A spell checker and corrector for the native South African language, South Sotho

Abstract

We describe a multithreaded, spell checking and correcting software application for the Windows platform, called eSpellingPro sa Sesotho sa Leboa. The application is specifically targeted to check South Sotho typed text for misspelled words, suggest correctly spelled words for the identified misspelled words and incorporate a degree of automatic correction of the incorrectly spelled words. The biggest motivation behind the development of this system, a custom spell checking and correcting application for this indigenous South African language, stemmed from evidence that had been gathered that suggested the average twenty year old South Sotho individual's spelling-skills had deteriorated. When considering the need to create error free documents, for example, a legal document in South Sotho, substandard spelling-skills could pose possible problems. Spell checking software does exist for the South Sotho language, but not for checking and correcting. Additionally, the system has the ability to translate South Sotho words into their Afrikaans and English equivalents, adding functionality. The application also has simple features of existing spell-checkers for example the ability to change the font, the font-size, to apply bold, italics or both to a word, underline a word, select all the text in the document and to print the document. Although South Sotho is not a language with high inflection, the application also checks for inflection, for example when the user enters two words as one. To accomplish faster checking, flagging and suggestion operations, multithreading was used in certain modules.