Developing the Thai Regional Dialect Based on Semi-automatic Technique

Abstract

A dialect is the specific language of a particular locality that has a unique style, both words and accents. It shows the identity culture and the way of life of people in each region of Thailand and it should be treated to continue to be a national heritage. This research presents the prototype of four regional dialect of Thai based on smart phone by using Ontology technique. The application is easily search and finds the term of dialect words for each region. To develop ontology, a semi-automatic approach was used to build domain ontology from spoken corpus in Thai dialect. The domain ontology is created to handle terms and relationships to describe the features of four Thai regional dialect words. Also, the longest matching approach was used to increase the capability of the system to Thai word segmentation. The empirical results showed that the prototype can efficiently provide satisfied information for users in information searching. System testing technique and questionnaires were needed to evaluate system work and user achievement. The results shown that user satisfaction, both experts and users, was fulfilled the system performances and easily found required information.