G uy L ingo: The R epublic of G uyana Creole Corpora (2024)

Abstract: While major languages often enjoy substantial attention and resources, the linguistic diversity across the globe encompasses a multitude of smaller, indigenous, and regional languages that lack the same level of computational support. One such region is the Caribbean. While commonly labeled as “English speaking”, the ex-British Caribbean region consists of a myriad of Creole languages thriving alongside English. In this paper, we present Guylingo: a comprehensive corpus designed for advancing NLP research in the domain of Creolese (Guyanese English-lexicon Creole), the most widely spoken language in the culturally rich nation of Guyana. We first outline our framework for gathering and digitizing this diverse corpus, inclusive of colloquial expressions, idioms, and regional variations in a low-resource language. We then demonstrate the challenges of training and evaluating NLP models for machine translation for Creolese. Lastly, we discuss the unique opportunities presented by recent NLP advancements for accelerating the formal adoption of Creole languages as official languages in the Caribbean.

## introduction major languages such as english and chinese frequently receive considerable attention and resources due to their global prominence and economic influence @xcite . the extensive focus on these major languages in natural language processing (nlp) has resulted in the development of sophisticated models, extensive datasets, and digital applications consumed by millions of users today. however, despite this global prominence, the linguistic landscape of the globe extends far beyond these dominant languages, encompassing a plethora of smaller, indigenous, and * equal contribution. figure 1 : map of guyana and its neighboring territories regional languages that play crucial roles in the cultural heritage and communication of their respective communities @xcite . the countries of the commonwealth (ex-british) caribbean community represent an example of a cluster of such countries. within the diverse linguistic tapestry of the caribbean community, a rich array of languages thrives, reflecting the historical, cultural, and ethnic diversity of the region @xcite . while english is commonly used as the official language in many commonwealth caribbean states, the linguistic heritage goes beyond just english, encompassing a variety of creole languages, indigenous languages, and influences from african, indigenous, european, and asian languages @xcite . creole languages of the caribbean emerged out of the language contact between europeans and africans arising from colonialism and plantation slavery. these languages, such as jamaican, otherwise referred to as jamaican creole or jamaican patois/patwa @xcite , trinidadian creole english "it luk laik nof ting cheenj op," seera se. "somtaim mi doz get fraikn." "so many things feel like they have changed," said sara. "i get scared about it sometimes." when me lef' han' 'cratch me, money a-come ## guylingo corpus this section describes the curation of guylingo, a corpus of creolese, the primary spoken language of guyana. the creation of this corpus aims to address the scarcity of resources and attention devoted to indigenous and regional languages within the nlp community. ## guylingo for machine translation to investigate the utility of guylingo, we conduct experiments on the task of machine translation assessing the ability of nlp models to facilitate english←→guyanese creole translation. as such to enable the training and evaluation of these models guylingo was further expanded to include english creole translation pairs. of the 2373 sentences, the common guyanese creole saying corpus was manually transcribed into english. the remaining creole sources were extracted alongside their english translations. in addition, 339 common creole terms from @xcite alongside their english pairs were extracted and verified. using these initial translation pairs, the guyanese creole translation tool was built to allow the initial translation of remaining sentences in guylingo. of the remaining creole sources, the largest source of creolese data from @xcite contained no english translations for the proverbs. as such, using the translation tool these proverbs were machine translated. these machine translations were reviewed and edited for lexical correspondence but not semantic meaning given the complexity of translating the contextual meaning of cultural proverbs. ## discussion in this section, we briefly discuss the unique opportunity presented by recent nlp advancements for accelerating the formal adoption of creole languages in the caribbean. ## related works in the context of linguistic diversity, prior works @xcite @xcite have highlighted the challenges faced by lesserknown languages, emphasizing the importance of recognition and preservation. works such as @xcite , @xcite , and @xcite have contributed to advancing nlp research in creole languages by building a corpus of text for various creole languages, fostering machine translation, and enhancing language modeling techniques specific to these linguistic varieties. our work falls into this category. on the other hand, works such as @xcite and @xcite emphasize the importance of linguistic diversity by documenting the challenges and exploring the complexities of language modeling for underrepresented languages. the juxtaposition of these studies with the dominance of major languages in nlp underscores the need for more inclusive research efforts that consider the linguistic richness and cultural significance of smaller, ## conclusion in this paper, we introduce guylingo, a corpus of guyanese creolese designed to facilitate advancements in nlp research. we discuss the process of gathering and digitizing this diverse corpus while highlighting the unique opportunities presented by recent nlp advancements for accelerating the formal adoption of creole languages in the caribbean. by providing access to a rich collection of colloquial language expressions, idioms, and regional variations, we hope to encourage further research in this field and improve the representation and understanding of creole languages in nlp.