Category Archives: Workshops

Copying between fields in two writing systems in FLEx

Last month I taught the FLEx II course at CoLang, held at UTA. It was very interesting trying to teach to about 45 students, coming for a great variety of backgrounds, but I think we all learned something. There was one thing that I taught, which I thought deserved further write-up, so I’ll do that here.
The problem is not immediately obvious, unless you spend lots of time thinking about how FLEx does what it does, in particular how writing systems work. But when you want to copy data from a field that is encoded in a particular writing system, into a field that is encoded in another writing system, you can’t just bulk copy and get results you might expect. The reason is that the data itself is tagged for which writing system it is in, and not just the field. So you can, theoretically, have Spanish data in a field that is supposed to have English. But this is actually a strength, as it allows you to tag one word or sentence in its correct language, even if it is surrounded by another language, all within the same field (like if you write a note in English, but include in the note words in another language). All data is tracked by writing system, and you don’t loose that information when you copy from one field to another.
So, the task we were working on, which you may need to do some day, was copying data from one writing sytem, to use as a base for another. For instance, if you have data in a practical working orthography, and you want to also have an IPA field, you may notice (as I hope is true) that much of your orthography transfers directly over to the IPA. And for those things that don’t, there should be regular changes (like substituting [ɸ] for ‘ph’). This task is just begging to be done through bulk editing. Why type all that over again, just to change a few phonemes here and there? Why not make most of the systematic changes systematically? But we can’t just copy a practical orthography field into an IPA field, since the data would still be encoded as the practical orthography, even if the field should contain IPA data. So here’s what you should do.
First off, I assume you have your two writing systems set up; I’m using Mbo and the IPA variant in these screenshots:

Writing sytems

Go to the Lexicon pane:

To Lexicon

Then Select Bulk Edit Entries:

To Bulk Edit entries

To be able to operate on both fields, you need to make them both visible. Click on the “Configure which columns to display” button:

To Show Columns

Then click on More Column Choices (unless your IPA field is in the list, in which case you just select it):

To More column choices

In the dialog that comes up, you selct the Lexeme form field (or whatever field you’re copying to). Yes, it is already on the right; we want to display the Lexeme form field twice, once in each of two writing systems:

Select Lexeme Form

Click Add:

Click Add

Initially you will probably have the same writing system for each of the two fields:

Both fields in same WS

change one to the IPA variant:

Pick IPA WS

then I like to move that second field up, so it will display next to the other one. While the field is selected, click on the up arrow:

Move WS field up

Then keep clicking until it is in place:

Move WS field up 2

Now that you have everything situated, click on OK:

Click OK on WS

That should take you back to the bulk edit pane, where you should see your IPA field. Assuming you’re just starting to work in this field, it should be empty:

IPA Empty

Then you Bulk edit, like normal, by selecting the Source Field (the one with data in it):

From LF

and the Target Field:

To LF-IPA

As always, you want to preview your bulk edit, to make sure it’s doing what you expect:

Preview Bulk Copy

And you should see blue arrows going from nothing to data, which matches the field next to it:

Preview Bulk Copy results

If you don’t like what you see, just click clear, and fix whatever was wrong. But if you like it, click Apply:

Apply Bulk Copy

And then you’ll have both fields filled with the same data (and no more blue arrows):

Apply Bulk Copy results

But if you select data in the IPA field, the indicator above will show that the data is NOT in IPA, but still in the other writing system:

Wrong writing system

So this is the problem we need to fix. To do this, we’re going to Bulk Replace:

Select Bulk Replace

Select the target field (Just the one we want to change writing systems on, the IPA on in this case):

Select WS_IPA

Then click on Setup…:

Setup Bulk Replace

This will give you Bulk Replace Setup dialog:

Bulk Replace Setup dialog

Where you can select in the “Find what:” box, then (click “more” if you have to, and) select Format/Writing System/xyz –whatever writing system you copied your data from:

Select From WS

My experience is that at this point, FLEx will figure out what you’re trying to do, and set the other field for you. You can verify this by seeing “Format: <Writing system name>” under each field:

Bulk Replace Setup w Langs

You don’t need to add anything to the empty fields in this box; you want to find everything. So you can just click OK. Unfortunately, I don’t see anything when I click “Preview” here, so we just trust that we’ve set it up correctly (you backed up your data before starting this, right? If not, stop and do it now.), and hit Apply.
Back in the bulk replace field, we can verify that the data in the IPA field is now indicated as IPA:

Mbo_IPA

While the orthographic field is still in the orthographic writing system:

Mbo

At this point, you can go through your IPA field and convert orthographic letters to IPA equivalents, either systematically through bulk replace (if appropriate) or manually. Then you can enjoy your dictionary database with both orthography and IPA in your entries!

