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.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I'm on hold with Vodafone

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

[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 ;-)

[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.

[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.

[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?