If only Bescherelle was a program

September 10, 2009 8:06 PM

Verb conjugation tester for OSX?

Are there any verb conjugation testers for OSX, whereby the question is either "fill in all the blanks to this verb table" or "2nd person plural of verb x" (etc.)?

I've tried repurposing flashcard programs for this, but having to have one card per conjugation (i.e. a card for 1st person singular, card for 2nd person singular etc. of the same verb) is really wearing and not the way I want to be able to do this.

I've got French Verb Games, but it's not doing what I want it to do - the question shows an entire verb table with one blank (allowing me to figure out the answer rather then know it), and the tests include hundreds of verbs I don't know rather than testing me on what I do know.

I would therefore prefer to input the verb tables myself.

I'm more than happy to accept a non-GUI Ruby, Python etc. script for this.

posted by djgh to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Yes, I wrote just such a thing last year. It is a non-GUI python script which takes a big .csv file of verbs (which I make in Excel). It then tests you with a prompt like "avoir, présent: tu " and you have to fill in the rest of the verb. At the beginning, you can enter a pattern (e.g. "ler") to select a subset of verbs to test (appeler, modeler, aller). You can also select a subset of tenses. Then you can have the program go through each verb in order (je, tu...) or randomly test you on different verbs/persons/tenses from amongst your selection.

It doesn't currently have any real way of scoring, though it does of course tell you whether each answer is right or wrong. So you have to keep yourself honest.

I have put the program (conjugationtest.py), plus the Excel and csv files that I use here. If you find them useful or need any help getting them going, mefimail me.
posted by beniamino at 1:24 AM on September 11, 2009

PS Le Monde has a random-verb conjugation tester too, though it's not all that flexible: See 'Verb at random, here.
posted by beniamino at 1:28 AM on September 11, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks beniamino, that's fantastic.
posted by djgh at 1:36 PM on September 11, 2009