I defended my diploma. Theme: "A spell checking module for Iradi in Latin script for OpenOffice". It knows 41,000 words and it does not know swear words, the commission laughed at that. Mark: excellent!
Thank you to my supervisor, and to my mother who made me 1,000 cups of tea.
We rehearsed the diploma defence in front of the supervisor. Ten minutes for a talk. I used eleven and a half. She wrote on my sheet "FASTER" and underlined it three times.
The best question from the rehearsal: "And what will your program do when someone writes a word that does not exist?" My answer: "Offer them a similar one." She said: "That is also the answer to many things in life."
The diploma project is a spell checker for Iradi in Latin script. The program is easy. The words are the problem. Where do you find a list of 41,000 correct Iradi words?
My answer: three places. The library's old dictionary (with a coffee stain on page 214), the archive of the Talas Herald (which uses every word and spells half of them in a new way), and my grandmother, who knows all the old words and corrects me every time I use the new ones.
The program now knows "kuyrukchu", "chaikana" and "jaanyshyp". It does not yet know "bekzhan", which is a problem for the blog.
Today is Nooruz. My mother cooked all night, and the neighbours came with bowls and went away with bowls, nothing is ever the same bowl. It was cold outside but the sun was warm, and after the winter that feels like a gift.
Grandmother said: "This year the spring is a promise." I wrote it on my hand so I would not forget it.
Last night the lights came on at 6 and did not go off until 11. All the neighbours stood outside and looked at the windows. Someone clapped. I think someone also sang.
We charged everything. We cooked on the electric ring. My sister washed her hair and stood in front of the heater for two hours with her mouth open. Do not tell her I wrote this.