How The Maltese Version Of Wordle Can Make Maltese Spelling Great Again

0
1403

Just as Wordle was taking the world by storm, the news of its creator selling the mobile game to the New York Times promptly came through our feeds. Sad? A little bit, yeah, because the New York Times model is to make everything subscription-based. So, while Wordle will remain free for now, it’s like to change in the near future. However, Maltese people and anyone fascinated by the Maltese language will be happy with the prospect of a Maltese version of the game remaining free, as Werdil creator Michael Pulis told us.

Making use of Ġabra’s platform

The key to creating a Maltese word game is having access to something that can generate a random selection of Maltese words. Helping Pulis was the platform Ġabra. As proclaimed on the website, “Ġabra is a free, open lexicon for Maltese, built by collecting various different lexical resources into one common database”. By no means is it a complete Maltese dictionary, but it’s still got almost 20,000 entries and four and a half million inflectional word forms.

Pretty Good GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY

“Ġabra’s dataset was clearly designed with the intention of being easily integrated into projects like this one”, Pulis tells us. “I would like to thank the people who worked on creating it and making it publicly available, as the project would not be possible without them!”, he also said. So, how did it all come together, we ask?

“I was mainly motivated by wanting to play a Maltese version of Wordle, and after finding that there wasn’t one available, I worked on building it mostly as a hobby over a couple of days”, he reveals. Not having to come up with the idea from scratch and having the dictionary ready-made, most of the heavy lifting was done. “It was an open-source project code, so people from the coding community contributed with improvements too (special thanks goes to Franco, Liam and Sean!).

Making education fun again?

If there’s one critique that can be levelled at us Maltese, it’s how laidback we are when it comes to our own language; we’re happy to let spelling mistakes slide if it makes communication easier or faster. Exposed to the same errors over time has meant that the knowledge of what is correct and what’s not has dropped to some new lows. Could Werdil be a tool that revives interest in writing Maltese correctly once again?

Pulis thinks that it can. “The original purpose was not educational, but the truth is I’ve learned the correct spelling for some words I thought I knew, as well as learning a few new words simply by playing the game”. There’s more to it though; the dictionary system being used for Wedil includes how common the words are, so eventually, a difficulty-based system can be introduced, allowing users to play at levels they’re comfortable with before moving on to bigger and bolder challenges.

Given the success Wordle has enjoyed, and its subsequent seven-figure sale to the New York Times, does Pulis think Werdil could reach the same digits? With a laugh and a wry smile, Pulis insists that the idea was just for fun: “I have no intention of monetising it; the original idea wasn’t mine, so it will remain out there for people to enjoy.”

Fancy yourself as a Maltese lingual expert or you just want a new challenge? Head to Werdil and try your luck!

SHARE