Help the dictionary from wherever you are (Indigen World 0.1.29)

The dictionary used to go quiet when it did not know a word. Now, wherever you meet a word it is still missing — scrolling Explore, searching the dictionary, browsing a topic, asking Kawuri — you can answer it in a couple of taps and follow your answer through review. And Kawuri can now run short practice lessons built only from verified words.

What is new at a glance

• Words that need you, in Explore. Now and then a card asks whether you know a word the dictionary is missing.
• Every door leads to the same word. A search that finds nothing, a topic page and Kawuri all offer Help add this word, and they all open the same question.
• Answer first, sign in after. Write your answer, then sign in to send it. Nothing is sent until you tap Send.
• Submitted for review, and you can follow it: corrections, duplicates and what your answer became are all in Your submissions.
• Your name, your choice. Choose whether you are credited by name, and whether your answer may help train language tools.
• Practise with Kawuri. Short lessons from verified words and from Explore posts, with clear next steps.

Words that need you, in Explore

Thousands of English words are waiting for somebody to say them in Kasem. Now some of them find you. Every so often, as you scroll Explore, a small card appears at the top of a reel: Do you know “girl” in Kasem?, with the sentence the word is used in.

It is occasional on purpose — after a few reels, and not more than three times a visit. If you scroll on, it goes. If you tap ×, that word will not be offered again on your phone. Tap Answer it and the word opens, ready for your answer.

Search, topics and Kawuri lead to the same word

Search the dictionary for an English word it does not have yet, and instead of a dead end you now see Help add this word.

The dictionary also has topics now: open the dictionary, choose Browse, and the subjects run along the top — farming, food and cooking, family, animals and more. A topic page shows the verified words filed under it, the English words people are asking for, and a box for a word that is missing. Reviewers file words under topics as they check them, so the lists fill up over time.

When Kawuri cannot find a word in the dictionary, it says so — and the word appears under its answer with a Help add button. If somebody has already sent a translation that is waiting for a reviewer, Kawuri tells you that too, without repeating it: an answer nobody has checked is never passed off as Kasem.

However you get there, the same English word always opens the same question, so the answers people give from Explore, search, a topic or Kawuri all reach one reviewer together. More than one person can answer the same word.

Answer first, sign in after

You do not need to sign in to look at a word or to write your answer. When you tap Sign in to send, you sign in and come straight back to your answer, exactly as you left it. Then you tap Send yourself — the app never sends anything on your behalf.

After sending you see Submitted for review. A reviewer reads every answer before anybody else sees it, and Follow it in Your submissions takes you to the list where its status changes as it is reviewed.

If a reviewer asks for a change

Reviewers can now send an answer back with a note — a missing tone mark, a spelling to check. It appears in Your submissions under Needs changes, with Correct your answer. Your earlier answer is already filled in, so a one-letter correction is one letter. It goes back to the reviewers in the same place.

If your answer repeats a word the dictionary already has, the reviewer can say which, and you can open that word from your list. And once an answer is approved, the list tells you what it became.

Your name, your choice

Two switches sit at the bottom of every answer, and they stay as you set them:

• Credit me by name when it is published. On by default. Turn it off and your answer is credited to “an Indigen World contributor”.
• Also let it help test and train language tools. Off unless you turn it on. Even then, only after a reviewer has approved the answer — and it is never published for that purpose. Withdraw the answer from Your submissions and that permission goes with it.

What a reviewer can decide

Not every answer is a new dictionary word. It might be a regional way of saying a word the dictionary already has, a saying, or a lovely example sentence. Reviewers now decide what each answer becomes:

• a dictionary word, as before;
• a regional variant of a word already in the dictionary, marked with the region it comes from;
• an expression, published with the other everyday expressions;
• an example sentence for a word;
• a translation pair — an English sentence and its Kasem — for lessons and Kawuri;
• training material, kept for testing and training language tools and never published, and only if you agreed.

Wherever an answer ends up, where it came from travels with it, and you are credited the way you chose.

Practise with Kawuri

Open a word in the dictionary and tap Practise with Kawuri. Kawuri introduces the word, then asks you three short questions and checks your answers against the dictionary — only the spellings the dictionary holds count as right.

You can start a lesson from Explore too: open a reel's details and tap Practise with Kawuri. The reel gives the lesson its topic, and Kawuri teaches the verified dictionary words that go with it. A post's own Kasem has not been checked by the dictionary's reviewers, so if Kawuri mentions it, it says so.

When the lesson ends you choose what next: save the word, read its full entry, answer a word for the dictionary, or ask Kawuri something else.

Also in this update

Version 0.1.29 is also the first to bring the changes described in Explore keeps your place, and My Space gets simpler: Explore returns to the reel you left and no longer reshuffles, double-tap to appreciate, My Space as You, Membership and Settings, and saved words that follow your account.

Getting the update

Indigen World 0.1.29 is for Android. Update from Google Play; it can take a day or two to reach every phone. Your saved words, keeps, likes, submissions and membership carry over as they are.