So I wrote another limerick game in 4 hours for ECTOCOMP, and I used Rhyme Ninja to help. I still ended up using Rhymezone and thesaurus.com as well, because I haven’t implemented any way to filter out rare words from Rhyme Ninja yet, and also the “related words” data I get from the Datamuse API isn’t synonyms per se. If I want to turn Rhyme Ninja into my one-stop shop for limerick assistance, I’ll need to add those two features.
That said, Rhyme Ninja was still helpful for generating rhyming word sets! I ended up using 3 or 4 great rhymes it suggested, my favorite of which is
That ought to be pretty straightforward - easier than English, actually, because Spanish is phonetic. All I need is a big list of Spanish words, and a way to filter out the rare ones. Like, on rimar.io when you give it “amor”, if you untick the “Palabras raras” tickybox, it filters out stuff like “azamor, chimor, memor, alamor, chemor, marmor, cundeamor, mor., montemor, elbiamor”. There are a lot of those, and they really clutter things up if the big list of words contains rare words like that.
For English I use two word frequency lists and a lemma dictionary for word forms; do you know of anything like that for Spanish that is freely licensed? I found a Spanish word frequency list but it’s only 8600 words, and that’s probably not enough to be useful.
I might not need a lemma dictionary for Spanish because, except for irregular verbs, all word forms are consistent, so I could probably find or implement a Spanish word form generator/identifier algorithmically. I would need all the irregular verb forms, though.
I went ahead and made a Spanish front end. The output is completely wrong due to lack of the Spanish word list, but I’ve refactored the back end to be multilingual, so it’ll be ready as soon as we can find the data we need.
Also, I’m sure there are many mistakes or awkward phrasings in my poor Spanish. For instance, I’m sure there’s a better way to say “Conjuntos de rimas relacionadas con”. When you notice them, would you be so kind as to fix them or let me know so I can fix them? Thanks!
Thanks, I have little time to take a deep look to all this to be helpful, but I will spread the word and point to the thread, just in case someone could help. I will be back next week!
Progress report: I’ve been working on getting rid of bad rhymes and increasing good rhymes. The pronunciation dictionary has some quirks to it, such as
curry [K AH1 R IY0] / hurry [HH ER1 IY0]
ear [IY R] / beer [B IH R]
illicit [IH2 L IH1 S AH0 T] solicit [S AH0 L IH1 S IH0 T]
faring [F EH1 R IY0 NG] / glaring [G L EH1 R IH0 NG]
caught [K AA1 T] / fought [F AO1 T]
bong [B AA1 NG] / song [S AO1 NG]
but NOT bar [B AA1 R] / score [S K AO1 R], so we leave it alone if it’s followed by R
Rhyme Ninja now does a preprocessing step to dwim these differences, so now curry rhymes with hurry, ear rhymes with beer, etc.
The first example I gave in this thread was
RHYME NINJA
Rhyming word sets that are related to animal :
bovine / canine / equine
cats / rats
dog / hog
dog / hog / wild dog
livestock / stock
Now it does much better. It doesn’t give bovine / canine / equine, since those rhymes aren’t on the primary syllable, and it does give some good ones that it didn’t give before, like:
RHYME NINJA
Rhyming word sets that are related to animal
bitten / kitten
cetacean / coloration / communication / conservation / domestication / experimentation / inoculation / liberation / predation / respiration / vaccination / vegetation
claws / jaws / paws
fauna / iguana
otter / slaughter
Auto-detect syllable boundaries for better identical-rhyme detection
Now we correctly identify the following as identical rhymes,
and exclude them:
confide / defied
side / beside / alongside
complied / applied
spectre / inspector
supplemented / fermented
bone / trombone
promising / unpromising
stand / understand
sanitation / temptation
healthy / unhealthy
contamination / condemnation
This gets rid of the biggest cause of bad rhyme suggestions. It doesn’t yet filter out pairs or sets that contain only identical rhymes, but that’ll be an easy fix, probably later today.
As a side note, does anyone know of any other forums/communities that might be interested in Rhyme Ninja? Y’all have been super supportive and encouraging and I appreciate you - and I realize that this is irrelevant to most IF authors (:
I’m finding Rhyme Ninja very useful, since I too am experimenting with writing IF in verse. I’ve also shared it with my friend Loz, who a few weeks ago suddenly decided to write a musical.
Perhaps the identical rhymes could be put at the bottom of the list, as a last resort. Even the best poets are not above using them occasionally:
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—
Though for Dickinson, rhyme is more an optional extra than a serious desideratum. Of these six rhymes, four are so sub-par that they hardly qualify as rhymes:
My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Opon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master’s Head -
’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I’m deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die -
(To avoid giving the wrong impression, let me stress that Dickinson is my favourite poet when it comes to shorter verse.)
I’m glad you’re finding it useful, and I hope Loz does too! For folks not on this forum, there’s a github on which to report issues.
I’ve added the suggestion about identical rhymes to my feature request list. I’ll make an additional section like “For the desperate” but instead it’ll be “For the brazen” (:
I’m done with Rhyme Ninja! Hosting is $13/mo, so I’m gonna let it expire soon. If anyone wants to take it over, everything you need is on the github! If anyone has any last-minute questions or documentation requests, now’s the time!
Thanks! And no worries! I’m not done due to lack of positive feedback, I’m done because I’m a serial monogamist when it comes to creative projects, and the next one is calling my name. (It’s a book of spiritual limericks.)
Of these six rhymes, four are so sub-par that they hardly qualify as rhymes: