Building Capacities in Human Language Technology for African Languages

I-Blocks in an African Context

The paper describes some initial experiences in involving users from Tanzania in the development of I-BLOCKS technology for the African cultural context. Users of the intelligent building blocks (I-BLOCKS) can do ‘programming by building’ and thereby construct functionality of artefacts in an intuitive manner without the need to learn and use traditional programming languages. We allow both sec...

Language Policy in Nigeria: Prospect for National Unity

Various studies on the National Policy on Education (NPE) have concentrated on the cognitive value of pedagogy and learning of the language aspect but few have viewed its importance on the togetherness of the nation - Nigeria. This paper deals with how the language policy can influence and ensure the co-existence of Nigeria in achieving self-actualisation, national unity, social, cultural, econ...

La Gestion de la Diversité Linguistique dans les Villes Africaines/Management of Linguistic Diversity in African Urban Cities, Gabriel Mba & Etienne Sadembouo (Eds.). (2012), L’Harmattan, ISBN 978-2-296-99091-3

Identity and Representation through Language in Ghana: The Postcolonial Self and the Other

Research related to colonialism and post colonialism shows how the identities of indigenous people were constructed and how these identities are reconstructed in our contemporary world. The thrust of this paper is that colonialism brought a shift in the linguistic structure of Ghana with the introduction of the use of English among Ghanaians. The coexistence of both Ghanaian languages and Engli...

AfLaT 2010 Proceedings of the Second Workshop on African Language Technology

Given the fact that this workshop focuses on African languages, the main thrust of the presentation will be on these languages, however, certain points of discussion could just as well apply to languages in general. The topic of this presentation makes reference to three concepts that will be discussed individually against the background of an “uneasy relationship” that seemingly exists between...