Words seem central to Inglua. But what the site really revolves around is something different: Meanings. That may sound like a fairly meaningless distinction, and most of the time it is. Words like ‘apple’ or ‘heart’ have simple, clear meanings. They correspond precisely with words in other languages.
But sometimes there’s a huge discrepancy between words and meanings. Recently I’ve finally brought myself to clean up the spaghetti of meanings that I had filed under the name “fuerza”. It concerns a cluster of fourteen different meanings that are translated with “power” in English or “fuerza” in Spanish. In English, these meanings are usually translated with “force”, “strength” or “power”. You can even use them in a single sentence:
“Projecting Air Power is the Air Force’s biggest strength.”
In this case, it seems that every meaning is translated by a unique combination of words. For instance, while “fuerza” in Spanish is usually translated by “Kraft” in German, there is one case where the correct translation is “Stärke”. And while the most frequent translations are “power” (English), “fuerza” (Spanish), “kracht” (Dutch), “Kraft” (German) and “force” (French), there is no single meaning tht combines these five words.
This makes it hard to lump meanings together, since a meaning is defined by having a unique combination of translations. Let me give an example.
If I were to add a new language Fringlish, and Fringlish had two words for “apple”: “grapple” for green apples, and “rapple” for red apples.
Now I’d need to split the meaning “apple” in two. Otherwise I couldn’t teach you, suppose you were learning Fringlish, when to use “rapple”, and when to use “grapple”. And languages without such a distinction (such as English) would need examples to tell these meanings apart. E.g. “APPLE: Bob stole a shiny green apple from his neighbor Ina.”
So if you’re French and you’re learning German, we cannot ask you to translate “puissance” in German. We’d have to add: “PUISSANCE: La Brittannie était une puissance maritime.” Or: “PUISSANCE: L’unité de puissance est le watt.” And only then could you decide between “Macht” and “Leistung”.
This is the reason that Inglua doesn’t use one of the many word lists floating around on the internet. They’re based on words, not on meanings. And that makes all the difference.
