Bug 164872

Version:           parley 0.9.0 (using KDE 4.0.3)
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

I enjoy using Parley, but it is a great chore to enter all the data for the conjugation lists. This is something I would like to practice more, but because of the dreariness of the task I usually don't enter the data. I was wondering if it were possible to modify the program so that it can follow a regular pattern of conjugation. For example, the languages I am studying are Spanish, French, and Portuguese. They all have a pattern for regular verbs. For instance, Spanish -ar verbs such as hablar conjugate to hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablais, and hablan. So if you could create a program that would allow me to register hablar as an -ar verb that would follow a regular pattern, that would help me immensely.

Now I am just an end user, so I don't much about how technical the programming would be, but this is how I imagine it: in the edit entry window there would be a place to define the verb as a regular -ar verb. Parley would then know how to conjugate it because I have already defined the pattern that a regular -ar verb follows in a new dialog box that would be created in the grammar window. In the grammar window there would have to be created a dialog box that where verb patterns are established. Here it would ask for the infinitive endings of the verb class defined. So that I would put "ar" in the box, and then for the 1st person singular "o", 2nd per. "as", 3rd per. "a",... etc. That way, Parley could be programmed so that every word that I define as a verb, and that ends with "ar", would automatically be conjugated according to the preset pattern as long as I mark it regular in the conjugation dialog box. So in Spanish I could define three types of verbs: -ar, -er, -ir. French would have -er, -ir, and -re. German could have -en, and -n, and so forth with the many languages.

Then after that there are irregular verbs that follow the same pattern, but have a stem change. That is probably another level of complexity to deal with, but I would like to see the capacity to enter those stem changes in and just define an irregular verb as one with that stem change. Anyways, I got a lot of these ideas from Kverbos for Spanish verbs. I think it would be a great addition to Parley if it could also be able to build conjugation tables from just a few simple patterns that most verbs seem to follow in many languages.