One big issue with the language is how hard is to look up words if you don’t know their spelling. It would be amazing to have a phonetic reverse search dictionary, that is you type with phonetic transcription, and then it presents all the possible spellings. Does this exist? Investigate! Otherwise it would be an amazing technical project to work on!
So I decided to write email to Monlam AI (hello@monlam.ai)
Hello བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས།
I am a Tibetan language student and I am struggling a lot when I find a word in spoken language that I am unaware of.
Of course it can be joloked, but I thought another good idea is to be able to lookup the word in the dictionary without knowing the spelling.
To me in spoken contexts having a dictionary is useless unless they jolok a lot.
So it would have a lot of value to do searches based on the sound and not the spelling, for example, a spoken word that starts with a sound like ཆ་ (Wylie: cha) would look for ཆ་ (Wylie: cha) and ཕྱ་ (Wylie: phya). So you only have to worry about typing “cha”.
Three of my fellow student friends agreed it would be very useful!
Have you ever thought about this?
To which Kelsang Dolker replied:
བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས། Ramon La,
Thank you so much for writing to us with your thoughtful suggestion regarding word searches in our dictionary. I completely understand your concern, as I personally face similar challenges, and I am sure many others share this experience as well.
Your feedback is highly appreciated, and I will be forwarding it to our tech team for review. While this process might take some time, please rest assured that we are committed to exploring solutions and will keep you updated as progress is made.
My sincere gratitude to you and your friends.
Warm regards
Kelsang
I will keep this post updated.