NationStates Jolt Archive

Hello there,

I've looked at the past few weeks' topic titles, and didn't see this particular topic addressed (kindly forgive me for not examining 160+ pages of topic titles), so I'd like to suggest the following future enhancement to improve issue texts:

When creating a nation, in addition to asking for the [singular nominative] name of the national animal and currency, also ask for the plural nominative, singular genitive, and plural genitive forms. If the plural nominative, singular genitive, or plural genitive forms are left empty, automatically generate "singular nominatives", "singular nominative's", or "singular nominatives'" respectively. In tandem, update the issue texts to use the appropriate grammatical forms. This will avoid texts that currently use e.g. "oxs" rather than "oxen", or "denariuss" rather than "denarii". (I don't know if any issue currently uses a genitive form, but a similar argument applies to the genitive forms.)

If a multilingual interface is also planned as a future enhancement, then additional grammatical forms would be needed depending on the language, e.g. an additional four forms (singular/plural accusative/dative) would be needed for German. (Each additional singular/plural grammatical form would default to automatic cloning of singular/plural nominative in English.)

Best regards,

Ludo

I've thought about this before, but I don't think it'd be a good idea to make the players enter more data. Instead there should be a macro @@PLURALCURRENCY@@ (and similarly for the other categories), and then an algorithm to generate @@PLURALCURRENCY@@ from @@CURRENCY@@ etc. This wouldn't be prefect, but it could make for significant improvements even with very simply rules:

consonant + 'y' -> consonant + 'ies'
'x' -> 'xes'
'z' -> 'zes'
's' -> 'ses'
anything else -> anything else + 's'

It would give 'oxes' rather than 'oxen', but that's preferrable to 'oxs'.

That would be a nice system, as 'aess' simply doesn't work for my Latin-themed nation. Your macro, plural currency, would be an interesting idea, but as you said, still not perfect.

That would be a nice system, as 'aess' simply doesn't work for my Latin-themed nation. Your macro, plural currency, would be an interesting idea, but as you said, still not perfect.

As always, it's a trade-off. If we weren't fussed about asking users for more data we could add things like 'animal environment' so we don't get 'the fish is on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation'.

Greetings, colleagues.

I've thought about this before, but I don't think it'd be a good idea to make the players enter more data.

that's why I'd implied making the extra fields optional:

If the plural nominative, singular genitive, or plural genitive forms are left empty, automatically generate "singular nominatives", "singular nominative's", or "singular nominatives'" respectively.

Existing nations would have automatic generation of the missing forms applied, and should be able to update them as needed. New nations would only be required to enter the singular nominative form; each of the other three forms not entered would be automatically generated.

The algorithm that you'd suggested for automatic generation could also be supplemented with:

'ch' -> 'ches'
'sh' -> 'shes'
'zh' -> 'zhes'

and possibly

'o' -> 'oes'

perhaps with built-in exception lists (on the animal side:

deer
elk
fish
geese
mice
moose
oxen
sheep

and other well-known irregular plural forms; on the currency side:

baht
denarii
euro
lira
pence
pieces of eight
pounds sterling
rand
yen
yuan

&c.).

Your macro, plural currency, would be an interesting idea, but as you said, still not perfect.

Yes, English text requires four forms: singular/plural nominative/genitive. Perhaps your aes requires aeris in the genitive? If @@ANIMAL@@ and @@CURRENCY@@ are the existing macros, then perhaps

@@ANIMAL_NOM_SING@@
@@ANIMAL_NOM_PLUR@@
@@ANIMAL_GEN_SING@@
@@ANIMAL_GEN_PLUR@@
@@CURRENCY_NOM_SING@@
@@CURRENCY_NOM_PLUR@@
@@CURRENCY_GEN_SING@@
@@CURRENCY_GEN_PLUR@@

would suffice. If a multilanguage interface becomes a future enhancement, additional macros of analogous names could be added (@@..._ACC_...@@ for accusative, @@..._DAT_...@@ for dative, &c.).

Ludo

Where the crap is Salusa when you need him? He'd know what to make of this. I'm lost in the technical blather.

I've thought about this before, but I don't think it'd be a good idea to make the players enter more data.

that's why I'd implied making the extra fields optional:

If the plural nominative, singular genitive, or plural genitive forms are left empty, automatically generate "singular nominatives", "singular nominative's", or "singular nominatives'" respectively.


We'd still have a problem with most people not knowing what 'nominative' and 'genitive' mean... :roll:

We'd still have a problem with most people not knowing what 'nominative' and 'genitive' mean... :roll:

Wait... there's people who don't know what those terms mean? :shock:

Wait... there's people who don't know what those terms mean? :shock: :roll: there's people who don't know what "stfu" means. not a dig at you, tuesday, just an example

We would undoubtedly get hundreds of threads here asking what the heck those fields are talking about. I myself didn't learn those terms until I studied German a few years ago.

Hello all,

We'd still have a problem with most people not knowing what 'nominative' and 'genitive' mean... :roll:

Wait... there's people who don't know what those terms mean? :shock:

The grammatically challenged can be accommodated by providing sample sentences of each form, generated from the mandatory entries of (singular nominative) animal and currency:

The national animal of Terra Bovis is the ox.
Many oxs can be seen in our national parks.
The ox's greatest threat comes from poachers.
Several of the oxs' most passionate defenders are lawful hunters.
The national currency of Terra Bovis is the denarius.
Twelve denariuss is the cost of a modest meal.
The denarius's value against the euro has fallen recently.
Millions of denariuss' worth of ox souvenirs are bought each year by tourists from the EU.

Those who can't be bothered with spelling minutiae can just click the 'Next' button at the bottom of the list. Those who react as though they'd heard fingernails scratching a chalkboard on reading some of the sentences above can click on the appropriate "Improve this case's spelling" buttons next to each sentence, which would allow an appropriate form to be entered and the corrected sentence to be redisplayed. When all of the forms are to a person's liking, the 'Next' button would be selected.

Ludo

If the system of generating the plural form of the word based on certain rules were to be used, another good rule would be to put the pluralization at the end of the word before 'of' instead of at the end of the name (i.e. 'ounces of naquadah' instead of 'ounce of naquadahs').

Wouldn't the plural of Denarius become Denari and not Denariuss?

Wouldn't the plural of Denarius become Denari and not Denariuss?

The nominative plural of Denarius should be Denarii, or at least Denariuses, fer cryin' out loud. The raison d'être of this topic is that at present, issue texts would use Denariuss, which I consider rather jarring.

My eight sample sentences above included Twelve denariuss... because automatic generation of an appended 's' for nominative plurals should require minimal coding effort, and will frequently suffice. The various ideas above on refining the automatic generation of nominative plurals could be further enhanced with Latin language rules such as 'ius -> ii' for first declension Latin nouns, depending upon how much effort the coders are willing to invest into a rather obscure corner of the simulation.

Ludo

Where the crap is Salusa when you need him? He'd know what to make of this. I'm lost in the technical blather.

First, this is not technical blather, it is linguistic blather.

Wait... there's people who don't know what those terms mean?

Second, I'd say the majority of English speakers don't know these terms.

Finally, there are some really interesting ideas here, and so I will add this to my Interesting Ideas list. Basically, that means that when I'm bored and feel like adding something new, this will be considered.