What are you making?
We are making a Spanish language learning game for Android tablets, using the Minspeak system as a basis for interaction with the game space.
Why are you making a Spanish language package?
Spanish is spoken natively by nearly 30 million Americans. And is spoken by about 500 million people worldwide, by more people than speak English. The three predominant languages in the world currently are Chinese, Spanish, and English, in that order.
Aren’t there tens of thousands of words in any given language? How can you hope to make a dent?
We are focusing on “Core Vocabulary.” This is a frequency-based word list that shows the 200 most commonly used words in a language. These make up more than 80% of words used in daily practice. For instance, The word “we” is far more important to know than the word “tangerine.”
What is Minspeak?
Minspeak is a communication system developed by Semantic Compaction Systems for people with communication limiting disabilities. It uses a static keyboard to link strings of icons together to create words. This minimizes the number of keystrokes to generate a word, while creating a language map that can be easily memorized.
Why use Minspeak?
The Minspeak system allows us several benefits. First, motor planning (sometimes referred to as muscle memory) can be used to create mental shortcuts to concepts. Second, since the player is not directly spelling the words, there is an amount of automatic error-proofing. Third, it allows us to map interactions one-to-one with the concepts involved in creating a word in a foreign language
When can I get it?
Unfortunately since SpeakEasy is a prototype, and a potential nucleus of a consumer product, it is not available to the general public.
Why a Tablet?
The tablet form factor allows us to make use of a touch interface with a relatively large screen size. This is an ideal combination for the Minspeak system, and for direct interaction in a game.
Who is this for?
In this case the hardware helped choose the demographic. Young adults are the primary demographic for tablets.
How complete will this be?
We will be creating a proof of concept with an introduction to the Minspeak system, the game system, and a few closed classes of words.