Youssef Aït Ouguengay
2010
For Standardised Amazigh Linguistic Resources
Youssef Aït Ouguengay
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Aïcha Bouhjar
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10)
Amazigh language and culture may well be viewed to have known an unprecedented booming in Morocco : more than a hundred- which are published by the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM), an institution created in 2001 to preserve, promote and endorse Amazigh culture in all its dimensions. Crucially, publications in the Amazigh language would not have seen light without the valiant attempts to upgrade the language on the linguistic and technological levels. The central thrust of this contribution is to provide a vista about the whole range of actions carried out by IRCAM. Of prime utility to this presentation is what was accomplished to supply Amazigh with the necessary tools and corpora without which the Amazigh language would emphatically fail to have a place in the world of NITCs. After a brief description of the prime specificities that characterise the standardisation of Amazigh in Morocco, a retrospective on the basic computer tools now available for the processing of Amazigh will be set out. It is concluded that the homogenisation of a considerable number of corpora should, by right, be viewed as a strategic move and an incontrovertible prerequisite to the computerisation of Amazigh,