The Role of NLP to Facilitate the Growth of Ge’ez Language

Abstract

Language is a system of communication used by humans to express and convey thoughts, ideas, emotions, and information. It serves several functions, including facilitating communication, preserving culture and identity, transmitting knowledge, and expressing creativity. The endangerment of a language occurs when it is no longer being passed down from one generation to the next, typically due to factors such as language shift, cultural assimilation, or the dominance of another more widely spoken language. Ge’ez is an ancient Semitic language that traces its roots back to what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Presently, Ge’ez serves as the primary liturgical language for the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Ethiopian and Eritrean Catholic Church and the Beta Israel Jewish community of Ethiopia. Ge’ez holds significant importance as it is the precursor of two major Semitic languages in Ethiopia: Amharic, which functions as the country's official working language, with approximately 33% of the population using it as their first language, primarily in the northwest and central regions, and Tigrinya/Tigrigna, predominantly spoken in northern and northeastern Ethiopia. Additionally, the Tigré language, spoken by the Eritrean people, also has its origins in Ge’ez. The fact that the language is not used as a means of everyday communication as it is the liturgical language, furthermore not being easily accessible through the Internet are the reasons for Ge’ez being vulnerable to extinction. The purpose of this paper is to study the role of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to ensure the language does not become extinct and is accessible to a wide range of people throughout the world.