-Variant Conversion Info (VARCON)
+Variant Conversion Info (VarCon)
-Revision 4.1
+Revision 5.1 (SVN Revision 161)
-August 10, 2004
+January 6, 2011
-Copyright 2000-2004 by Kevin Atkinson (kevina@gnu.org)
+Copyright 2000-2011 by Kevin Atkinson (kevina@gnu.org)
-This package contains tables to convert between American, British, and
-Canadian spellings and vocabulary as well as well as a table listing the
-equivalent forms of other variants.
+This package contains information to convert between American,
+British, and Canadian spellings and vocabulary as well and other
+variant information.
The latest version can be found at http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/.
-The abbc.tab contains mappings between American, British with "ise"
-spelling, British with "ize" spelling, and Canadian spellings. The
-fields are separated by a tab character and have the Unix EOL
-character. The first four columns are the spellings respectively.
-The last column is used to mark words where the American or British
-spelling is also used in the British or American spelling but only
-when the word has a certain meaning. American words that are also
-used in British / Canadian spellings are marked with a "A" while
-British words that are also used in American / Canadian spellings are
-marked with a "B".
-
-The file voc.tab is like abbc.tab except that it converts between
-vocabulary instead of spelling. If more than one word if often uses to
-describe the same thing the words are separated with commas. The last
-column contains additional notes on when the word is used. Unlike
-abbc.tab it is generally not suitable for automatic conversion.
+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 tageed 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 seperated by
+spaces and the group of tags is seperated 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 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 prefered Spelling
+ C: Canadian
+ _: 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 it use, or
+when it is it marked as as a archaic spelling for the word. The "x"
+is used when the spelling is almost generally considered a
+misspelling, and is only included for completeness.
+
+If there are no tags with the 'Z' spelling category on the line than
+'B' implies 'Z'. Similarly if there are no 'C' tags than 'Z' implies
+'C'.
+
+For ease of reading and maintaining the data file, each line is
+grouped in a cluster of closely related words. Each cluster is
+uniquely identifed 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 <verified> (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 "<verified>" tag will be explained latter, and "(level 35)"
+indictated what level in SCOWL (see http://wordlist.sourceforge.net)
+the headword is found in. The levels generaly 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 cluser
+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-speach (POS) info is given to help distinguish which
+form is used. For example:
+ A B C: practice / AV Cv: practise | <N>
+ A Cv: practice / AV B C: practise | <V>
+POS info is always given given in the form "<POS>" and if a definition
+is also given the the POS info is always first. The POS tags used are as
+follows:
+ <N>: Noun
+ <V>: Verb
+ <Adj>: Adjective
+ <Adv>: Adverb
+
+A "(-)" before the definition indicated a rarly 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 <verified> (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 prefered 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 "<verified>". 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 necessarily region dependent. Only
-mappings that are not listed in abbc.tab are included in this mapping.
-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
+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.
-Both the translation array and variant table includes a lot of strange
-affixations of words which I have no intention of removing as some
-people might find them useful.
-
-The "make-variant" Perl script will combine abbc.tab, 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 create 5 words lists from abbc.tab:
-american.lst, british.lst, british_z.lst, canadian.lst, and
-common.lst. The common.lst file contains words that were marked in
-the last column as explained above and the other four contain all the
-possible words that might be used by that particular country, included
-some of the words marked in the last column.
+The file voc.tab is similar to varcon.txt but converts between
+vocabulary instead of spelling. Unlike varcon.tab it is a simple tab
+seperated file with the fields correspoding 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:
+ <spelling>[-v<variant level>][-uncommon].lst
+where <spelling> 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 numberic 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:
Words are marked with a '?' before and after the questionable word
when the option is enabled.
-If you discover any errors in these mappings, besides the strange
-affixations, or have suggestions for additions be sure and let me know
-at kevina@gnu.org.
+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, which you can find instructions
+for at http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/, or alternativly 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:
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 where:
+
+ 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)
+
CHANGELOG:
+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 ib abbc.tab
+ - Fixed various errors in abbc.tab
- Removed clause 4 from the Ispell copyright with permission of Geoff
Kuenning.
COPYRIGHT:
-Copyright 2000-2004 by Kevin Atkinson
+Copyright 2000-2010 by Kevin Atkinson
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this array, the
associated software, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby
projects / deb_pkgs / scowl.git / blobdiff