1 Variant Conversion Info (VarCon)
2 ********************************
6 Copyright 2000-2020 by Kevin Atkinson (kevina@gnu.org) and Benjamin
7 Titze (btitze@protonmail.ch).
9 This package contains information to convert between American,
10 British, Canadian, and Australian spellings and vocabulary as well as
11 other variant information.
13 The latest version can be found at http://wordlist.aspell.net/.
19 The main data file is varcon.txt. It contains information on the
20 preferred American, British, Canadian and Australian spelling of a
21 word as well as other variant information.
27 Each line contains a mapping between the various spellings of a word.
28 Words are tagged to indicate where the spelling is used, and each
29 word/tag pair is separated with a " / ". For example in the line:
30 A Cv: acknowledgment / Av B C: acknowledgement
31 "acknowledgment" and "acknowledgement" are two spellings of the same
32 word and "A", "Cv", "B", etc are the tags. Tags are separated by
33 spaces and the group of tags is separated from the word with a ": ".
34 Here, "acknowledgment" is the preferred American spelling (as
35 indicated by the "A") of the word, and "acknowledgement" is the
36 preferred Canadian and British spelling ("B" and "C"). However the
37 American spelling is sometimes used in Canada (as indicated by "Cv",
38 where the lowercase "v" indicated a variant form) and the British
39 spelling is sometimes used in America (as indicated the "Av").
41 More generally each tag consists of a spelling category (for example
42 "A") followed possible by a variant indicator. The spelling
43 categories are as follows:
46 B: British "ise" spelling
47 Z: British "ize" spelling or OED preferred Spelling
50 _: Other (Variant info based on American dictionaries, never used
51 with any of the above).
53 and the variants tags are as follows:
57 V: seldom used variant
58 -: possible variant, should generally not used
59 x: improper variant (should not use)
61 The "." or equal variant tags are reserved for special cases when
62 there is little agreement between dictionaries or when I think the
63 dictionary is wrong. The "v" indicator is used for most words marked
64 as variants in the dictionary. However, some variants will be demoted
65 to a "V". For example, if the variant is marked as "also" by
66 Merriam-Webster, or also if only some dictionaries acknowledge the
67 existence the variant. "-" is used when the variant is generally not
68 listed is the dictionary but I could find some evidence of its use, or
69 when it is marked as an archaic spelling for the word. The "x"
70 is used when the spelling is almost generally considered a
71 misspelling, and is only included for completeness.
73 For Australian English "v" was used for variants that are widely used,
74 but not preferred, and "V" for all "-or" (vs. "-our") variants and
75 variants considered "chiefly US".
77 If there are no tags with the 'Z' spelling category on the line then
78 'B' implies 'Z'. Similarly if there are no 'C' tags then 'Z' implies
79 'C'. If there are no 'D' tags then 'B' implies 'D'.
81 Some entries may have a number after the tags, this is a column
82 number and will be explained later.
88 For ease of reading and maintaining the data file, each line is
89 grouped in a cluster of closely related words. Each cluster is
90 uniquely identified by a headword, which is generally the American
91 spelling of word on the first line of the cluster. Each cluster is
92 started with a '#' and is followed by the headword with some
93 additional information after it. For example the cluster for
95 # acknowledgment <verified> (level 35)
96 A Cv: acknowledgment / Av B C: acknowledgement
97 A Cv: acknowledgments / Av B C: acknowledgements
98 A Cv: acknowledgment's / Av B C: acknowledgement's
99 The "<verified>" tag will be explained latter, and "(level 35)"
100 indicate what level in SCOWL (see http://wordlist.sourceforge.net)
101 the headword is found in. The levels generally mean the following:
102 <= 35: Very common word
103 <= 70: Can be found in the dictionary
104 80: Likely a valid word, can likely be found in an
105 unabridged dictionary
106 > 80: May not even be a legal word
108 Earlier versions of varcon contained numerous errors. With version
109 5.0 massive effort has been made to correct many of these errors.
