Commons:Story (game) - multilingual interdisciplinary collaborative work

short link to this page: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/project:rakonto
omegawiki.org DefinedMeaning's : story (game) - multilingual interdisciplinary collaborative work

Why develop a multilingual game in a collaborative work?

What is illiteracy?

Some weeks ago I was involved in a discussion with the general manager of an internet café. We where talking about an article in the newspaper. Finally I told him: "You may read in my newspaper." His answer was: "I can not read." I was thinking about his answer and did understand that he can not read in Latin script. Of course he could read in Arabic, Urdu and other languages of his country of origin.
On the 20th of October the Munich Museum of film presented the best available copy of « Yidl Mitn Fidl » « ייִדל מיטן פֿידל » a musical film in Yiddish made in 1936. People laughed many times during this comedy. It was very silent when headlines of Yiddish newspapers where shown. There where two scenes where handwritten text was displayed. I wished the first time I have made my homework during the last three years.
Why we should be able to present some interesting material which relates to languages? One could offer both transliterations and translations wherever is a need for this.

to be continued

Participants

Participants in alphabetical order:

...
user:Gangleri The transcription of « לערי ריינהארט is « 'lɛʁi 'ʁɑjnhɑʁt » .

Language starter kit

Beside visual / illustrative methods we use our language to communicate. Language communication is "linear ". In order to present / explain a complex topic one can use a story.
The stories developed so far try to represent some universes of different children. The stories use objects such as the main reference persons, the closest beings to the center of the universe, the child itself.
At an early age a child has learned about umbrella terms / hypernyms and can use descriptive sentences about itself and the reference persons.
Because the game is related to most-perfect magical squares where objects are ordered in four rows and four columns the presentation of the rules are related to a special property of such squares of order four:

Each field (value) in such a square (there are 384 different ones) is surrounded always by four other fields (values) only. The squares are hypersymmetrical; neither a field nor an arangment is priviledged.

Preparation

Please make a printout of a language kit of your choice as a language kit in German ^deu, a language kit in Esperanto ^epo, a language kit in Romanian ^ron, a language kit in Russian ^rus, a language kit in Yiddish ^ydd etc. and one of the pattern file:Rakonto 01.png ^{pattern 01}. Because most scripts have an orientation (some aboriginal drawings have none) the orientation will be preserved if you cut the borders. However if cut the border around the pattern file:Rakonto 01.png ^{pattern 01} orientation will be lost. In the following, the original orientation of the pattern file:Rakonto 01.png ^{pattern 01} does not matter anyway. For example one could use also a printout of file:Rakonto 01 mirrored.png ^{pattern 01 mirrored}.

Because of these properties, one cuts the 16 "cards" from a language kit and groups them as follows:
a) one card (A): the center of the universe / the main person / player in the story; normally a translation of the English word "I";
b) four cards (B, C, D, E): the reference persons / objects of the story;
c) six cards (F, G, H, I, J, K): the cards related to either umbrella terms / hypernyms or mentioning two reference persons / objects;
d) five cards (L, M, N, O, P): the cards mentioning either the center of the universe or one reference person / object only;

Introduction

One should present the story to the child. In order not to focus the attention on the positions where the cards are laid the first time one should explain that not individual positions are important: Important is only the understanding of the classification of the cards and the actual relations between the cards. The goal is to arrange the 16 cards in order in such a way that at the end the cards will build a square with four raws and four columns.

