[HN Gopher] Shabdle: Wordle in Hindi
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       Shabdle: Wordle in Hindi
        
       Author : ketanmaheshwari
       Score  : 82 points
       Date   : 2022-03-21 12:23 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (kach.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (kach.github.io)
        
       | teluguwordle wrote:
       | There is a telugu version here at https://teluguwordle.com/
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | perryizgr8 wrote:
       | The problem is that it is nigh impossible to guess a word that is
       | both valid and incorrect, at least on today's puzzle. It consists
       | of three letters. The first two have a o matra and the last has
       | half ka and an e matra. I literally can't think of any word that
       | satisfies these conditions, except the correct answer.
       | 
       | The game won't highlight anything if your guess is not a valid
       | word. So it was impossible for me to get any hint at all. I kept
       | trying random letters and made over a hundred guesses but not a
       | single yellow or green.
       | 
       | I think the author should fix this. If a selected letter occurs
       | in any part of the answer, it should be highlighted even if the
       | guess is not a valid word. That's the only reasonable way to make
       | this work with Hindi.
        
       | HexDecOctBin wrote:
       | One tip: don't use words with a sandhi [1] (like today's word).
       | It makes guessing it many more times harder, since you are
       | actually guessing two (or more) words in addition to the joining
       | letters.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhi
        
         | mwasiav wrote:
         | One of the Bengali versions let go of all the consonant
         | clusters, phala, reph, chandrabindu. You can only build words
         | with letters and karas.
         | 
         | https://araf47.itch.io/shobdogoal
        
         | plibither8 wrote:
         | I agree with this suggestion! However, I wonder if it's only
         | because we don't read and write Hindi on a daily basis (as
         | compared to English).
         | 
         | Also, I'd just like to say that this take of Hindi Wordle is
         | the best so far - fill in the vyNjn (consonants) with the svr
         | (vowels) supplied as hints.
        
           | captn3m0 wrote:
           | Even then, today's word is pretty impossible to guess. The
           | Wordle formula is too restrictive for a language like Hindi.
           | 
           | Written word-games aren't a thing in Hindi (like Hangman for
           | eg) but we do have a lot of stuff rhyme based games. Probably
           | other ways to tackle this better.
        
             | plibither8 wrote:
             | > _Written word-games aren't a thing in Hindi but we do
             | have a lot of stuff rhyme based games_
             | 
             | Interesting observation, and I can't help but wonder if
             | this is loosely correlated to literacy. Since most of these
             | games were developed to pass time by the masses, it only
             | makes sense that they be verbal rather than written.
        
       | peterhil wrote:
       | I just get black background on the letters in Firefox - I tried
       | all the letters. Does this work in Firefox?
        
         | notRobot wrote:
         | If I understand correctly, if what you enter is not a valid
         | word in the dictionary, then it shows all black.
         | 
         | Like in wordle, all your guesses need to be valid dictionary
         | words.
        
       | submagr wrote:
       | Hey good idea!! Promote it on facebook where a lot of old folks
       | are. Or even on whatsapp groups!
        
       | abdullahkhalids wrote:
       | Here is the Urdu version https://urdle.chaoticity.com/
       | 
       | I would like someone to do an analysis of quantifying difficulty
       | in terms of alphabet size, word size, and vocabulary size.
       | Because I don't know what the actual difficulty here is vs the
       | English or the Hindi version.
       | 
       | That would be first order analysis. Second order analysis would
       | consider the structure of words in different languages, such as
       | how often pairs of letters occur together etc.
        
       | navait wrote:
       | As someone learning hindi, I'm looking forward to trying this.
       | 
       | Shaabash!
        
       | rk06 wrote:
       | Nice idea. Few suggestions:
       | 
       | 1. Do not count words absent in word list, like original wordle.
       | 
       | 2. Put a limit to guesses.
        
       | nsenifty wrote:
       | Kannada version - https://wordalla.online/
        
         | dxbydt wrote:
         | Heh heh! Too clever by half.
         | 
         | In Kannada, wordalla can be parsed in 2 ways -
         | 
         | wordalla => "word alla" == "not the word"
         | 
         | wordalla => "wordle uh?" == "Isn't this Wordle ?"
        
           | aareet wrote:
           | haha I read it as "word ella.online" == "all the words are
           | online"
        
       | ketanmaheshwari wrote:
       | Just wanted to note that this is not my creation. I found this
       | randomly linked on Twitter. I tried some but could not find the
       | original creator.
        
         | hdesh wrote:
         | Based on the source code I think this person is the creator -
         | https://cs.stanford.edu/~kach/
        
       | jvalencia wrote:
       | As a non-speaker this would be pretty fun as just a pattern
       | matching game. The only problem is not knowing the words. If non
       | valid next matches grayed out as I went, I would know what
       | constituted a word, without knowing the language.
        
       | lsrinivas wrote:
       | The interface is somewhat non-transparent. I was looking for an
       | 'Enter' and a 'Backspace' key. there's only one. Some clues on
       | how to play might be helpful
        
       | tnsittpsif wrote:
       | Speak Hindi all day, but cannot guess a single letter in a 100
       | tries!
       | 
       | Shows how much this language's usage in writing and reading has
       | declined.
        
         | Grumpy34 wrote:
         | I'm also a native Hindi speaker and I've never in my life used
         | the word which is the correct answer. The game creator should
         | have chosen more popular words.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | umeshunni wrote:
         | Do most Hindi speakers now use the Latin script?
        
           | throwaway158497 wrote:
           | Not really. news channels, print media, billboards, internet
           | websites use devanagari script. But in Messenger apps, FB,
           | Telegram, people use latin script.
        
