Who whom kissed" is a construction I'd never use (and would take some time to parse if someone said it to me), but if I see it written, I recognize the grammatical logic.<br /><br />2) Any differences between how we understand/process written versus spoken language?<br /><br />3) A lot of the constructions in the survey/game seemed to be missing key helping verbs or prepositions that would make meaning clear. Have you seen any indication that people supply them, even if they are missing from the text of the examples?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-46127891738406067812014-06-26T00:48:17.177-04:002014-06-26T00:48:17.177-04:00I just took the test and was correctly recognised ...I just took the test and was correctly recognised as a native speaker of (English) English. Well done. <br /><br />One point occurred to me: I have lived abroad for ten years and spent a lot of time with native speakers of other English dialects. Also, like most English speakers these days, I am exposed to a lot of material in American.<br /><br />Consequently, on the "which sentences are grammatical" questions I clicked ok on quite a few things that I was pretty sure would be fine in (e.g.) Irish or some American dialects, even though I personally would never say them. Perhaps you need to tighten up the phrasing of the question?AlanLhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04820194790550072204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-29754920398614439522014-06-19T19:56:34.934-04:002014-06-19T19:56:34.934-04:00@Timo - I've just put up a new post that goes ...@Timo - I've just put up a <a href="http://gameswithwords.fieldofscience.com/2014/06/magic-singlish.html" rel="nofollow">new post</a> that goes part of the way towards explaining what's going on. As discussed in the blog post, there's still a lot of analysis to be done before we fully understand what is going on.GamesWithWordshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15107067137612954306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-42451424432038137292014-06-19T17:45:19.306-04:002014-06-19T17:45:19.306-04:00Quite lot of us North Europeans seem to get Singap...Quite lot of us North Europeans seem to get Singaporean dialect as the top guess. See e.g. Helmer's post above. (Although he has lived long in Singapore.) <br /><br />I find this bit surprising as in general there shouldn't be particularly strong connection between Scandinavia and South-East Asia.<br /><br />So I am wondering what might be a reason for this? Isn't Singaporean dialect some kind of mixture of British and American dialects? <br /><br />We in Scandinavia are non-native English-speakers but still quite fluent in it and we also get lot of influence from both sides of Atlantic. Thus I would guess we speak neither pure standard American English nor standard British English but we tend to mix features from both of those dialects. Thus could it be that we get Singaporean English as a proxy for "mixed British and American English"?<br />Timo M. Partanenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04069219297687065086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-80661208083109192862014-06-13T11:31:43.389-04:002014-06-13T11:31:43.389-04:00Well in my dialect it's the word order - "...Well in my dialect it's the word order - "Throw me the hammer down the stairs." or "Throw the hammer down the stairs to me."Bob Halehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09648768078027630120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-58713221069238773262014-06-12T22:42:54.188-04:002014-06-12T22:42:54.188-04:00Wait. How does a person from USA or Britain say &q...Wait. How does a person from USA or Britain say "Throw me down the stairs the hammer"?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-44292646136833921652014-06-09T10:12:00.280-04:002014-06-09T10:12:00.280-04:00I took the quiz, as did many of my friends (some U...I took the quiz, as did many of my friends (some UK, some US-all native English speakers). Most, though not all, of us got Hungarian suggested as the second possibility for our native labguage (after English). I was wondering which feature of our dialects is flagging Hungarian as none of us speak any Hungarian and, on the face of it, the languages have little similarity.<br />Bob Halehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09648768078027630120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-39762043075887590162014-06-06T15:01:26.622-04:002014-06-06T15:01:26.622-04:00Hi, Pam. I'm Aussie, too, and my results were ...Hi, Pam. I'm Aussie, too, and my results were the same as yours: NZ, Aus & Welsh. I wonder how we were flagged as Kiwi first. (Disclaimer, I've lived in NZ for the past 12 years, but I'm sure my language is still the fully-sick, choice, eh bro, version I brought with me.) Interesting... Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-90723872959548558212014-06-06T06:00:43.131-04:002014-06-06T06:00:43.131-04:00Hi, just letting you know there's a grammatica...Hi, just letting you know there's a grammatical error (at least to my Australian English grammar!) in the third sentence on your 'findings' page - the word are is missing.<br />Interesting quiz, though. My results were:<br />1. New Zealandish (as an Australian I'd call it Kiwi, but we tend to like shorter slang terms)<br />2. Australian<br />3. Welsh<br />The first two I understand; the Welsh is an interesting guess. I'd love to know a bit more about the particularities of each dialect you've examined.Pam Bnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-51864978717889266062014-06-06T02:37:42.636-04:002014-06-06T02:37:42.636-04:00What´s the point with the passive constructions an...What´s the point with the passive constructions and the pictures in the beginning? How can giving the wrong answer to those possibly say anything else than weak proficiency in English? Why did you add those? Also, I understand you will improve the algorithm based on analysis of the results. Will you improve the input questions as well? Right now, they don´t seem very sophisticated at all...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-53655549950299968822014-06-05T19:18:23.590-04:002014-06-05T19:18:23.590-04:00@qvd When the algorithm tries to guess your dialec...