How dictionaries work, and Russian

marinheiro · 03-12-2024, 06:32 PM

I am trying to read Russian, using the Kobo Russian-English dictionary (my Russian is not good enough to use Russian-Russian). The dictionary is terrible at recognizing word endings; often when it is obvious what the nominative singular of a regular noun would be, or the infinitive of a verb, the dictionary fails to find the word and looks up another word which happens to have the same start but a few letters different at the end.

Is this a problem with all online dictionaries, that all they can do is a very simple pattern match on words, or can any have some basic knowledge of structure built in? Surely even a set of regexes could do something more towards finding the root form of a word?

Or, have I just used a bad dictionary?

Graham

kandwo · 03-13-2024, 02:13 AM

Kobo dictionaries do not support morphology - only infinitives and nominative forms are supported - making it next to useless for a highly inflected language such as Russian.

Check out the custom dictionary thread here in the Kobo sub-forum. There's a decent ru-eng dictionary based on wiktionary. It still lacks many words, but should be good enough at your level.

When you feel confident using a ru-ru dictionary, I'd recommend using Koreader and downloading the Russian wiktionary dictionary from within the app. It's the best option on Kobos.

marinheiro · 03-14-2024, 10:56 AM

Thanks kandwo

The wiktionary ru-eng dictionary is a huge improvement. A lot bigger, so I guess it works by just listing huge numbers of case/verb endings, but I don't care as long as it helps my reading!

Graham

geek1011 · 03-14-2024, 09:46 PM

Yes, Kobo's dictionaries have very limited support for morphology (especially the built-in ones).

For a while, Kobo only supports looking up hardcoded variants with the same prefix. Recently, Kobo did add internal support for looking up word forms with different starting characters, but this is not used much by the built-in dictionaries, and I haven't had a chance to update my own tool with it.

03-12-2024, 06:32 PM	#1
marinheiro Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 377922 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Sony PRS-T1, Pocketbook, Kobo Aura, Kobo Elipsa	How dictionaries work, and Russian I am trying to read Russian, using the Kobo Russian-English dictionary (my Russian is not good enough to use Russian-Russian). The dictionary is terrible at recognizing word endings; often when it is obvious what the nominative singular of a regular noun would be, or the infinitive of a verb, the dictionary fails to find the word and looks up another word which happens to have the same start but a few letters different at the end. Is this a problem with all online dictionaries, that all they can do is a very simple pattern match on words, or can any have some basic knowledge of structure built in? Surely even a set of regexes could do something more towards finding the root form of a word? Or, have I just used a bad dictionary? Graham

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03-13-2024, 02:13 AM	#2
kandwo Addict Posts: 357 Karma: 10703708 Join Date: Dec 2020 Device: Kindle Paperwhite 3	Kobo dictionaries do not support morphology - only infinitives and nominative forms are supported - making it next to useless for a highly inflected language such as Russian. Check out the custom dictionary thread here in the Kobo sub-forum. There's a decent ru-eng dictionary based on wiktionary. It still lacks many words, but should be good enough at your level. When you feel confident using a ru-ru dictionary, I'd recommend using Koreader and downloading the Russian wiktionary dictionary from within the app. It's the best option on Kobos.

03-14-2024, 10:56 AM	#3
marinheiro Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 377922 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Sony PRS-T1, Pocketbook, Kobo Aura, Kobo Elipsa	Thanks kandwo The wiktionary ru-eng dictionary is a huge improvement. A lot bigger, so I guess it works by just listing huge numbers of case/verb endings, but I don't care as long as it helps my reading! Graham

03-14-2024, 09:46 PM	#4
geek1011 Wizard Posts: 2,736 Karma: 6990705 Join Date: May 2016 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Kobo Mini, Aura Edition 2 v1, Clara HD	Yes, Kobo's dictionaries have very limited support for morphology (especially the built-in ones). For a while, Kobo only supports looking up hardcoded variants with the same prefix. Recently, Kobo did add internal support for looking up word forms with different starting characters, but this is not used much by the built-in dictionaries, and I haven't had a chance to update my own tool with it.