Variant Conversion Info (VarCon) Version 2019.10.06 Copyright 2000-2016 by Kevin Atkinson (kevina@gnu.org) and Benjamin Titze (btitze@protonmail.ch). This package contains information to convert between American, British, Canadian, and Australian spellings and vocabulary as well as other variant information. The latest version can be found at http://wordlist.aspell.net/. The main data file is varcon.txt. It contains information on the preferred American, British, and Canadian spelling of a word as well as other variant information. Each line contains a mapping between the various spellings of a word. Words are tagged to indicate where the spelling is used, and each word/tag pair is separated with a " / ". For example in the line: A Cv: acknowledgment / Av B C: acknowledgement "acknowledgment" and "acknowledgement" are two spellings of the same word and "A", "Cv", "B", etc are the tags. Tags are separated by spaces and the group of tags is separated from the word with a ": ". Here, "acknowledgment" is the preferred American spelling (as indicated by the "A") of the word, and "acknowledgement" is the preferred Canadian and British spelling ("B" and "C"). However the American spelling is sometimes used in Canada (as indicated by "Cv", where the lowercase "v" indicated a variant form) and the British spelling is sometimes used in America (as indicated the "Av"). More generally each tag consists of a spelling category (for example "A") followed possible by a variant indicator. The spelling categories are as follows: A: American B: British "ise" spelling Z: British "ize" spelling or OED preferred Spelling C: Canadian D: Australian _: Other (Variant info based on American dictionaries, never used with any of the above). and the variants tags are as follows: .: equal v: variant V: seldom used variant -: possible variant, should generally not used x: improper variant (should not use) The "." or equal variant tags are reserved for special cases when there is little agreement between dictionaries or when I think the dictionary is wrong. The "v" indicator is used for most words marked as variants in the dictionary. However, some variants will be demoted to a "V". For example, if the variant is marked as "also" by Merriam-Webster, or also if only some dictionaries acknowledge the existence the variant. "-" is used when the variant is generally not listed is the dictionary but I could find some evidence of its use, or when it is marked as an archaic spelling for the word. The "x" is used when the spelling is almost generally considered a misspelling, and is only included for completeness. For Australian English "v" was used for variants that are widely used, but not preferred, and "V" for all "-or" (vs. "-our") variants and variants considered "chiefly US". If there are no tags with the 'Z' spelling category on the line then 'B' implies 'Z'. Similarly if there are no 'C' tags then 'Z' implies 'C'. If there are no 'D' tags then 'B' implies 'D'. For ease of reading and maintaining the data file, each line is grouped in a cluster of closely related words. Each cluster is uniquely identified by a headword, which is generally the American spelling of word on the first line of the cluster. Each cluster is started with a '#' and is followed by the headword with some additional information after it. For example the cluster for acknowledgment is: # acknowledgment (level 35) A Cv: acknowledgment / Av B C: acknowledgement A Cv: acknowledgments / Av B C: acknowledgements A Cv: acknowledgment's / Av B C: acknowledgement's The "" tag will be explained latter, and "(level 35)" indicate what level in SCOWL (see http://wordlist.sourceforge.net) the headword is found in. The levels generally mean the following: <= 35: Very common word <= 70: Can be found in the dictionary 80: Likely a valid word, can likely be found in an unabridged dictionary > 80: May not even be a legal word Sometimes the spelling of a word depends on the usage. If so the word is listed more than once within a cluster, with any usage information being indicated after a " | ". For example here is part of the cluster for prize: A B: prize | reward A B: prizes | reward A C: prize / B: prise | otherwise A C: prizes / B: prises | otherwise which indicated than the preferred spelling of prize is always with a "z" when meaning a reward, but otherwise is spelled with a "s" is British English. In the example above a brief definition of the word is given, but often no such attempt is made, and the definition simply consists of a number, for example: A B: sake | :1 A C: sake / Av B Cv: saki | :2 Sometimes part-of-speech (POS) info is given to help distinguish which form is used. For example: A B C: practice / AV Cv: practise | A Cv: practice / AV B C: practise | POS info is always given in the form "" and if a definition is also given the POS info is always first. The POS tags used are as follows: : Noun : Verb : Adjective : Adverb A "(-)" before the definition indicated a rarely used or archaic form of a word, for example: A B: bark | :1 A: bark / Av B: barque | (-) ship A "--" indicates a note rather than definition. This is generally used to indicate that the spelling of the plural form not depend on the spelling of the root word, for example: _: cabby / _.: cabbie _: cabbies | -- plural Misc. notes on a particular form of a word are given after a "#" on the same line. Misc. notes for the cluster are given at the end of the cluster and are prefixed with "##", for example: # coloration (level 50) A B C: coloration / B. Cv: colouration A B C: colorations / B. Cv: colourations A B C: coloration's / B. Cv: colouration's ## OED has coloration as the preferred spelling and discolouration as a ## variant for British Engl or some reason In the notes ODE (not to be confused with OED) stands for Oxford Dictionary of English, "Ox" is used for any Oxford dictionary, and "M-W" for Merriam-Webster. Earlier versions of varcon contained numerous errors. With version 5.0 massive effort has been made to correct many of