WeSay and BALSA: Thanks!

I just finished a trip to Bunia and Nia-Nia, DRC, where I helped the Ndaka [ndk] and Mbo [zmw] communities develop draft alphabet charts and transition primers, the material for each language including all nine vowels (with ATR harmony) and the egressive/implosive stops. The Mbo version also includes the [p]/[ɸ] contrast, as /p/ is normally [ɸ] there. Each booklet includes a short story in the new draft orthography.

I’ve written before about using WeSay to collect language data in highly illiterate language communities, which was a major part of this work.  And since I don’t want to do IT work full time (or rather I have other things to do with my time), I’m using WeSay in BALSA. So since much of this work would not have been possible without the work of many people, especially those working on BALSA and WeSay, I wanted to take a minute to thank them. Without a budget to do so materially, I’ll do that through describing the work here, and explicitly saying that if you work on WeSay and/or BALSA, please feel free to take and use this story and/or pictures in your own publications; this is your story, too.

We met for this workshop in Nia-Nia, DRC, about an hour into the rainforest (by MAF) from Bunia, which is about an hour (again by MAF) from Entebbe, Uganda. We met in a church, with the Ndaka covering most of the workshop logistics, since this is their home turf.  The Mbo are also a bit on the run these days from a militia conflict that hasn’t seemed to end yet. And they’re a smaller and more illiterate people group. So much so that one of the guys on the Mbo team didn’t participate in a dictation exercise, as we were practicing new letters. And yet, here they are, around a BALSA machine, using WeSay:
WeSay̠Ung'inMbo_IMG_4222_sm
Admittedly, the guy touching the computer isn’t Mbo, but he’s helping them deal with the interface, and they’re choosing pictures through the Art of Reading interface in WeSay, which would seem to be even more popular with less literate communities.

This one is of the Ndaka team, using WeSay in BALSA independently:
WeSay_ndk_IMG_4220_sm
They’re also picking images to go with dictionary entries we put there earlier, though some people started modifying entries by the end of the workshop. Lest this seem trite, let me point out that this was the first time that ANY of them had used a computer of any kind.  For some, it was the first time they had seen one. You can see in the background the current stabilizer, which is plugged into the generator we used to have electricity. Without the stabilizer, I wouldn’t plug in a computer, because of the risk of unstable current. After the stabilizer, we put a fridge guard. when I can, I put a second stabilizer in series, to even out what current irregularities the first one doesn’t catch. Which is all to say that this is not the most computer friendly place, even after the alternating dust and humidity, and the heat. But these guys took to the tasks, and were able to work somewhat independently on computers for the first time.  Having tried this in similar contexts with other software, I attribute this success entirely to WeSay and BALSA.  Thanks, guys, for making that possible.
Here is the same team from another angle:

WeSay_ndk_II_IMG_4223_sm
And here is one with other people hanging around, showing that this is truly a community affair:

WeSay_ndk_kids_IMG_4224_sm
So this workshop was a success in part because people who had never used computers before (including the elementary school principal, shown in the background of this last pic), were able to get up and running in very little time, with very few frustrations.  They even enjoyed the work so much, I had to kick them out several evenings, after it was already too dark to walk home. So thanks to everyone involved, for your part in making this happen.

Discourse Workshop Finished

We just finished a workshop oriented towards the study of discourse properties, originally in several Central Soudanic languages of DRC, but also included was one Nilotic language.  I worked with Lese (Ethnologue: les), a language where I studied tone for some six months of this last year.

One of the highlights for the team was finally (I hope) getting the aspect distinctions of their language. That is, their basic verbal contrast is between something like perfective and non-perfective aspects, though all their formal education is in French, so they have been thinking in terms of past, present, and future tenses.  One morpheme they had glossed as ‘future,’ but from a survey of texts, only one of seven examples referred to certain, future action.  The rest were states or actions that would result from a choice that  was not, in fact, taken (either past, present, or future), or else a desired future action, which was never in fact, accomplished. So, not to weird to see aspectual and modal marking mapped onto tense functions, but it was good to see some of interpretationsthe team catching on to the grammatical distinctions in their language, and how it differs from French.