Jump to content

Word search: problem in French words search


Olivier Zalmanski

Recommended Posts

Hi,

 

As you can see on the screenshots, I wanted to search the French expression "peut-il" (= "can he") in the SEG21 module.

 

I did three tests (on the screenshots, I limited my search to only one verse, for they be clearer): in the Word search bar, I put...

- "peut-il"

- "peut il"

- "peutil"

 

In French, an hyphen ("-") is equivalent to a space, so that the two first forms are equivalent, and only those two forms are correct – though the third form simply does not exist and is absolutely incorrect.

However, my search succeeded only in the third test... :-(

 

I also made testes with *"Saintesprit" / "Saint-esprit" [= "Saint esprit"], and the result is the same.

Conclusion: it seems that the hyphen is considered by Accordance as "nothing", though in French it is most of the time like a space (or simply like an hyphen!)...

 

Nevertheless, in addition to considering the hyphen as an hyphen AND as a space, it is good to continue to accept the hyphen as "nothing", because some words can be written either with or without hyphen in French.

 

Regards

post-31001-0-75043800-1345795568_thumb.png

post-31001-0-60653300-1345795573_thumb.png

post-31001-0-90070900-1345795577_thumb.png

Edited by Olivier Zalmanski
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We can set the way the hyphen is treated in each module individually when we build it. So it is possible that we can treat it as a space, but I do not think we can treat is as either a space or nothing. It has to be consistent throughout that module.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Then, for a French speaker, worth treat an hyphen as a space rather than nothing, because most of the time hyphen links 2 words that are independent and can also be separated by a space (see my example of "peut-il", which has the same meaning of "peut il" – although "peutil" means nothing and even doesn't exist...).

Anyway, in the case of the other words, a French speaker who doesn't succeed to find the word "entretemps" would search "entre-temps" or "entre temps", so that it doesn't matter if the hyphen is treated as a space.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...