these errors. Clusters that have undergone some form of verification (and likely correction) are marked with "". As of version 5.0, most clusters with headwords word in common usage (SCOWL level 35 and below) should now be checked, as well as many others. No effort was made to check clusters with headwords in SCOWL level 80 and above; many of those entries are unlikely to be in the dictionary anyway. The file variant-also.tab contains additional mappings between various spellings of a word which are not yet in varcon.txt. No attempt is made to distinguish the primary form of a word. The file variant-infl.tab is like variant-also.tab except that it is created automatically from the AGID inflection database. The file variant-wroot.tab is like variant-infl.tab except that it also included the root form of the word. The file voc.tab is similar to varcon.txt but converts between vocabulary instead of spelling. Unlike varcon.tab it is a simple tab separated file with the fields corresponding to the American, British, and Canadian words. If more than one word if often used to describe the same thing the words are separated with commas. The last column contains additional notes on when the word is used. Unlike varcon.txt it is generally not suitable for automatic conversion. The "make-variant" Perl script will combine varcon.txt, variant-also.tab, and variant-infl.tab into one huge mapping and will output the result to "variant.tab". If the "no-infl" option is given than variant-infl.tab will not be included. The "split" script will split out the information in varcon.txt into several word lists named as follows: [-v][-uncommon].lst where is one of: american, british, british_z, canadian, common, or other. "common" is used for words which appear in varcon.txt, yet are used in all versions of english, such as "prize", and "other" is used for the "_" spelling category. The mapping from the variant indicators in varcon.txt to the numeric variant level is as follows: v => 0 V => 1 - => 2 "-uncommon" is used for forms marked with "(-)" as already described. The "translate" Perl script will translate a text file from one spelling to another. Its usage is: translate [] is any of -?,-h,--help this screen -m,--mark mark words where the translation is questionable -i,--include include words where the translation is questionable is the file name of the translation array, defaults to "abbc.tab". and are one of: american, british, british_z, or canadian. british-ise and british-ize can also be used. Text is read in from standard input and is outputted to standard out. Words are marked with a '?' before and after the questionable word when the option is enabled. The file varcon.pm contains some library routines for parsing varcon.txt and is used by many of the scripts above. If you discover any errors in these mappings or have suggestions for additions please file a bug report at https://github.com/kevina/wordlist/issues, or alternatively email me directly at kevina@gnu.org, but I will likely tell you to file a bug report so that I don't forget about it. SOURCE: These mappings were compiled from numerous sources. The abc.tab was originally created from the American and British word lists found in the Ispell distribution and the Canadian word list created by Garst R. Reese : What I have discovered is that Canadian is a modification of British. Canadians use ize ization, izing izable like Americans, and gram instead of gramme. The one exception I found was practise. It does not go to practize. Otherwise they use British spelling. So, what I am currently checking books with is a an edited version of British, where I have changed all occurrences of ise to ize, isab to izab, isation to ization, ising to izing, and gramme to gram except I allow programme, which is sometimes proper unless you are talking about a computer program. I did bunches of greps to be sure these substitutions would work as expected. Many other words have been added to abc.tab which were not in the original Ispell word lists. Many different web sources were consulted when crating the tables. They include: The American-British British-American Dictionary http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dictionary.html American and British Spelling Differences http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/spellcat.html Dave (VE7CNV)'s Truly Canadian Dictionary of Canadian Spelling http://www.luther.bc.ca/~dave7cnv/cdnspelling/cdnspelling.html Canadian Spelling Convention http://imej.wfu.edu/articles/1999/1/02/demo/tutorial/canas.html Cornerstone's Canadian English Page http://www.web.net/cornerstone/cdneng.htm Inter-Play Translation: British/Canadian/American Spelling http://www.inter-play.com/translation/spel-ukus.htm Inter-Play Translation: British/Canadian/American Vocabulary http://www.inter-play.com/translation/voc-ukus.htm As well as several online dictionaries: Marriam-Webster: http://www.m-w.com/ American Heritage: http://www.bartleby.com/61/ Cambridge (ESL): http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ In version 5.0 a massive effort to correct the numerous errors in VarCon was done. The primary sources used for verification were: Marriam-Webster: http://www.m-w.com/ Free version of Oxford Dictionaries Online: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ Oxford dictionaries available via Oxford Reference Online (subscription service, http://www.oxfordreference.com/): The New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd edition, 2006) and sometimes: The Oxford American Dictionary of Current English (2002) The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (11th edition revised, 2008) and sometimes: The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised, 2005) The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2004) I also used Tysto UK vs US spelling list available at: http://www.tysto.com/articles05/q1/20050324uk-us.shtml to make sure I didn't leave out any information in VarCon, however any additions from his lists