Rotokas Per Letter Entropy

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Rotokas

Rotokas is a language spoken by about 4,300 people on Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea. It has one of the smallest letter inventories of any language–12. (It is also the language with the fewest sounds – 11 phonemes. )Take the following Rotokas Text or find some on your own on the Web. Compute the frequencies of the letters in the text (this tool might be helpful- or write one of your own). Assume they are true probabilities.

1. What is the entropy of Rotokas? (It is probably fastest to write a script to do this – my rough Python script is about 10 lines)
2. Compute the entropy of a similar sized sample of another language (note that the tool above only computes the frequencies of the letters a-z). How do they compare?
3. Submit a quick summary of what you found to submit.o.bot@gmail.com. Subject CompLing Rotokas.

 

 

Why dogs don’t talk

Gaurai raga oisoa  toupareve vegoaro. Vaiterei  kaakau vaio rera  vaitereiaro taporo oisoa toupareve.

Rera  raga oisoa toupareve uva  viapau oisoa rorupareve.

Viapau irai  oiratoavai  ra irai tapo orareoparo.

Ovokivuia  Gaurai avaroepa vegoarore aue  ousia guruvara auere ruvarua  purasia.

Ruipaparoepa  oisio ra   guruvara vatereve rera vaitereiaropa  kaakau vaio.

Gaurai guruvara goagoarapiereva uva  vara  vatereva  kaakau vaiopa uva  vara aiosiva.

Oa iava kaakau vaio    rovosiepa  reoreopaoro uvare guruvara  aiosiva.

Gaurai rorureva  uvare   oisio vaitereo tapo orareoparavere   kaakau vaio.

Ovokivuia  avukato oisio puraroepa   rera vaitereiarore  kaakau vaio,