Six down - five to go

Speaking in tongues

No-one in South Africa can claim true polyglot status because none can speak all of the country's 11 official languages. For those aspiring to that lofty ideal, however, help is not far away. The University of the North West has written software packages that include a spell check for six of them - English, Afrikaans, Setswana, northern Sotho, isiXhosa and isiZulu.

The university's Centre for Text Technology (CTexT) says the products have particular appeal for businesses as an increasing number of companies prefer to communicate with clients using their home language. The system was pioneered on the development of an Afrikaans spell check "that gave us the necessary technological background for efficient sharing of knowledge with other languages", discloses head of CTexT, Gerard van Huyssteen. "By international standards," he adds, "our product outperforms other spell checkers."

Copyright International Communications Jan 2006
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