           | captn3m0 wrote:
           | Depends a lot on the medium and the demographic. Twitter has
           | a lot of native Hindi users, and there's more on some
           | platforms such as Sharechat which focus on Indic languages.
           | 
           | Twitter even does a good enough job of translating Hindi
           | written in the Devnagri script. Doesn't work if you use Latin
           | script obviously.
        
           | txtsd wrote:
           | Yes, and it's awful because it isn't standardized. Current
           | generations frequently use only consonants to type out a word
           | and I have no idea how to pronounce them. For example "hai"
           | (pronounced "hey") roughly translates to "is". I literally
           | see kids typing a singular "h" instead.
        
             | plibither8 wrote:
             | Welp, don't get me started on the "hai"->"h" contractions!
             | The one that irks me the most is acchaa (good, pronounced
             | "uh-ch-aah" with a hard and emphasized "ch") is written as
             | "axa" in chats (more popularly written as "achha").
        
             | bakul wrote:
             | For most Indian languages you can use IAST & can use an
             | IAST keyboard, as it transliterates sanskrit based letters
             | precisely. Though I don't know why people don't just use
             | the original scripts as they are much more beautiful and
             | you can find (virtual) keyboards for them even for ios &
             | android.
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Alphabet_of_San
             | s...
        
         | cuteboy19 wrote:
         | devanagari is not meant for such puzzles
        
           | plibither8 wrote:
           | In what way is it not _meant_ for puzzles, as opposed to
           | English?
        
             | cuteboy19 wrote:
             | The Latin Alphabet treats vovels and consonants equally,
             | whereas alphasyllabaries treat vovels differently. It's
             | much easier to construct letter games if all the letters
             | are more or less the same. Add to that the complexity that
             | ligatures bring. Plus the number 9f letters should be small
             | so that games like scrabble are more reasonable
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | yashg wrote:
       | Where do I find the answer?
        
         | captn3m0 wrote:
         | Source Code has it. (Also spoilers for the next few days).
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | 1024core wrote:
       | Hindi alphabet, interestingly, is arranged in the order of the
       | part of the mouth that makes the sound. For example, sounds
       | generated at the back of the mouth (like "k", "g", etc.) are
       | listed first, and then you move forward to sounds like "t", "d",
       | and finally sounds involving the lips, like "p", "f", etc.
       | 
       | I found this arrangement fascinating. Unlike the jumble of
       | letters that is the Latin alphabet.
        
         | lgessler wrote:
         | This is referred to as the varnamala:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari#Letters
         | 
         | Here's a good explanation from Richard Salomon (2003), "Writing
         | Systems of the Indo-Aryan Languages". Note the startling
         | suggestion that this arrangement might have been systematized
         | even before the advent of writing!
         | 
         | > In this system, usually referred to as varnamala 'garland of
         | letters', the characters are divided into vowels (svara) and
         | consonants (vyanjana), and each major set is further divided
         | into subgroups, again on phonetic principles. Thus the vowels
         | are subdivided into simple vowels and diphthongs, each set up
         | as short/long pairs (a-a-i-i-u-u, etc.), while the consonants
         | are classified into the groups vargiya (comprising stops,
         | sparsa, including nasals, anunasika), antahstha (semivowels),
         | and usman (spirants, including ha). Within each consonant
         | subclass, the individual letters are arranged by place and
         | manner of articulation. Thus the largest set, the twenty-five
         | vargiyas, is divided into five sets (varga) of consonants with
         | the same place of articulation, arranged from the back to the
         | front of the mouth: kanthya 'velar', talavya 'palatal',
         | murdhanya 'retroflex' or 'cerebral', dantya 'dental' and osthya
         | 'labial'. Each varga contains five types of consonants:
         | unvoiced unaspirated, unvoiced aspirated, voiced unaspirated,
         | voiced aspirated and nasal. This system may have originally
         | been developed in a tradition of linguistic analysis before the
         | use of writing, and only subsequently been applied to the
         | written form of language in Brahmi script. The earliest written
         | specimens of the are found in terracotta plaques of about the
         | second century BC showing a schoolboy's writing lessons
         | (Salomon 1990:271).
        
           | contingencies wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script#Consonants_2
           | shows the groupings of the earlier stage of the script.
           | 
           | The Korean script, invented much later, is also impressively
           | phonetic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul#Consonants
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | aildours wrote:
         | This is not specific to Hindi though, almost all Indian
         | languages (except for maybe Urdu), use this arrangement known
         | as the Varnamala. This collation order has to do with these
         | languages using scripts descended from the Brahmi script.
        
         | hunter-2 wrote:
         | Wow, I have never realized this aspect about Hindi in all these
         | years. Thank you
        
         | devnull3 wrote:
         | > back of the mouth (like "k", "g", etc.)
         | 
         | Note the "g" here is like that in "gum" and not "gin"
        
       | damenci wrote:
       | Pretty rad!
        
       | throwaway091256 wrote:
       | Here's the statistics if you get it right ( I got it in two):
       | 
       | 1 guesses: 503 players
       | 
       | 2 guesses: 61 players
       | 
       | 3 guesses: 17 players
       | 
       | 4 guesses: 6 players
       | 
       | 5 guesses: 7 players
       | 
       | 6+ guesses: 29 players
       | 
       | Most people got it in one!
        
       | HJain13 wrote:
       | I was thinking about making something like this but was stuck in
       | a mental block that the number of combinations possible would be
       | huge due to concept of _matra_, but pre-populating them was a
       | really nice idea. Kudos to the author!
        
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       (page generated 2022-03-21 23:01 UTC)