Spicy Irish - Instructions

Instructions

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Spicy Irish is a flashcard program for learning Irish vocabulary. It's fairly simple. To get a new word, click on the button labelled "new word". Type your answer in the white text box in the center of the page. To indicate that a vowel should have a fada over it, type a forward slash "/" character directly after the vowel - no spaces. For example, to type "cailín", you would enter "caili/n" into the text box. When you have entered your answer, click on the "submit" button. If you answer correctly, praise will be bestowed upon you. If you answer incorrectly, the word "mícheart" will appear below the white text box. To see the correct answer, hit the button labelled "show answer".

My algorithm for checking your answer is not terribly advanced. It is not case-sensitive, so it does not matter whether you type "fear" or "FeAr", etc. It also does not care about white space in front of or behind your answer. So " fear ", "fear ", and "fear" are effectively the same. It also ignores a final period in your answer (but all other punctuation must be exact). Beyond that, your answer has to be exactly what I have told the program is correct. Extra white spaces within the answer will make your answer wrong. Punctuation that does not match the English word or phrase will make your answer wrong, with the exception of a final period as noted above.

On the other hand, I've gone to the trouble of accepting multiple correct answers if I am aware of them. For example, the program accepts both the synthetic and analytic forms of the first person singular and plural where appropriate. This is not reflected when you click the "show answer" button; it lists what I consider to be the more usual answer, or just the one I prefer. I might change that sometime.

Note on Fadas

As noted above, to indicate a fada, type a "/" character after the vowel the fada should go on. Please note, you must indicate the fada in this manner. The program will not accept any other way of indicating fadas (i.e. special accented characters. To indicate "í" you should type "i/" - you cannot type "í" directly into the text box). The idea is that this should save you the hassle of reconfiguring your keyboard or making extra keystrokes.
Added 02/18/2006 by bshields
Updated 02/18/2006 by bshields