Latin and macrons ?

A forum to talk about our successful Latin Spell Checker COL. Un forum pour échanger autour du correcteur COL (correcteur orthographique de langue latine).
Avatar de l’utilisateur
drouizig
Site Admin
Messages : 484
Inscription : mar. nov. 16, 2004 11:45 am
Localisation : Gwened/Sant-Brieg/Pouldreuzig
Contact :

Latin and macrons ?

Message par drouizig »

Dear Drouizig,

I've been using COL2.0 for quite a while now, and I absolutely love this Latin spell checker. It works pretty well with my Office 2007. However there is one feature I would like to see in the future version - that is the support of macrons. I'm taking a Latin course right now and the use of macrons on long vowels is compolsory. But when I put macrons above vowels a, e, i, o, u, and y, the spell checker doesn't recognise the word anymore.
I hope you would consider this suggestion of supporting macrons. Or maybe there is a way to make the spell checker recognise, for example, â as a?
You can reply to this email when needed.

Regards
T. Tran
Avatar de l’utilisateur
drouizig
Site Admin
Messages : 484
Inscription : mar. nov. 16, 2004 11:45 am
Localisation : Gwened/Sant-Brieg/Pouldreuzig
Contact :

Message par drouizig »

Hello An Drouizig,

The rule for adding macrons is really simple: add it to long vowels of Latin (vowels include a, e, i, o, u, y). The purpose of this is to distinguish between long and short vowels. There is not really a way to know which vowels is long in a word. It's like when learning French or German, you have to learn the nouns along with their genders. It's the same in Latin. When learning a Latin word, you have to learn which vowel is long in that word. Any good Latin dictionary will indicate long vowels with a puntuation mark.

I said "punctuation mark" because in some publications, they use a macron (e.g ā), or a circumflex (e.g. â) to indicate a long vowel. And they use a breve (e.g. ǎ), or nothing (e.g. a) to indicate a short vowel.
I use a macron for long vowels and nothing for short vowels.

If this sounds too complicated, what you could simply do is to make the Latin spell-checker to recognise ā as a, ē as e, ě as e, etc. This is not ideal, but it would still be much better than the current version of COL2.0. At least now, we are able to know if we have spelt the word right (though not if we have put the macron in the right vowel).


Hope you find this helpful.
Regards,
T. Tran

PS: Wow, I never thought I was going to get the reply almost instantly. Often, when I send out support emails for other programs, I have to wait for days for a reply.
Avatar de l’utilisateur
drouizig
Site Admin
Messages : 484
Inscription : mar. nov. 16, 2004 11:45 am
Localisation : Gwened/Sant-Brieg/Pouldreuzig
Contact :

Message par drouizig »

COL 2.0.1 has the ability to filter macron, circumflex and brieve accents.
see. http://latin.drouizig.org
Avatar de l’utilisateur
drouizig
Site Admin
Messages : 484
Inscription : mar. nov. 16, 2004 11:45 am
Localisation : Gwened/Sant-Brieg/Pouldreuzig
Contact :

Message par drouizig »

Thanks for the update, Philippe.
T. Tran

An Drouizig <drouizig@drouizig.org> wrote:

Hi Thang and Marjorie,

you can give a try now to COL2.0.1. There is a new option in the config box to:

1 - do not allow any accent on top of vowels
2 - ignore macron accents on top of vowels
3 - ignore macron and brieve accents on top of vowels
4 - ignore circumflex accents on top of vowels
Répondre