Language is a key element through which we communicate, express thoughts and feelings. We share ideas, shape our thoughts and learn new things. And while language is a tool many species share, humans are the only species to have produced writing.

Writing evolved alongside humans, initially through cave paintings, which then turned into pictographs and eventually writing systems. Writing has allowed humans to record their knowledge and discoveries, creating a means of passing information down to the next generations.

Over time, the way we write, what we write and how we write has shifted greatly. From cave walls to paper, from the printing press to the internet, the amount of data and information that gets recorded has increased exponentially. Today we are dealing with vast amounts of data in the digital sphere.

The writing format also impacts our communication style greatly, with content creators trying their best to grab people’s attention for as long as possible.  In our case, living in a bilingual country where both Maltese and English are widely spoken, we are faced with different platforms and content styles to deliver our message and have to decide which language we should communicate in.

A recent survey found that more than 57% would prefer to write an e-mail in English, rather than in Maltese. One of the main problems we face when using Maltese in the digital sphere is the lack of tools to support writing in Maltese.

Over time, the way we write, what we write and how we write has shifted greatly

Language technologies have advanced greatly these last couple of years, but the main advancements have focused on the English language, the most widely spoken language in the world. This means that the demand naturally fosters a push in the development of technologies for English.

Since the use of Maltese is not as widespread, it remains at the backend of the language technology development. One can simply see this from a language learning perspective – the number of tools and apps available to support the learning of English versus Maltese are polar opposites.

The need for investment in the creation of digital language technology tools for Maltese was further highlighted by the European Language Equality Project (LC-01641480). This project provided the opportunity for countries to report on the resources available for their languages.

Looking at the official European languages, Maltese is the lowest-resourced language. Even if we look at the last group of low-resource languages, we can see that Maltese has practically half the resources available for Irish.

Efforts at the University of Malta continue to focus on creating tools and resources that can help process the Maltese language. The research team works on various aspects, including machine translation and automatic speech recognition, and builds various models to understand different aspects of the Maltese language.

Claudia Borg is a senior lecturer at the Department of Artificial Intelligence, Faculty of ICT and affiliated with the Institute of Linguistics and Language Technologies.

Photo of the Week

Sharing information on emerging viruses is essential. A new database called Pathoplexus (https://pathoplexus.org/) aims to help communities derail outbreaks before they grow by easily sharing sequencing information. Photo: NIAID/Wikimedia Commons

Did you know?

• In one minute on Twitter, people send 277,000 tweets.

• In one minute on YouTube, people watch 72 hours of videos.

• In one minute on Instagram, people make over 216,000 new posts.

• In one minute over e-mail, people send over 204 million e-mails.

 For more trivia, visit www.um.edu.mt/ think.

Sound bites

• Nuclear clocks would measure time based on changes inside an atom’s nucleus, which would make them less sensitive to external disturbances and potentially more accurate than atomic clocks. These clocks could lead to improved timekeeping and navigation, faster internet speeds and advances in fundamental physics research. Scientists have demonstrated key components of a nuclear clock, such as precise frequency measurements of an energy jump in a thorium-229 nucleus.

• A new study shines a light on the enormous scale of uncollected rubbish and open burning of plastic waste in the first-ever global plastics pollution inventory. Researchers used AI to model waste management in more than 50,000 municipalities around the world. This model allowed the team to predict how much waste was generated globally and what happens to it. It revealed that 15% of the global population does not have access to waste collection services.

For more soundbites, listen to Radio Mocha here.