odd dictionary

[venta]

Does anyone know what criteria must be met for a word to be included in a mobile phone's default predictive-text dictionary?

My phone (which is Sony Ericsson) seems to have an odd selection... today it didn't know 'inauspicious' - which didn't surprise me. It also didn't know 'bastard', but did know 'conjure' - both of which surprised me.

Comments

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Phones are very bad at knowing rude words. Presumably because they're scared of being sued by the parents of some poor darling who typed in a perfectly innocuous word and got a surprise.

Great!

[venta.livejournal.com]

This means I get to have low-grade corruptive fun teaching my prim phone bad words :>

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I'm on hold with Vodafone

To complain that your phone didn't understand "bastard", I hope?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Sadly, no. But when I complain to Sony Ericsson that despite what their instruction book says (yeah, I even read it) it is impossible to save a number from which you have received an sms, I shall be sure to mention also my disappointment with my phone's prudishness.

[chrestomancy.livejournal.com]

Betcha that problem is a disparity between the memory you choose to use, and the memory that the phone saves from SMS to.

For example, I use the phone memory for my address book. That way I can have long names and over 100 friends (and before you say it, I know, finding 100 people that were prepared to talk to me was an achievement). Everytime I add a name from an electronic business card or SMS, it adds it to the SIM, which is no use whatsoever.

And no, I don't have a solution. Except change where your address book is stored.

[triskellian]

It's also interesting which order they suggest words in (cos it's not necessarily alphabetical).

Someone I saw at the weekend complained that her phone suggested 'nun' before the presumably more-common-in-texting 'mum'.

The same day, I received a message with 'I would have you sinned you about that' in it ;-)

[surje.livejournal.com]

For a virgin phone, the order is predetermined in the database, presumably from some published analysis of words (I don't know what that is). However, every time you commit the text for a word in any editor on the phone, it should update the frequency list, moving your word presumably about a third of a place higher in the list or a third of the way up the list (if you write a word three times it gets the message).

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

My phone recognises "sausage" and "armchair" in the singular, but neither of their plurals.

A good game is to try and get your phone to predict strange words instead of the one you're actually thinking of. I had some great ones, but they've temporarily slipped my mind, probably due to mobile phone radiation.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

My phone suggests before Xmas, Wobr. I therefore wished many people a very merry Wobr at the end of 2002.
I have no idea what a Wobr is.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Google suggests it's either a Welsh word (don't know what it means), or else, rather more intriguingly, the Western Oregon Boomerang Roundup:

http://boomchuck.20m.com/wobr.html (don't follow this unless you either like popup ads or are vaccinated against them).

[surje.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that every time you type in a word, and it can't find it, and you choose "Spell" from the menu, and then put it in using multitap, then it gets added to the user dictionary, and its frequency will presumably be set about half way up the list for that number.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Depends on the phone. Mine (Nokia 7110e) doesn't do that, it adds the word to the end of the list and never changes the order that words are suggested. But then it is a fairly old phone.

[surje.livejournal.com]

ah ok. i didn't know much about older phones, and almost added a caveat to that effect. what i said is true of the Nokia 7650 and 3650.

[ealuscerwen.livejournal.com]

My telephone definitely believes that Borinod is a word (but not Corinne) and that Faltsadsyen is a word (but not Ealuscerwen. Any ideas about either of those?

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

I just get Bodie and Codif before Andie and that's only there because I added it. I don't usually bother with Andromeda, to the extent that I have added it to my phone at all and get Androned?

Sigh.

The nice one on my phone is Lips comes before Kiss.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

to the extent that I have added it to my phone
_haven't_

I shouldn't even try being useful some mornings.