1493920 - add words to en-us dictionary

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Spelling checker, enhancement)

Comment 1

[Ekanan Ketunuti]

Attachment: bug1493920.patch

For the problematic word "hangry" in bug 1490541 comment 4:

> Coming back to the words added. "hangry" is of course an absolute no no, 
> since it will now allow the spelling mistake "hangry" instead of "hungry".

"hangry" is not misspelling of "hungry" at all, and in dictionary since the 90s. Different word, different meaning.

Oh, indeed, it's not tomayto, tomahto.


> Particularly bad since phonetically the "u" in "hungry" is pronounced as "a" (/ˈhʌŋɡri/).

"hangry" pronounced as /ˈhæŋɡɹi/, "hungry" as /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/. Precisely not homophone.


So, I'm not gonna remove this word.

Comment 2

[Ekanan Ketunuti]

Attachment: bug1493920(1).patch

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to Ekanan Ketunuti from comment #1)
> Created attachment 9011729 [details] [diff] [review]
> bug1493920.patch
> 
> For the problematic word "hangry" in bug 1490541 comment 4:
> 
> > Coming back to the words added. "hangry" is of course an absolute no no, 
> > since it will now allow the spelling mistake "hangry" instead of "hungry".
> 
> "hangry" is not misspelling of "hungry" at all, and in dictionary since the
> 90s. Different word, different meaning.
> 
> Oh, indeed, it's not tomayto, tomahto.
> 
> 
> > Particularly bad since phonetically the "u" in "hungry" is pronounced as "a" (/ˈhʌŋɡri/).
> 
> "hangry" pronounced as /ˈhæŋɡɹi/, "hungry" as /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi/. Precisely not
> homophone.
> 
> 
> So, I'm not gonna remove this word.

It's true that "hangry" is a valid word and has been included in various English dictionaries for a long time.

The problem with including it in a spell checking dictionary, however, is the specific use case of such a dictionary, that is, spell checking.  If the user types hngry by mistake, right now Firefox suggests "hangry" before "hungry".  Right now our spell checker is very crude, for example it has no knowledge about the commonality of words, so it can't understand that while both of these suggestions are valid, the user almost certainly meant to type "hungry" not "hangry" so that should be suggested first.  And in most practical scenarios, users are probably not trying to type hangry at all, so suggesting it is more harmful than helpful.

Not including it, of course, has downsides too.  If the user types haangry a legitimate case could be made that they meant to type "hangry".  Also obviously not having the word in the dictionary means typing it would make it show up as misspelled.  In the ideal situation, our spell checker would be smart enough to know not to suggest uncommon spellings, but also to not mark them as misspelled.  But for now all we can do in these situations is to go for the lesser of the two evil and not include these types of less common words that are very similar to really common ones.  :-/

Based on this I think adding hangry was a mistake and we should remove it.

Comment 4

[Ekanan Ketunuti]

(In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari from comment #3)
> The problem with including it in a spell checking dictionary, however, is
> the specific use case of such a dictionary, that is, spell checking.  If the
> user types hngry by mistake, right now Firefox suggests "hangry" before
> "hungry".  Right now our spell checker is very crude, for example it has no
> knowledge about the commonality of words, so it can't understand that while
> both of these suggestions are valid, the user almost certainly meant to type
> "hungry" not "hangry" so that should be suggested first.  And in most
> practical scenarios, users are probably not trying to type hangry at all, so
> suggesting it is more harmful than helpful.

Not convincing, still. I definitely don't know if users type "hngry" they certainly meant to type "hungry" not "hangry".

Comment 5

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to Ekanan Ketunuti from comment #4)
> (In reply to :Ehsan Akhgari from comment #3)
> > The problem with including it in a spell checking dictionary, however, is
> > the specific use case of such a dictionary, that is, spell checking.  If the
> > user types hngry by mistake, right now Firefox suggests "hangry" before
> > "hungry".  Right now our spell checker is very crude, for example it has no
> > knowledge about the commonality of words, so it can't understand that while
> > both of these suggestions are valid, the user almost certainly meant to type
> > "hungry" not "hangry" so that should be suggested first.  And in most
> > practical scenarios, users are probably not trying to type hangry at all, so
> > suggesting it is more harmful than helpful.
> 
> Not convincing, still. I definitely don't know if users type "hngry" they
> certainly meant to type "hungry" not "hangry".

For sure, this isn't a matter of certainty, it is a matter of making a good decision in the majority of the cases.  Based on that, one can make an educated guess based on which of the two words is more commonly used, and the balance is clear in this case.  (e.g. right now a Google search on hungry finds 680,000,000 results, but only 5,920,000 for hangry.)

Anyway, please let me know if you're not planning to write a patch for that one.  Thanks!

Comment 6

[Ekanan Ketunuti]

Well, I'll remove it.

Comment 7

[Ekanan Ketunuti]

Attachment: bug1493920(2).patch

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/b4492a216eb0
Add words to en-US dictionary and remove the problematic word "hangry". r=ehsan

Comment 9

[Arthur Iakab [arthur_iakab]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b4492a216eb0

Comment 10

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to Ekanan Ketunuti from comment #6)
> Well, I'll remove it.

Thanks!