How to tell Watson conversation to not recognize strings as numbers

Question

I'm facing a strange issue with IBM Watson Conversation when capturing numbers in Spanish language:

In Spanish when you write (or say), "please give me an answer" (por favor, dame una respuesta) or "I want to talk with a professional" (quiero hablar con un profesional), Watson recognize the words "una" and "un" as a number. Yes, it is a number (the number 1) but in these phrases they do not have the meaning of a number, they work as an article.

Do you know how to tell Watson to not recognize strings as numbers? I have been thinking about patterns but the numbers can have different length.

Answer 1

According to the Official documentation, the @sys-number system entity detects numbers that are written using either numerals or words. In either case, a numeric value is returned.

When you enable the System Entity @sys-number, this entity always tries to detect if the user typed some number, there are the recognized formats:

• 21
• twenty one (in your case, works with un, una, etc)
• 3.13

You can see this table showing how to use this entity with other examples:

So, Watson will recognize these values (un, una) like one number, and currently don't have exceptions or configuration for does not recognize something, like your example, the word typed by the user. If you want for some purpose to send to the user the 'una' or 'un'(literal format example), just add in your conversation response:

The number is @sys-number.literal 

And the return in the bot will be:

The number is un?

• See more about @sys-number System entity.
• See more about System entities.