110 Clusters that have undergone some form of verification (and likely
111 correction) are marked with "<verified>". As of version 5.0, most
112 clusters with headwords word in common usage (SCOWL level 35 and
113 below) should now be checked, as well as many others. No effort was
114 made to check clusters with headwords in SCOWL level 80 and above;
115 many of those entries are unlikely to be in the dictionary anyway.
121 Sometimes the spelling of a word depends on the usage in which case a
122 cluster is split into multiple groups with each group represting one
123 usage of a word. Usage annotations and/or pos tags are used to
124 distinguish one group from another.
126 Usage information is given after a " | ". For example here is part of
127 the cluster for prize:
130 A C: prize / B: prise | otherwise
131 A C: prizes / B: prises | otherwise
132 which indicated than the preferred spelling of prize is always with a
133 "z" when meaning a reward, but otherwise is spelled with a "s" is
134 British English. In the example above a brief definition of the word
135 is given, but often no such attempt is made, and the definition simply
136 consists of a number, for example:
138 A C: sake / Av B Cv: saki | :2
140 A part-of-speech (POS) tag may also given after a " | ", for example:
141 A B C: practice / AV Cv: practise | <N>
142 A Cv: practice / AV B C: practise | <V>
143 POS tags are always given in the form "<POS>" and if a definition
144 is also given the POS info is always first. The POS tags used are as
150 <A>: Adjective or Adverb
156 Additional Annotations
157 ----------------------
159 A "(-)" before the definition indicated a rarely used or archaic form
160 of a word, for example:
162 A: bark / Av B: barque | (-) ship
164 A "| -- pl: someword" indicates that the word is a plural and the root
167 A plain "| -- pl" indicates that the word is a plural and the root is
168 elsewhere within the group. It is used when one form of the plural is
169 the same as the root word, for example:
171 _ 1: yaks / _V 1: yak | :1 | -- pl
174 A "| --" otherwise indicates a note which gives additional context but
175 does not create it's own group like a definition does.
177 A "#" after a line indicates a comment that is often used to indicate
178 why. A "##" after a cluster indicates the the comment applies to the
179 entire cluster, for example:
180 # coloration <verified> (level 50)
181 A B C: coloration / B. Cv: colouration
182 A B C: colorations / B. Cv: colourations
183 A B C: coloration's / B. Cv: colouration's
184 ## OED has coloration as the preferred spelling and discolouration as a
185 ## variant for British Engl or some reason
186 In the comments ODE (not to be confused with OED) stands for Oxford
187 Dictionary of English, "Ox" is used for any Oxford dictionary, and
188 "M-W" for Merriam-Webster.
194 Varcon does not directly expresses the relation of words within a
195 group as it is normally easy to derive. For example given a simple
197 A: acknowledgment / B: acknowledgement
198 A: acknowledgments / B: acknowledgements
199 A: acknowledgment's / B: acknowledgement's
200 it is clear that acknowledgments is the plural form of acknowledgment
201 since they are both the American spelling of a word. While
202 acknowledgEments is the plural form of acknowledgEment since they are
203 both the British forms of a word. Within a group each varcon line
204 is considered a row in a table and each entry within a line is considered
205 a column. Within this group the first column is the American spelling
206 and the second is the British.