@qvd When the algorithm tries to guess your dialect, it only considers "native" dialects, like Australian, Canadian, etc. When it considers native language, it considers those dialects *as well as* the "dialects" spoken by people whose native language is something else. <br /><br />If your answers are closest to a native dialect, it guesses that your native language is English. If your answers are closest to, say, the typical response of an Italian speaker, it guesses your native language is Italian. <br /><br />Check out our updated <a href="http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/dialect_results.html" rel="nofollow">interactive visualization</a>. As you can see, in most cases, the typical grammars of non-native English speakers are more closely related to one another than to any specific dialect of English.<br /><br />Was that explanation clear?GamesWithWordshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15107067137612954306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-35864936761537372062014-06-05T17:14:37.425-04:002014-06-05T17:14:37.425-04:00My results are definitely awesome: dialect - Engli...My results are definitely awesome: dialect - English,Australian,US; First language - Polish,Turkish,Italian. That makes tiny bit of a weird mix. Can you explain how can the algorithm go for 3 most common dialects and at the same time give 3 totally not connected native language answers?qvdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12665581313092705643noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-28491603612261075352014-06-05T14:55:20.760-04:002014-06-05T14:55:20.760-04:00Your question about education is a good point. Edu...Your question about education is a good point. Education almost certainly plays a role, but we haven't yet incorporated it into the predictions the algorithm makes.<br /><br />As said in the intro to the quiz, we're using the data we collect to train the algorithm, and with time, it does better. But it's still far from perfect. If you filled out the post-quiz questionnaire about your background, we'll be using that to improve the algorithm.<br /><br />Probably no quiz that takes 5-10 minutes is ever going to be accurate 100% of the time. Part of the research question is seeing how close we can get!GamesWithWordshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15107067137612954306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-17239851127709035252014-06-05T14:26:59.588-04:002014-06-05T14:26:59.588-04:00Every single guess for me was pretty much wrong.
...Every single guess for me was pretty much wrong.<br /><br />1. New Zealand<br />2. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics<br />3. Welsh (UK)<br /><br />Prior to turning about 22, my instruction was completely in English in the United States with some high school Spanish classes. I spent three months interning at a British school in Slovakia. When I turned 30, I moved to Australia and started a PhD program there. I've spent about 2 months total in New Zealand, and a weekend in Wales. I'm at a complete loss because three different continents, three variants and none that I would describe myself as being a language user of.<br /><br />The other one was just as "Huh." <br /><br />1. Norwegian<br />2. English<br />3. Dutch<br /><br />I've never learned either Norwegian nor Dutch. English is my native language.<br /><br />I'm wondering if education possibly plays a role in this (I thought of Gwendolyn Brooks poetry when answering some) or moving from one English speaking dialect area to another at some stage. (That wasn't asked about.)Laura Halehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00834598741102260910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-19611535711689076912014-06-04T18:37:20.218-04:002014-06-04T18:37:20.218-04:00There was some recent research that using differen...There was some recent research that using different measures than L2 (the Euclidean distance) gave better clustering for high dimensional spaces.<br /><br />Specifically, using *fractional* exponents, so e.g.<br />((x0 - y0)^N + (x1 - y1)^N + ...)^(1/N) gave better results for fractional N, with higher dimensions leading to lower fractions. I can't remember the numbers, but you might want to try using 0.6 or 0.7...Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14693393763440275429noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-16378058448193858492014-06-04T15:58:22.598-04:002014-06-04T15:58:22.598-04:00So...the 'done' page for that study was ge...So...the 'done' page for that study was getting really cluttered, and when things are too cluttered, people don't read anything. <br /><br />About 25% go on to the 'findings' page or the 'visualization' page, which seems pretty good, especially given that over 33% just return to the first page again. I'm not sure how many people click on the "algorithm" button or the two help buttons.<br /><br />But this is still a work in progress.GamesWithWordshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15107067137612954306noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-53898273179064820542014-06-04T01:49:52.890-04:002014-06-04T01:49:52.890-04:00Glad I found my way through to this blog otherwise...Glad I found my way through to this blog otherwise your promise of "We will explain the purpose of the experiment at the end of the experiment, along with any potential implications of the research." would have gone unfulfilled.Jim Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04278873730992687192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701757403364514168.post-2357358977667349052014-06-03T16:46:36.200-04:002014-06-03T16:46:36.200-04:00Thank you so much for the quick and informative re...Thank you so much for the quick and informative response! I'll watch how your project develops. I work on Newfoundland literature and language from a cultural studies / humanities perspective, so I have something of a vested interest in seeing Newfoundland English (or Englishes, more correctly - the example you use in your post would only make sense in parts of the island) represented / seeing how it relates to other dialects. Good luck and thanks again! :)Michael Collinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08078502900832758533noreply@blogger.com