Can advances in NLP lead to worse results for Uralic languages and how can we fight back? Experiences from the world of automatic spell-checking and correction for Finnish

Flammie A Pirinen


Abstract
Spell-checking and correction is a ubiquitous application within text input in modern technology, and in some ways or another, if you type texts on a keyboard or a mobile phone, there will probably be an underlying spelling corrector running. The spell checkers have been around for decades, initially based on dictionaries and grammar rules, nowadays increasingly based on statistical data or large language models. In recent years, however, there has been a growing concern about the quality of these modern spell-checkers. In this article, we show that the spell-checkers for Finnish have gotten significantly worse in their modern implementations compared to their traditional knowledge-driven versions. We propose that this can have critical consequences for the quality of texts produced, as well as literacy overall.We furthermore speculate if it would be possible to get spell-checking and correction back on track for Uralic languages in modern systems.
Anthology ID:
2025.iwclul-1.4
Volume:
Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Uralic Languages
Month:
December
Year:
2025
Address:
Joensuu, Finland
Editors:
Mika Hämäläinen, Michael Rießler, Eiaki V. Morooka, Lev Kharlashkin
Venues:
IWCLUL | WS
SIG:
SIGUR
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
22–28
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.iwclul-1.4/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Flammie A Pirinen. 2025. Can advances in NLP lead to worse results for Uralic languages and how can we fight back? Experiences from the world of automatic spell-checking and correction for Finnish. In Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Uralic Languages, pages 22–28, Joensuu, Finland. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Can advances in NLP lead to worse results for Uralic languages and how can we fight back? Experiences from the world of automatic spell-checking and correction for Finnish (Pirinen, IWCLUL 2025)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.iwclul-1.4.pdf