Description

The Lusophone community includes nine Portuguese-speaking nations on four different continents; Portuguese is the sole official language in seven of them and one of the official languages for the other two. While Portuguese may be spoken widely in these countries, they also have many indigenous and minority languages spoken natively by large populations (e.g. Umbundu in Angola has ~7 million native speakers, Makhuwa in Mozambique ~9 million, and Fang in Equatorial Guinea ~1 million). There are also many languages spoken natively by smaller populations which nevertheless have an important cultural history (e.g. Brazil alone has 217 recognized indigenous languages). 

Despite their prevalence and importance, these languages are seriously under-resourced and under-researched, and many face extinction. As advances in NLP-based technologies have started to reach more spheres of society with applications in diverse domains, these include indigenous languages, with tools aiding in promoting and preserving these languages. However, the focus on indigenous languages of Lusophone countries has been limited. As such, ILLC-NLP targets an area for which research, resources, and tools are in dire need of development and promotion.

Dates