Towards Gulf Emirati Dialect Corpus from Social Media

Abstract

Purpose: This paper discusses the need for a corpus of Emirati traditional phrases and idioms in natural language processing (NLP) for the Gulf Emirati dialect and its potential applications in fields like voice recognition, machine translation, and sentiment analysis.Methodology: The researchers collected a corpus of more than 3000 traditional Emirati words and idioms by gathering data from several social media platforms, such as forums, YouTube, and Emirati radio stations. In addition, the researchers used the website scraping technologies to collect suitable resources, subsequently cleansing and organising the gathered material to ensure accuracy and consistency. A pilot investigation was undertaken, including an individual who is a native speaker of Emirati, in order to verify the precision of the dataset.Findings: The researchers successfully compiled a substantial dataset of traditional Emirati phrases and idioms, so enabling potential future investigations in the realm of Arabic dialects, specifically focusing on Gulf Arabic dialects such as the Emirati dialect.Implications: The compilation of Emirati traditional idioms and words presented in this study has potential practical effects in several domains such as medical, education, and business. These implications mostly revolve around enhancing communication among and with individuals proficient in the Emirati language.Originality/Value: This study distinguishes itself by concentrating on the compilation of an NLP corpus comprising traditional Emirati phrases and idioms, with a specific emphasis on the Gulf Emirati dialect. The dataset generated as a result of this effort may prove indispensable for further studies into Arabic dialects.