[CULTURE] A Talossan Language Contest / Ünă Cumpetaziun da Mocts

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Thank you!

What corrections?

[Zilect Uómbat Firă]

Zilect Firă's submission was disqualified for not being in Talossan.

I guess I shouldn't have relied upon ChatGPT to translate.

here's the poem in English:

The Kingdom of Dreams

There was a man from Milwaukee,
     who, out of boredom,
in his bedroom,
     created a micronation.
Forty-five years have passed
     and King Ben's dream lives on.
The years have seen changes,
     in the style and form of this nation.
With citizens across the globe,
     one man's dream has spread.
Talossa became bigger
     than one man could dream.
And may we all always remember:
     Miehen Huone on Hänen Valtakuntansa.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Zilect Firă's submission was disqualified for not being in Talossan.

I guess I shouldn't have relied upon ChatGPT to translate.

No, you really shouldn't. The goal of the contest was to encourage people to learn and use Talossan, and only about 25% of the words in the ChatGPT output were actually Talossan!

I'm sure there are some use cases for AI writing, but not at a level where people aren't even in a position to do a basic sanity-check on the AI output.

[Zilect Uómbat Firă]

I could have done a "sanity check" if I could have found a functional online Talossan dictionary.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

I could have done a "sanity check" if I could have found a functional online Talossan dictionary.

L'Översteir is just that. If you have any criticisms as to its functionality, feel free to let me or the current Secretary of State know.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Yeah, for example, you could have done this very simple search to indicate that ChatGPT was lying to you that the Talossan word for "man" is om (I think that's the word in some Northern Italian dialects)

But in any case the use of AI goes against the purpose of a contest that was supposed to be about people stretching their language skills

[Barclamïu da Miéletz]

I could have done a "sanity check" if I could have found a functional online Talossan dictionary.

L'Översteir is just that. If you have any criticisms as to its functionality, feel free to let me or the current Secretary of State know.

Has come in handy for me sometimes.

[Tric’hard Lenxheir]

I was going to try it, I have a cute little christmas poem somewhere, my biggest problem wasn't going to be figuring out the words it was the grammar that was going to be the issue for me.

[Zilect Uómbat Firă]

Trying to find simple verbs like "been" or "was" returns "Your query didn't yield any results." or "no exact match" with a bunch of words that simply have those letters.

It would be super helpful if there was a searchable document that had the list of Talossan words with their English counterparts.

[King Txec]

I have a copy of Count Thord's excellent (though outdated) Guizua which does give more information. I wish it was digital though as I can't search the Guizua if it is not in my hand.

[King Txec]

In fact, I was chatting with the Count today and I made the joke that, like in England where they speak "The King's English," in Talossa, we speak "El Regeu se Glheþ" so if I say it, it's a word haha. (I channeled one of my favorite movies, King Ralph, to come to that thought!)

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

Trying to find simple verbs like "been" or "was" returns "Your query didn't yield any results." or "no exact match" with a bunch of words that simply have those letters.

It would be super helpful if there was a searchable document that had the list of Talossan words with their English counterparts.

Like any other dictionary, you have to look up base forms. The base form of "been" and "was" is simply "be", and looking that up will give you the word estar as the main result. From there you can click on the word itself to find out how it is pronounced, or click the book icon on the right to get all the other grammatical forms.

A document as you describe it would be impossible because English words and Talossan words don't match 1-to-1. No two languages match that way.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

This is a common problem with language learning among people who are monolingual, they assume precisely that - that other languages are "codes", the same rules as their own language but with the vocabulary swapped out. I remember being 10, trying to translate "I don't know" into German and looking up the word for "do".

This is why we need real, *real*, like baby-level Talossan 101 materials for people who don't even get that there are such things as verb conjugations.

[Barclamïu da Miéletz]

I remember being 10

I spoke two languages fluently at that age + decent English you could say (look I'm the child of migrants so obviously I will speak more than one language.)

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

I remember being 10

I spoke two languages fluently at that age + decent English you could say (look I'm the child of migrants so obviously I will speak more than one language.)

In my country, anyone* who learns a non-English language willingly is known to be a woke homosexual

(* this is slightly softened in the case of te reo Māori, in which case you're a dangerous political radical)

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

This is a common problem with language learning among people who are monolingual, they assume precisely that - that other languages are "codes", the same rules as their own language but with the vocabulary swapped out. I remember being 10, trying to translate "I don't know" into German and looking up the word for "do".

This is why we need real, *real*, like baby-level Talossan 101 materials for people who don't even get that there are such things as verb conjugations.

This is something that I remember asking for help with on Fora Talossa. It didn't get much uptake then. I am hoping to add more helpful and accurate editions to the ongoing Talossan 101 materials on FT and the call for help will hopefully be taken up there or by another group.

[Barclamïu da Miéletz]

I remember being 10

I spoke two languages fluently at that age + decent English you could say (look I'm the child of migrants so obviously I will speak more than one language.)

In my country, anyone* who learns a non-English language willingly is known to be a woke homosexual

(* this is slightly softened in the case of te reo Māori, in which case you're a dangerous political radical)

Interesting...

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I was motivated to write a short story for this competition by the money. It might be mercenary, but I have a lot of responsibilities and limited time. Doing something challenging that helps me learn is great, yet it's time away from other stuff I need to do. The chance of a small prize was a great motivator (which is maybe obvious, since it's the whole point of prizes).

I recently did a line-by-line translation of one stanza of a poem, and I think it might be beneficial to do such a thing for even simpler sentences and then make it accessible.  I think there's a grant program in the budget (or maybe there just used to be), so maybe I'll pitch that and see if it helps.  My Talossan isn't great, but it's better than nothing and probably it's infinitely easier to just make small fixes to someone else's lesson than to think through and write out the whole thing.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

@Miestră Schivă, UrN , is the prize for this contest the whole of the available cultural grant money?

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

This is a common problem with language learning among people who are monolingual, they assume precisely that - that other languages are "codes", the same rules as their own language but with the vocabulary swapped out. I remember being 10, trying to translate "I don't know" into German and looking up the word for "do".

This is why we need real, *real*, like baby-level Talossan 101 materials for people who don't even get that there are such things as verb conjugations.

This is something that I remember asking for help with on Fora Talossa. It didn't get much uptake then. I am hoping to add more helpful and accurate editions to the ongoing Talossan 101 materials on FT and the call for help will hopefully be taken up there or by another group.

*Crickets*