A Simple Data Driven Yoruba Language Dictionary

Abstract

The language of a people is an integral part of their lives, because it is synonymous with their identity, culture and environment. Traditionally, the language people speak tells others about their identity but in a country like Nigeria where a lingua franca, English has been adopted, the identity of the people is being suppressed such that the first language of some Nigerians is English instead of their mother tongue and in some extreme cases the indigenous language has been lost. The use of a lingua franca, globalization and civilization should not bring about the death of our indigenous languages, instead, amid all these, Information Technology as the bedrock of our time can be harnessed to propagate our indigenous languages. This work focused on the development of an electronic Yoruba language dictionary that is data driven. The tools and techniques used in this work produced results.

Keywords: Yoruba, dictionary, database, language translation, machine learning