In order to facilitate phonological, lexicological, syntactic as well as historical, ethnological and sociological studies of Asian and African languages, the Institute uses computers to process text data. In the spring of 1978 a main frame computer system, open to use by outside scholars, was installed to accumulate databases of these languages. Bilingual dictionaries of Asian-African and Japanese languages as well as comprehensive grammars for each language have been compiled. To achieve this, we first machine-process the text data, specifying phonological and syntactic information for each linguistic form, and produce sorted-out text data with various application programmes, such as KWIC (Key-Word In Context).
Due to recent advances in computing, not only textual information, but also image and sound data can be processed by this computer. We intend to develop a multi-purpose database system which will allow us to retrieve various ethnological data (festival, dance, music and so forth) as well as linguistic corpora. For the purpose of entering various linguistic data we have developed fonts for Devanagari, Burmese, Bengali, Thai, Khmer, Tibetan, Arabic, Korean and Mongolian etc. This system may prove helpful for establishing new ways of carrying out multi-disciplinary research in the field of Asian and African languages and cultures.
The Institute has been offering courses in various Asian and African languages since 1975. Members of the Institute teach the courses with assistance from native speakers. Following is a list of such courses offered since 1980:
| (at Tokyo) | (at Osaka) |
|---|---|
| 1980 Nepali, Mongolian | Vietnamese |
| 1981 Pashto, Hindi | Standard Chinese |
| 1982 Hungarian, Egyptian Arabic | Fulfulde |
| 1983 Finnish, Tibetan | Panjabi |
| 1984 Pilipino, Yoruba | Turkish |
| 1985 Korean, Khmer | Swahili |
| 1986 South-Western Mandarin, Tamil | Bengali |
| 1987 Central Mandarin, Thai | Singhalese |
| 1988 Turkish, Persian | Indonesian |
| 1989 Bengali, Vietnamese | Egyptian Arabic |
| 1990 Korean, Indonesian | Persian |
| 1991 Estonian, Burmese | Standard Chinese |
| 1992 Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, Nepali | Pilipino |
| 1993 Korean, Georgian | Mongolian |
| 1994 Wolof, Hindi | Turkish |
| 1995 Amharic, Tibetan | Shanghai Chinese |
| 1996 Thai, Modern Hebrew | Yoruba |
| 1997 Telugu, Mongolian | Hungarian |
About ten students are selected from applicants nationwide for each course, which runs for six weeks. After successful completion of the course, the students receive certificates from the Director of the Institute.