208 Sometime the column assignment unclear, when they are explicit column
209 numbers may be given. For example:
210 A B: caulk / Av: calk / AV Bv 1: caulking / AV 2: calking | <N> :3
211 A B: caulks / Av: calks / AV Bv 1: caulkings / AV 2: calkings | <N> :3
212 A B: caulk's / Av: calk's / AV Bv 1: caulking's / AV 2: calking's | <N> :3
214 Each column must contain exactly one spelling of the base form of a
215 word, however a column may contain multiple derived forms for a single
216 spelling of the base form, for example:
217 A B D 1: amoeba / Av Dv 2: ameba
218 A B D 1: amoebas / Av Bv Dv 1: amoebae / Av Dv 2: amebas / Av Dv 2: amebae
219 A B D 1: amoeba's / Av Dv 2: ameba's
225 The file variant-also.tab contains additional mappings between various
226 spellings of a word which are not yet in varcon.txt. No attempt is
227 made to distinguish the primary form of a word. The file
228 variant-infl.tab is like variant-also.tab except that it is created
229 automatically from the AGID inflection database. The file
230 variant-wroot.tab is like variant-infl.tab except that it also
231 included the root form of the word.
234 The file voc.tab is similar to varcon.txt but converts between
235 vocabulary instead of spelling. Unlike varcon.tab it is a simple tab
236 separated file with the fields corresponding to the American, British,
237 and Canadian words. If more than one word if often used to describe
238 the same thing the words are separated with commas. The last column
239 contains additional notes on when the word is used. Unlike varcon.txt
240 it is generally not suitable for automatic conversion.
243 The "make-variant" Perl script will combine varcon.txt,
244 variant-also.tab, and variant-infl.tab into one huge mapping and will
245 output the result to "variant.tab". If the "no-infl" option is given
246 than variant-infl.tab will not be included.
249 The "split" script will split out the information in varcon.txt into
250 several word lists named as follows:
251 <spelling>[-v<variant level>][-uncommon].lst
252 where <spelling> is one of: american, british, british_z, canadian,
253 common, or other. "common" is used for words which appear in
254 varcon.txt, yet are used in all versions of english, such as "prize",
255 and "other" is used for the "_" spelling category. The mapping from
256 the variant indicators in varcon.txt to the numeric variant level is
261 "-uncommon" is used for forms marked with "(-)" as already described.
264 The "translate" Perl script will translate a text file from one
265 spelling to another. Its usage is:
267 translate <options> [<translation array>] <from> <to>
269 -?,-h,--help this screen
270 -m,--mark mark words where the translation is questionable
271 -i,--include include words where the translation is questionable
272 <translation array> is the file name of the translation array,
273 defaults to "abbc.tab".
274 <from> and <to> are one of: american, british, british_z, or canadian.
275 british-ise and british-ize can also be used.
277 Text is read in from standard input and is outputted to standard out.
278 Words are marked with a '?' before and after the questionable word
279 when the option is enabled.
282 The file varcon.pm contains some library routines for parsing
283 varcon.txt and is used by many of the scripts above.
289 If you discover any errors in these mappings or have suggestions for
290 additions please file a bug report at
291 https://github.com/kevina/wordlist/issues, or alternatively email me
292 directly at kevina@gnu.org, but I will likely tell you to file a bug
293 report so that I don't forget about it.
299 These mappings were compiled from numerous sources.
301 The abc.tab was originally created from the American and British word
302 lists found in the Ispell distribution and the Canadian word list
303 created by Garst R. Reese <reese@isn.net>:
305 What I have discovered is that Canadian is a modification of British.
306 Canadians use ize ization, izing izable like Americans, and gram instead
307 of gramme. The one exception I found was practise. It does not go to
308 practize. Otherwise they use British spelling. So, what I am currently
309 checking books with is a an edited version of British, where I have
310 changed all occurrences of ise to ize, isab to izab, isation to ization,
311 ising to izing, and gramme to gram except I allow programme, which is
312 sometimes proper unless you are talking about a computer program. I did
313 bunches of greps to be sure these substitutions would work as expected.
315 Many other words have been added to abc.tab which were not in the
316 original Ispell word lists.
