Natural Language Processing, or NLP for short, is broadly defined as the automatic manipulation of natural language, like speech and text, by software.
The study of natural language processing has been around for more than 50 years and grew out of the field of linguistics with the rise of computers.
In this post, you will discover what natural language processing is and why it is so important.
After reading this post, you will know:
What natural language is and how it is different from other types of data.
What makes working with natural language so challenging.
Where the field of NLP came from and how it is defined by modern practitioners.
Natural Language
Natural language refers to the way we, humans, communicate with each other.
Namely, speech and text.
We are surrounded by text.
Think about how much text you see each day:
Signs
Menus
Email
SMS
Web Pages
and so much more…
The list is endless.
Now think about speech.
We may speak to each other, as a species, more than we write. It may even be easier to learn to speak than to write.
Voice and text are how we communicate with each other.
