Go play some language games!

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There are more and more exciting new tools cropping up for scientist to gather data, and in linguistics one new tool such is gaming! We just had a talk here at CoEDL at ANU from a researcher working on mutual intelligibility of closely related european languages - Charlotte Gooskens - where they've been using games to investigate this question. Apropos that, I thought I'd let you all know about some games you can play that can further our understanding of language!

Go play games, for science!

 Mutual understanding between closely related languages-game
As a speaker of a major european language, how good are you at understanding your neighbours? Really... :)?
Link to game.
Link to science behind (don't look before playing!)

LingQuest! How good are you at correctly identifying which language you're hearing?
Test yourself on over 30 European languages and other languages from all over the world. Included are many languages currently under study in the DOBES-program.
Link to newer expanded game (currently only iOS)
Link to original game (all platforms)
Link to science behind (don't look before playing!)

Which English?
Let the Games With Words-people guess what dialect of English you speak, or what your first language is, by answering some quite simple questions
Link to game
Link to science behind (don't look before playing)

Help build an alien language
The people at Language Evolution and Computation (LEC) in Edinburgh are interested in how you can create a communication system, pass it on and how it's changed through repeating this process. Go play!
Link to game
Link to science behind (don't look before playing)

Another recognising languages-game - but this time you can adjust the sample yourself and train yourself!
The people at Maryland Language Science Center are also interested in learning about how well you can recognise languages, and also allow you to train and improve.
Link to game

Want more?
If you want more, check out the other games by the Language in Interaction-Consotirum, Games With Words-lab, explore the LECs website and read posts about games at Replicated Typo!

Comments

  1. andreDecember 21, 2015 at 11:45 PM

    i don't know about other people, but almost none of these games function well in my browsers - there are glitches all over the place. i hope for the sake of these researchers that this doesn't affect their results

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hedvig SkirgårdDecember 21, 2015 at 11:51 PM

      I've had some problems when I haven't updated by java and/or flash, but otherwise it's been fine. Which ones is it you're having problems with and what browsers are you using?

      Delete

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