Romanizations for Hokkien / Hakka / Wu / Sichuanese

[Hydramus]

Thanks very much for all of this detailed info.

Mikelove, quick question. I've found your example on making custom dictionary text files, but does Pleco supply some template that I could work with? If I want to help with my own custom Hong Kong Hakka dictionary (and potentially add recordings!), where should I start? I've not read any support for sound files either since it wouldn't have a google dictation, it would have to be sound recordings done by a person.

 

[mikelove]

No templates at the moment, no - it's all a little up in the air still. Basically if it's a well-structured tab- or comma-delimited file you should be able to wrangle the import screen into doing something sensible with it, and it may even detect the format automatically to some extent.

We do support embedded audio files, yes - *tentatively* I think you'd want to put in a relative path to them as a Markdown embed link, . However, I'm not sure how well-supported those would be in user dictionary entries - the only simple thing we've built that uses them so far is flashcard tests. They do generally get rendered into tappable audio icon links (even in the current version) so if you include them embedded like this at the top of your dictionary definition (try this in a small file first) it should be possible to tap on an audio icon in that spot to play the linked audio.

 

[Hydramus]

No templates at the moment, no - it's all a little up in the air still. Basically if it's a well-structured tab- or comma-delimited file you should be able to wrangle the import screen into doing something sensible with it, and it may even detect the format automatically to some extent.

We do support embedded audio files, yes - *tentatively* I think you'd want to put in a relative path to them as a Markdown embed link, . However, I'm not sure how well-supported those would be in user dictionary entries - the only simple thing we've built that uses them so far is flashcard tests. They do generally get rendered into tappable audio icon links (even in the current version) so if you include them embedded like this at the top of your dictionary definition (try this in a small file first) it should be possible to tap on an audio icon in that spot to play the linked audio.

Ah that's a shame. I'll try with the tab split. Do I still need to add the "<>" as well after every definition if a word has multiple?


Also...

Thanks. Do you know if HK Hakka can be expressed accurately using the MOE system?

For sandhi in Mandarin and tone changes in Cantonese, we've adopted the approach of letting you search for either or neither - we certainly could support entering both tone numbers, but I'm not sure how many people would be interested in looking up words that way or how much a search might be narrowed down by that versus only entering one.

Oh I found an area for Sandhi rules in hakka too that you might find helpful.

Typical Tone Sandhi Rules​

For the majority of Hakka dialects, which belong to the JiaYing subgroup, tone sandhi occurs on the first syllable if the following syllable is of a lower tone for some tones only. For example, if [xn] is a syllable with tone n, the for the Jiaying Hakka subdialect of Shatoujiao (ShaTauKok, SaThewKok, SaTdiuGok, SaTeuGog):

 

[mikelove]

Do I still need to add the "<>" as well after every definition if a word has multiple?

No, those were a 3.0 thing; in 4.0 if you enclose a column with quotes it should support regular newlines.

Oh I found an area for Sandhi rules in hakka too that you might find helpful.

Thanks.