Whilst working hard on fixing the final bugs, the DOMA team indulged in a quick round of the board game Scrabble. Given we are working on a Spanish Verb Conjugation game, we chose the Spanish version which is called Intelect in Spain due to licensing laws.
My Spanish is not yet perfect, and I wanted to double check the spelling of the past subjunctive of “oír” (to hear). Our game allows you to search for verbs using the infinitive. There isn’t much I could spell incorrectly with “oír” – or so I thought. Still, the game didn’t find “oír”. We were flabbergasted. What had happened?
It turns out that the search insisted on the accent above the “í”!
What is the size of the issue?
Of our game’s over 3,600 verbs, there are only 9!
They have one thing in common: they have a hiatus. What is a hiatus?
Spanish has strong vowels and weak vowels. The“a”, “e” and “o” are strong vowels. The “i” and “u” are weak vowels. When a strong vowel and a weak vowel are combined they can either form a dipthong or a hiatus. In a dipthong, the vowels are combined to be pronounced as a single sound. In a hiatus, the vowels are pronounced separately. To indicate that the vowels should be pronounced separately – a hiatus – the weak vowel is accented. In the example “oír”, you pronounce it “o-ír”, and “reír” is pronounced “re-ír”.
The full list includes:
| desleír | to dilute |
| desoír | to ignore |
| engreírse | to become conceited |
| entreoír | to half-hear |
| freír | to fry |
| oír | to hear |
| reír | to laugh |
| sofreír | to sauté |
| sonreír | to smile |
This issue is now fixed. You can now search for “oír” by typing “oir”. However, once this issue was fixed, we realised there may be other potential, similar issues. Fortunately, there are no verbs with “ú”, but there is the “ñ” character. You may want to search by just typing “n”. And, guess what? We have 53 verb infinitives with the “ñ” character. So, we’ve fixed that issue too. You can now search for “bañar” by typing “banar”.
In other news: our new design is being applied as we speak and our first Alpha version should be released next week! Go team DOMA!
If you want to sign up for the Alpha version, email us at info@doma.games or enter your details into the early access form below.
What are you waiting for?
Sign up today!
UPDATE: The game is live and you can download it here:
