University introduces isiZulu spell-checker

10 November 2016 1:06 PM

The University of Kwazulu Natal is launching a Zulu language spell checker and series of technical words and phrases in isiZulu on Thursday. This forms part of its plan to start teaching in the language.

Dr Tessa Dowling, Senior lecturer in the African Languages Department at University of Cape Town, says there is no need to create new words instead we should look at using linguistic resources available to us to describe things that needs to be described.

Is this spell-checker taking into account the many different spellings and many different dialects we have in African languages?
— Dr Tessa Dowling, Senior lecturer in the African Languages Department at University of Cape Town

People are so worried about creating the correct terminology, sitting in boardrooms, coming up with stuff and that is actually what makes language die and not develop.
— Dr Tessa Dowling, Senior lecturer in the African Languages Department at University of Cape Town

Dowling suggest that language users should use tools available to them and go across languages (trans language) to keep the language robust in the way many languages including English have always done.

Listen below to more about the isiZulu spell checker:

This article first appeared on CapeTalk : University introduces isiZulu spell-checker

Written by: Lengwadishang Ramphele