i) Put the card about child / the main persons of the story (the card A) in the middle of the table.
ii) Explain that the closest beings are always near the child; the positions of the four cards B, C, D, E will be left, right, above und underneith card A.
iii) Now focus your attention on the six cards, F, G, H, I, J, K. Four of them can be placed in such a way that they are "neighbours" to the two reference persons / objects mentioned in that card. Keep the dialog to the child in order to assure that he / she understands that the cards need to be placed in such a way that the arrangement reflects relations. Now you should have nine cards on your table, forming three rows and three collumns. Two cards are left. They refer to either of the two cards left and right of the center or to the two cards above and underneath the center. Choose the one that refers to the two cards left and right of the center. Place it in either of the two positions left of the center or the two positions right of the center. The last card refers to the two cards above and underneath the center. Place it in either of the two positions above the center or two positions underneath the center.
You are almost finished. Please explain again that a primary goal is to form a square with four rows and four columns.
iv) Five cards (L, M, N, O, P) are left. They mention either the child / the center of the universe or one reference person / object only. The position of each of these five cards will be related to the mentioned being / object. So you need to locate that position first. Place each card in such a way that it will be two positions away from the identified position on a diagonal line.

If you made two printouts of your original language kit you can compare whether you achieved the same arrangement or not. Do not worry if your new arrangement does not match the original. Now you may stick your arrangement on the back site of your printout of file:Rakonto 01.png. Please remember that the orientation of file:Rakonto 01.png does not matter at all.

Now cut the square again. Mix the cards. The child / you may rebuild a most perfect magical square by rearanging the cards while repeating the story or according to the instructions from i) to iv) and turning all cards afterwards.

Rearrangements / redistributions of the cards

Properties of file:Rakonto 01.png

The examples at Vollkommen perfektes magisches Quadrat#Beispiele are using numbers from the unicode basic latin block, whereas file:Rakonto 01.png is only using patterns. Beside one empty card / field at file:Rakonto 01.png the rest contain between one and fifteen colored circles. The circles are arranged in such a way that the pattern on each card / field is without any orientation.

One can see that each card is unique.

One can see that half of the cards contain a group of eight blue circles situated outmost.

One can see that half of the cards contain a black circle situated in the middle.

One can see that half of the cards contain two green circles.

One can see that half of the cards contain a group of four red circles.

One can see that the number of circles for each pair of cards located on a diagonal with a distance of two will always be 15; only one of them will contain a black circle, only one of them will contain the group of green circles, only one will contain the group of red circles and only one will contain the group of blue circles.

Looking at file:Rakonto 01.png one will see that each row and each column contain exactly

two black circles

two times the group of two green circles

two times the group of four red circles

two times the group of eight blue circles

Vollkommen perfektes magisches Quadrat#Beispiele illustrates that one can perpetuate the pattern of an most-perfect magical square horizontally and vertically and that each adjacent subset of four rows and four columns is also a most-perfect magical square. This is important in order to address the properties of the diagonals and of the adjacent subsets of the squares with two rows and two columns.
Looking at file:Rakonto 01.png one will see that each diagonal (also the broken diagonals) and each of the adjacent subsets of squares with two rows and two column contain exactly: i. two black circles ii. two times the group of two green circles iii. two times the group of four red circles iv. two times the group of eight blue circles Note: There are other groups of four cards containing these combinations.

Simple rearrangements / redistributions of the cards

One should explain to the child about basic rearagments / redistributions of the cards that are valid for every magic square: A magic square can be "rotated or transposed, or flipped so that the order of rows is reversed"; see the (classical) definition of "essentially different" magical squares.
Beside these eight rearrangements / redistributions most-perfect magical square allow also shifting / moving / gemetrical translation along either the horizontal axis, or the vertical axis, or one of the main diagonals.
You may have noticed that no restrictions have been made on how your initial square is looking alike. It is important to know that different rearrangements / redistributions can be done consecutively.

