Nobody likes getting a wrong answer. When you’re using Byki Express or Byki Deluxe to learn a language, you’re bound to get lots of wrong answers, and that’s okay. Byki will take care of you and make sure you know every word and phrase with 100% Perfect Recall by the time you’re finished.
Still. That “wrong-answer” frowny face can ruin your day sometimes. What if you typed an answer that you think is good enough? What if you accidentally typed a stray letter? What if you simply didn’t capitalize your answer, and you don’t care if Byki thinks it’s wrong? Just click the little link below the frowny face:
Accept as Correct
When you do, you’ll get three options:
- Typo. Accept this answer one time only.
- Alternative Answer. Always accept this answer as correct.
- Incorrect Answer. Do not accept this answer.
Use the Typo option when you made an honest-to-goodness mistake. Perhaps you accidentally hit the Z key with your pinky and typed “holza” instead of “hola”. Fine. Mark it as a typo.
Alternative Answer is a little trickier. When you mark what you typed as an alternative answer, Byki will accept it as correct forever after. Therefore, do not mark typos—especially typos you’re likely to repeat—as alternative answers. You don’t want to tell Byki to accept your most common mistakes as correct—if they are truly mistakes. Let’s say, though, you want to type “hi” instead of “hello” as the translation for Spanish “hola,” even though Byki says “hello” is the right answer. Fine. Mark “hi” as an alternative answer. Be careful, though: if you don’t know that your alternative answer is acceptible, you may be learning a bad translation. When in doubt, trust Byki’s exact translations.
Incorrect Answer. It’s obvious enough: you know that the answer you typed was wrong, and you have to admit you goofed. Choose this option. It’ll be fine: Byki will make sure you don’t see that wretched frowny face very often again.
Tip: You can tell Byki to ignore capital letters and punctuation in typed answers (thus “good evening” will be accepted for “Good evening.”), but only for English. You’ll have to type exactly what’s on the card when you’re producing a foreign language.
4 Comments
I am really enjoying the new BYKI Deluxe 4.0 Hindi. I ESPECIALLY like being able to measure my pronunciation against that of native speakers. This is a huge bonus and the many new tests and games are great helps to long-term imprinting of the vocabulary. Well done to all involved.
I do have a question, though. There is great inconsistency in spelling, and no reasons or explanations are given for the variations.
For example, in one list there is
राजमार्ग पर चलते रहिए। and सीधे चलते रहिये।
And in either case, if the alternate spelling is used, the user is told that the answer is incorrect.
Similarly, in one list there is एक आदमी के लिए and in another कमरा एक रात के लिये
And again, in each instance, use of the alternate spelling is marked as incorrect. Now I realise that it is easy to tell the software that the alternates are acceptable, but the completely arbitrary, random and apparently capricious nature of the choices made seems puzzling. When I asked about this in a Hindi help forum, I received this answer:
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the former (रहिए) is the preferred spelling now by many writers. Rajbhasha committee (Hindi Varani Samiti) - the last major effort for standardization of Hindi spelling that happened sometime in 70s - also recommends the former forms:
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Rule 8 forbids the use of glidal य-व where it is optional. This prohibition is applicable in respect of all types of words in all cases e.g. दिखाए गए, राम के लिए, पुस्तक लिए हुए, नई दिल्ली.
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For more: http://www.giitaayan.com/hindispelling.asp
Regardless, neither of the forms are deemed incorrect or out of usage as yet.
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. I asked the person who answered my question “if i understand this correctly your saying that neither is actually wrong and the makers of the software should be allowing either spelling in each case rather than insisting that only one is correct in each situation?” and their response was “Yes. To say that one spelling is right and the other is wrong in certain circumstances is ridiculous.”
I would be very interested to hear if there is any method and reason behind the selection of the variant spellings, and also why the software INSISTS that one is right in a given sentence and wrong in another, while the other is wrong in one and right in another. The fact that the user can instruct the software to accept either does not really address the core issue, because there is a good chance that many users may not know enough about Hindi to challenge the software and may just blindly accept what it says, despite the seeming illogicality of the inconsistent spelling choices the software tries to impose.
Are there any keyboard short-cuts for these?
Thank you for the feedback and close attention to detail!
When translating an English sentence into any language, there are many things to take into consideration, and there are often several different ways of translating a sentence. I don’t know why the translator made this particular choice, but it was not the intention of our sotware to punish the user for knowing an alternate translation or spelling. We will look into adding an alternative answer to this in our software.
Please also note that, in addition to adding alternative answers when you are in written mode in BYKI, you can also add alternative answers in the BYKI ‘edit’ tab.
As far as I know, there are no keyboard shortcuts for dealing with incorrect answers.