318 Many different web sources were consulted when crating the tables. They
321 The American-British British-American Dictionary
322 http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/dictionary.html
323 American and British Spelling Differences
324 http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/spellcat.html
325 Dave (VE7CNV)'s Truly Canadian Dictionary of Canadian Spelling
326 http://www.luther.bc.ca/~dave7cnv/cdnspelling/cdnspelling.html
327 Canadian Spelling Convention
328 http://imej.wfu.edu/articles/1999/1/02/demo/tutorial/canas.html
329 Cornerstone's Canadian English Page
330 http://www.web.net/cornerstone/cdneng.htm
331 Inter-Play Translation: British/Canadian/American Spelling
332 http://www.inter-play.com/translation/spel-ukus.htm
333 Inter-Play Translation: British/Canadian/American Vocabulary
334 http://www.inter-play.com/translation/voc-ukus.htm
336 As well as several online dictionaries:
338 Marriam-Webster: http://www.m-w.com/
339 American Heritage: http://www.bartleby.com/61/
340 Cambridge (ESL): http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
342 In version 5.0 a massive effort to correct the numerous errors in
343 VarCon was done. The primary sources used for verification were:
345 Marriam-Webster: http://www.m-w.com/
346 Free version of Oxford Dictionaries Online:
347 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/
348 Oxford dictionaries available via Oxford Reference Online
349 (subscription service, http://www.oxfordreference.com/):
350 The New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd edition, 2006)
351 and sometimes: The Oxford American Dictionary of Current English (2002)
352 The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (11th edition revised, 2008)
353 and sometimes: The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised, 2005)
354 The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2004)
356 I also used Tysto UK vs US spelling list available at:
357 http://www.tysto.com/articles05/q1/20050324uk-us.shtml
358 to make sure I didn't leave out any information in VarCon, however any
359 additions from his lists where verified using the dictionaries
360 mentioned above as his lists contained numerous errors (such as
361 including archaic spellings of words)
363 I also made indirect use of Luke's Canadian, British and American
364 Spelling page available at:
365 http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/spelling/cgi-bin/database.cgi?database=spelling
366 but only to perform some initial verification, in the end I rechecked
367 his data using the dictionaries above. (However, his data is, by far,
368 more accurate than Tysto's)
370 In Version 2016.11.20 Benjamin Titze added support for Australian English.
371 The primary sources for this addition were:
373 The Macquarie Dictionary: https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/
374 Style Manual: For Authors, Editors and Printers, 6th Edition. DCITA.
375 University of Technology Sydney Publications Style Guide:
376 http://www.gsu.uts.edu.au/publications/styleguide/spelling.html
377 Style Manual, Department of Treasury and Finance, Tasmania:
378 http://conference.tasa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Style-Manual.pdf
379 Editor Australia - Style Guide:
380 http://www.editoraustralia.com/styleguide_spelling.html
381 Webster in Australia (history of "our"/"or" spelling variants):
382 http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2008/01/webster_in_australia.html
388 From 2018.10.06 to 2020.12.07
390 - Additional documentation on file format
392 - Minor change in file format
394 - Fix scripts to work with modern versions of Perl.
396 - Various new entries
398 - Additional cleanups
400 From 2017.08.24 to 2019.10.06
402 - Added entries for: eukaryote, prokaryote, virtualization, volcanism
404 From 2016.11.20 to 2017.08.24
406 - Typo fixes thanks to Jakub Wilk
408 From 2016.06.26 to 2016.11.20
410 - New Australian spelling category thanks to the work of Benjamin
413 - Various other fixes.
415 From 2016.01.19 to 2016.06.26
417 - Fix plural of "bus".
419 From 2015.08.24 to 2016.01.19
421 - Undo the effects of PERL_UNICODE in the translate script.
423 - Other minor fixes and new entries.
425 From 2014.02.15 to 2015.08.24 (Aug 24, 2015)
427 - Added entry for Koran/Koranic.
429 - Tweaked "adviser" cluster.
431 - Fix formatting problems.
433 From 2015.01.28 to 2014.02.15 (February 15, 2015)
435 - Various new entries
437 From 2014.11.17 to 2015.01.28 (January 28, 2015)
439 - Minor adjustments to a few entries (analytic, amid)
441 - Added entry for shareable
443 - Remove a junk entry (ted/taed).
445 From 2014.08.11 to 2014.11.17 (November 17, 2014)
447 - Fix typos in README
449 - Enhancement to VarCon translate script. It will now, by default,
450 filter clusters with a SCOWL level > 80. This behavior can be
451 controlled with the new "--thresh" option.
453 - Remove a few junk entries.
455 From Revision 5.1 to Version 2014.08.11 (August 8, 2014)
457 - Various corrections. Most of them minor. Two notable exceptions:
459 - Added an entry for furor as the correct British spelling is furore
461 - Fixed racket entries as Canadians still use racquet even
462 though it is a British English (at least according to the
465 - Other minor changes.
467 From Revision 5.0 to Revision 5.1 (January 6, 2010)
469 - Corrected numerous errors after running various forms
470 of verification on varcon.txt.
472 - Reordered the clusters in varcon.txt so that they are
473 mostly in alphabetic order based on the headword.
475 From Revision 4.1 to Revision 5.0 (December 27, 2010)
477 - Completely new format for the main table which, in addition to
478 providing the preferred spelling of a word for various forms of
479 English, also records variant and other information. To reflect
480 this change, the name of the file was renamed from abbc.tab to
483 - Massive effort to verify the variant information against
484 authoritative sources (mainly Oxford dictionaries). Most entries
485 for common words (SCOWL level 35 and below) have been checked
486 against at least a British and Canadian dictionary.
488 - Added variant information for numerous other words, even when
489 there is no difference between the various forms on English.
491 - Other changes corresponding to the new format.
493 From Revision 4 to Revision 4.1 (August 10, 2004)
495 - Fixed various errors in abbc.tab
497 - Removed clause 4 from the Ispell copyright with permission of Geoff
500 From Revision 3 to Revision 4 (August 7, 2004)
502 - Added a column to "abc.tab" for the British "ize" spelling and
503 renamed the file to abbc.tab.
504 - Added verb forms of prize/prise to abbc.tab, removed from
507 From Revision 2 to Revision 3 (January 2, 2003)
509 - Added an option for not including variant-infl.tab for the
510 make-variant perl script
511 - Added the file variant-wroot.tab
512 - Added a few entries given to me by Francis Bond and Edward Betts
514 From Revision 1 to Revision 2 (January 27, 2001)
516 - Removed all "B" markers because I could not find any evidence for
518 - Corrected a few Canadian entries, especially those with the "B"
520 - Added some more entries by trying fixed changes (such as ize to
521 ise) to words in SCOWL and hand-checking over the ones with semi-common
523 - Added variant-infl.tab
529 Copyright 2000-2019 by Kevin Atkinson
531 Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this array, the
532 associated software, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby
533 granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears
534 in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission
535 notice appear in supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no
536 representations about the suitability of this array for any
537 purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
539 Copyright 2016 by Benjamin Titze
541 Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this array, the
542 associated software, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby
543 granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears
544 in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission
545 notice appear in supporting documentation. Benjamin Titze makes no
546 representations about the suitability of this array for any
547 purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
549 Since the original words lists come from the Ispell distribution:
551 Copyright 1993, Geoff Kuenning, Granada Hills, CA
554 Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
555 modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
558 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
559 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
560 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
561 notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
562 documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
563 3. All modifications to the source code must be clearly marked as
564 such. Binary redistributions based on modified source code
565 must be clearly marked as modified versions in the documentation
566 and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
567 (clause 4 removed with permission from Geoff Kuenning)
568 5. The name of Geoff Kuenning may not be used to endorse or promote
569 products derived from this software without specific prior
572 THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY GEOFF KUENNING AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
573 ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
574 IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
575 ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL GEOFF KUENNING OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
576 FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
577 DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
578 OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
579 HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
580 LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
581 OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF