The problem of linguistic inflection has long been a barrier to effective software internationalization. The problem is even more visible today with multimodal UIs. In many languages, word forms change (inflect) based on grammatical context, creating a significant challenge for developers aiming to build truly global applications. Getting the wrong word inflection can be as bad as using the wrong preposition in English.
Today, the Unicode Consortium is announcing a major step forward with the Technical Preview Release of the Unicode Inflection Library. It provides direct access through C and C++ APIs, or can be used in conjunction with Message Format 2.0 functionality.
This library is designed to solve a problem that is particularly acute in languages with a large number of inflectional forms, such as the Slavic, Germanic, Romance, Semitic, Indic and agglutinative families of languages.
The issue extends beyond common words like adjectives, nouns, and verbs. In many of these languages, proper nouns—including geo-location names, brands, and people’s names—can also inflect. This complexity affects a large number of users and has been largely unaddressed by the industry, which has typically opted for narrow, language-specific solutions. Even languages like French require handling inflection for gender and number, demonstrating the problem is not limited to a few specific language families.
The Unicode Inflection Library provides a robust and standardized approach to this challenge. It leverages extensive data sets to handle complex grammatical transformations, enabling more accurate text generation, search functionality, and natural language processing. A key resource for this project is the availability of comprehensive lexicons from the Wikidata project, which provide the foundational data necessary for these operations.
Get Started and Participate
This is a community effort. We invite developers and linguists to explore the library's capabilities and contribute to its development. A detailed tutorial is available to help you get started:
Tutorial: https://github.com/unicode-org/inflection/wiki/Tutorial
Release: https://github.com/unicode-org/inflection/releases/tag/Inflection-0.1
Your feedback and contributions are critical for refining the library's rules, expanding language coverage, and ensuring its performance. By participating, you will help build a foundational tool that will make the digital world more accessible and linguistically accurate for hundreds of millions of users.
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