accented letters as separate letters of the alphabet
Alan Vogel
I am working with a South American language in Brazil that has letters with accents that we would like to treat as separate letters of the alphabet. In the national language, Portuguese, the accented letters are considered the same as the unaccented letters. So, for example, the order is, abrir/âncora/andar in a dictionary of Portuguese. This is fine for the Portuguese part of our dictionary, but in the vernacular part we would like, for example, to have a section for the letter a and a separate following section for words beginning with â. That is, we want a and â to be treated as separate letters of the alphabet. I am working in Flex right now, but my purpose is to eventually build an Android app with Dictionary App Builder.
There is a language closely related to the one I am working with, that has an app available at Google Play, and also has a Webonary version. But as I look at the app and at the Webonary version, they are not the way we would like our dictionary to be. In the app, there are actually separate sections listed for the accented letters. For example, a and â have different sections. But when you look at the words that are actually listed in each of the sections, there are words that start with a in the â section, and words that start with â in the a section. And in the Webonary version, there are not separate sections at all, so that the words that start with a or â are all listed under a single a section.
I tried to configure this in the language settings for the Flex project, but was not successful. Nor could I find anything about this in the help files. Also, it seems this topic has not come up before in discussions in this list.
I would like to get in touch with anyone who has done this with a language in Flex. And I would also like to see examples of languages which have their alphabets organized this way at the Webonary website, and/or have apps available at Play.
Thanks for any help you can give,
Alan
Kevin Warfel
Hi Alan,
I’ve helped a number of FLEx users configure their sort order to display data the way they’re wanting it. I think I can help you achieve what you’re wanting. I’ll contact you off-list.
For the record, in my experience, the best approach to use is to choose “Custom ICU Rules” as your sorting method in the Vernacular Writing System Properties dialog box:
Details about how to write ICU Rules can be found in this document by Ken Zook: http://downloads.sil.org/FieldWorks/Documentation/FieldWorks%20Sorting%20With%20ICU%20Rules.pdf
I’ve learned a lot from Ken but still have a lot to learn. Still, I’m happy to at least attempt to find a solution for your situation, Alan.
Kevin Warfel
Associate Dictionary & Lexicography Services Coordinator
Rapid Word Collection workshop consultant
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Brent Brollier
I thought an example might be helpful for you. I do a similar thing for the language that I'm working on, that is, è and e are different letters, as are o and ô. Here are how those two custom sorting rules look in my Flex project:
& O < ô <<< Ô
& È < e <<< E
The relevant section on Ken's pdf is 2.3.
Brent Brollier
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