where verified using the dictionaries mentioned above as his lists contained numerous errors (such as including archaic spellings of words) I also made indirect use of Luke's Canadian, British and American Spelling page available at: http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/spelling/cgi-bin/database.cgi?database=spelling but only to perform some initial verification, in the end I rechecked his data using the dictionaries above. (However, his data is, by far, more accurate than Tysto's) In Version 2016.11.20 Benjamin Titze added support for Australian English. The primary sources for this addition were: The Macquarie Dictionary: https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/ Style Manual: For Authors, Editors and Printers, 6th Edition. DCITA. University of Technology Sydney Publications Style Guide: http://www.gsu.uts.edu.au/publications/styleguide/spelling.html Style Manual, Department of Treasury and Finance, Tasmania: http://conference.tasa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Style-Manual.pdf Editor Australia - Style Guide: http://www.editoraustralia.com/styleguide_spelling.html Webster in Australia (history of "our"/"or" spelling variants): http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2008/01/webster_in_australia.html CHANGELOG: From 2017.08.24 to 2018.10.06 - Added entries for: eukaryote, prokaryote, virtualization, volcanism From 2016.11.20 to 2017.08.24 - Typo fixes thanks to Jakub Wilk From 2016.06.26 to 2016.11.20 - New Australian spelling category thanks to the work of Benjamin Titze. - Various other fixes. From 2016.01.19 to 2016.06.26 - Fix plural of "bus". From 2015.08.24 to 2016.01.19 - Undo the effects of PERL_UNICODE in the translate script. - Other minor fixes and new entries. From 2014.02.15 to 2015.08.24 (Aug 24, 2015) - Added entry for Koran/Koranic. - Tweaked "adviser" cluster. - Fix formatting problems. From 2015.01.28 to 2014.02.15 (February 15, 2015) - Various new entries From 2014.11.17 to 2015.01.28 (January 28, 2015) - Minor adjustments to a few entries (analytic, amid) - Added entry for shareable - Remove a junk entry (ted/taed). From 2014.08.11 to 2014.11.17 (November 17, 2014) - Fix typos in README - Enhancement to VarCon translate script. It will now, by default, filter clusters with a SCOWL level > 80. This behavior can be controlled with the new "--thresh" option. - Remove a few junk entries. From Revision 5.1 to Version 2014.08.11 (August 8, 2014) - Various corrections. Most of them minor. Two notable exceptions: - Added an entry for furor as the correct British spelling is furore - Fixed racket entries as Canadians still use racquet even though it is a British English (at least according to the Oxford dictionaries) - Other minor changes. From Revision 5.0 to Revision 5.1 (January 6, 2010) - Corrected numerous errors after running various forms of verification on varcon.txt. - Reordered the clusters in varcon.txt so that they are mostly in alphabetic order based on the headword. From Revision 4.1 to Revision 5.0 (December 27, 2010) - Completely new format for the main table which, in addition to providing the preferred spelling of a word for various forms of English, also records variant and other information. To reflect this change, the name of the file was renamed from abbc.tab to varcon.txt. - Massive effort to verify the variant information against authoritative sources (mainly Oxford dictionaries). Most entries for common words (SCOWL level 35 and below) have been checked against at least a British and Canadian dictionary. - Added variant information for numerous other words, even when there is no difference between the various forms on English. - Other changes corresponding to the new format. From Revision 4 to Revision 4.1 (August 10, 2004) - Fixed various errors in abbc.tab - Removed clause 4 from the Ispell copyright with permission of Geoff Kuenning. From Revision 3 to Revision 4 (August 7, 2004) - Added a column to "abc.tab" for the British "ize" spelling and renamed the file to abbc.tab. - Added verb forms of prize/prise to abbc.tab, removed from variant-also.tab From Revision 2 to Revision 3 (January 2, 2003) - Added an option for not including variant-infl.tab for the make-variant perl script - Added the file variant-wroot.tab - Added a few entries given to me by Francis Bond and Edward Betts From Revision 1 to Revision 2 (January 27, 2001) - Removed all "B" markers because I could not find any evidence for them - Corrected a few Canadian entries, especially those with the "B" markers - Added some more entries by trying fixed changes (such as ize to ise) to words in SCOWL and hand-checking over the ones with semi-common words in them. - Added variant-infl.tab COPYRIGHT: Copyright 2000-2018 by Kevin Atkinson Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this array, the associated software, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no representations about the suitability of this array for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. Copyright 2016 by Benjamin Titze Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this array, the associated software, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. Benjamin Titze makes no representations about the suitability of this array for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. Since the original words lists come from the Ispell distribution: Copyright 1993, Geoff Kuenning, Granada Hills, CA All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. All modifications to the source code must be clearly marked as such. Binary redistributions based on modified source code must be clearly marked as modified versions in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. (clause 4 removed with permission from Geoff Kuenning) 5. The name of Geoff Kuenning may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY GEOFF KUENNING AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL GEOFF KUENNING OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.