Example: Take the uppermost row and append it to the bottom. Take the leftmost column and put it at the right of the rightmost column. The combination of these two rearagments / redistributions is identical to a shifting / moving / geometrical translation along the main diagonal starting at the uppermost and leftmost card / field and ending at the rightmost card / field in the bottom line.

to be continued

Media (examples)

short link: c:project:rakonto#media_examples
2009.11.05 : Media made by Gerald Ettl (a chess problem expert) and Gangleri. Thanks a lot Gerald!

file:rakonto 01 epo.ogg in Esperanto

file:rakonto 02 ron.ogg in Romanian

file:rakonto 03 deu.ogg in German

rakonto 04 eng.wmv in English

rakonto 05 deu.wmv in German

file:rakonto 06 deu.ogg in German

file:rakonto 07 eng.ogg in English

file:rakonto 08 eng.ogg in English

file:rakonto 09 deu.ogg in German

file:rakonto 10 eng.ogg in English

2009.11.19-21 : Media made by Gerald Ettl (a chess problem expert) and Gangleri. Thanks a lot Gerald!

file:rakonto 11 epo.ogg in Esperanto

file:rakonto 12 epo.ogg in Esperanto

file:rakonto 13 epo.ogg in Esperanto

file:rakonto 15 epo.ogg in Esperanto

file:rakonto 16 epo.ogg in Esperanto

‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 02:54, 4 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your involvement

You may start with a copy of any of the pages listed at en:special:PrefixIndex/user:Gangleri/tests/sandbox/squares/rakonto. ...

to be continued

Available soon

file:Rakonto fra 01.png language kit in French. Merci beaucoup xonique pour en:user:Gangleri/tests/sandbox/squares/rakonto fra !
file:Rakonto eng 01.png language kit in English see en:user:Gangleri/tests/sandbox/squares/rakonto eng
file:Rakonto sqi 01.png language kit in Albanian see en:user:Gangleri/tests/sandbox/squares/rakonto sqi
file:Rakonto lat 01.png language kit in Latin see en:user:Gangleri/tests/sandbox/squares/rakonto lat

Historical issues

to be continued

Grants

For me all started with a note: "... a young man has discovered the amazing properties of magic squares. Padmakumar, an honorary fellow in the State Science, Technology and Environment Department (STED) for the last 11 years, has published the wonderful properties of the magic square called ‘Sri Rama Chakra’ in the international mathematical journal, ‘Fibonacci Quarterly’ in August 1997." See DSpace at Cochin University record ^{google search}

to be continued

Last news

2015.08.04

[[:Template:Rakonto]]

Looking at file:Albrecht Dürer - Melencolia I (detail).jpg and reminding the work of Amit6 at file:Abstrakt.svg it was possible to create file:Albrecht Dürer - Melencolia I (abstrakt detail).svg making the following changes to the 4x4 square file:Abstrakt.svg:

exchanged cell 3,3 with cell 4,4

exchanged cell 3,4 with cell 4,3

exchanged cell 1,3 with cell 1,4

exchanged cell 2,3 with cell 2,4

exchanged cell 3,1 with cell 4,1

exchanged cell 3,2 with cell 4,2

The modified svg files contain now the patterns of these 4x4 types squares and include comments and hints for the transformation between File:Abstrakt.svg (for en:Most-perfect magic square) and the related/corresponding generic/abstract/general pattern of File:Albrecht Dürer - Melencolia I (abstrakt detail).svg like 4x4 squares

2009.11.06

http://www.geocities.com/~harveyh/ has moved. The new location is http://www.magic-squares.net/ .

Facebook: group Magic Squares

2009.11.08 — Sabine Eller; Heroid Shehu

topic Rakonto - a card game related to the Most Perfect Magical Square at Vox Humanitatis

2009.11.08

LibraryThing: topic collaborative work on Paul Erdős at group Collaborative work

Facebook: group I wish I had an Erdös number! (I'm a Math lover)

2009.11.23

Thread:Help request and invitation to a multilingual collaborative game (1)

2009.12.19

I received 30 copies of

T.V.Padmakumar, Number Theory and Magic Squares, Sura books, India, 2008, 128 pages, ISBN 978-81-8449-321-4

and could contact the author

Last change

‫·‏לערי ריינהארט‏·‏T‏·‏m‏:‏Th‏·‏T‏·‏email me‏·‏‬ 20:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Commons:Story (game) - multilingual interdisciplinary collaborative work

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