I’ve had to teach my phone some pretty common words but this just tops it all: I just had to teach it the word small. WTF?! It will occasionally spell out something like pjhghsjwkmkc or aswddcfffddfcv but it doesn’t know small?!
And What’s with My new Phone capitalizing The first letter of Random words?
I am sometimes amazed by the things that are in the native dictionary on my phone. I don’t recall the exact word, but recently I text’d from my doctor’s, and didn’t have to spell out some polysyllabic pharmacological thingy. There it was. No “coriander,” though.
I picked up the frenchie expression “Ouff!” from my Quebecoise SO.
I had to add it, of course, but I am amused every time I cycle through the suggestions to get to it:
Ouff! Nude muff, Mudd.
I just remembered another common word I had to add: taco.
I wish it was better with contractions. I have to teach it most common contractions but some work - probably by coincidence
There are lots and lots more but I usually boggle about it for a minute and then forget.
One possibility is that the phone doesn’t know any words except the ones you teach it. Rather what it might have is knowledge of what letters often follow certain other letters so it makes guesses that sound like English though they might or might not be.
Another possibility is that they figured it was more important to put in longer words since those are the most hassle to type. Words four or less characters long they just put in the 5% most common words (which make up 95% of all words used.) If you use a particular short word often enough, you’ll enter it into the dictionary.
Both are solutions to save memory space while providing you with what you want 99% of the time.
I don’t think that’s it because, despite my ranting, it has a 95%+ success rate. I probably wouldn’t even notice all these little anomalies if I didn’t send 10+ texts per day.
But why would they add jksdlahfuihrewnbm and not small or taco?
Listen up, you aunts.
Just kidding. One that pisses me off all the time is “go”, which is the same keys for “in”… Now, I use “in” much much more than “go”, yet when I key it in, it always offers me “go” first. You’d think they could invent software that would learn what words you use most, but I guess thats how Skynet got started.
Also, on my phone, you can scroll through the list of words that you’ve entered into the dictionary yourself… its fun to do with a friend, scroll through each others custom dictionaries and wonder not so much at the “boobies” or “futurama” entries, but what friggin text were you writing that required you to use the word “dodecahedron”?
They’re trying for a higher class of customer.
My phone automatically chooses the last selection you picked, so if you type “Go in the house, then go right,” you have to select “in” and then you have to select “go” again. I also wish it would go by most used. However, barring that, I kind of wish it would stick with the same order every time. My old phone used to do that, so when I was typing I would know that “go” is 4, 6, select, rather than 4, 6, check the screen to see whether “go” or “in” is showing up.
“Of” and “me” drive me crazy, too. What would really be ideal is software that recognizes certain patterns. Like if the previous word were “to,” then you’re going to be typing “me” instead of “of.” And recognizing parts of speech for predictions. This is teh stuff of legends and science fiction.
I’m coming good soon.
…
Home! Home soon.
That has always seemed the dumbest one to me. I always mean home I don’t know that I have ever used good in an SMS.
Guess you don’t get out much? I come good all the time. 
T9 is dumb. If you don’t use it, you learn to text quickly anyway. And then you get to say EXACTLY what you want without screwing up.
Hi nun, this is your favourite son
Yeah, it totally sucks to hit a third or half of the keystrokes you need otherwise. If you learn to use T9, you get to say exactly what you want without screwing up.
I went from T9 stateside to not having it in Japan for months before I discovered which one of the little menus it was squirreled away in. Best discovery on my phone yet, and I’m the envy of all my friends. Still having trouble with the Japanese T9. I have to do that one the old-fashioned way.
Everyone I know that uses T9 routinely sends me a text that makes no sense because they think T9 does no wrong and they don’t check what they are saying. Then if I can’t figure out what they mean, I have to text back saying “what?” and they have to repeat themselves, wasting my limited text messages. I dunno, I don’t see why it’s hard to just type it out old-school like. And I can easily abbreviate like “wo” “bc” etc and write more in the limited space you get per text.
That kind of speaks more to the people who send you texts than to T9 itself. I don’t have all that much trouble with it. Though I do agree that abbreviations are easier without it.
However, now that I have a phone that I can teach, I’m putting all kinds of [del]obscenities[/del] words from my own speech style in my texts that weren’t ever going to show up in any dictionary.
ETA: I also agree with the limited space thing being a pain, but when I had Verizon if you went over the limit it simply counted as 2 texts and sent the whole thing. Now that I’m in Japan I write only email on my phone. SMS doesn’t work to all that many numbers, and the limit is even more stringent than in the states. I think it’s because it’s easier to say things with fewer characters than with words.
I don’t know why, but the T9 dictionary is the one, the one bit of technology my father has mastered and can actually teach others about. Programming the VCR, fiddling with the computer, he needs help. Sending a text message on his phone? A doddle.
I think that’s usually a feature of the handset rather than the network. Mine (Palm Treo) does this, but I try not to use it because some recipients’ handsets will show them the most recent message first - making nonsense of messages split across two texts.
My phone doesn’t have T9 though, because it’s got a qwerty keyboard.
Next time, try opening a new message and typing the words they actually wrote, and going through the available choices for that number combo. It’s still a pain in the ass, but it would save you 2 txts per ea