Annually, the World Mother Tongue Day is on the 21st of February. This year, the United Nations revealed that;

“Out of 7,000 languages spoken in the world, 96% are spoken by 4% of the world’s population.
Only a few hundred languages have been given a place in education systems and less than 100 are used in the digital world”

In 2012, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) warned that African languages may be on the brink of extinction as speakers are reducing.

This potential extinction of our mother tongues(s) has motivated a group of young people to take positive action



The team from the University of Ilorin in Kwara State, Nigeria has built Linguo a web-based speech system that can read and speak Nigerian and African languages.

The 4-man team is made up of a unique mix of software engineers, data scientists, marketers and analysts; Kolawole Felix Oyerinde, Olanrewaju Doyin, Adebayo Abolaji, and Olowonirejuaro Oreoluwa.

Except for Oreoluwa who is still a final year student, the rest are all 2016 alumni of Unilorin.

Linguo is supposed to be able to read and speak 15 African languages including Yoruba and Igbo dialects.

Though it promises the conversion of text to speech for over 15 languages, a Yoruba number system from 1 to 40,000, Linguo still doesn’t function optimally; it is still largely in beta phase.

The system works by asking for an input and pronouncing it in the chosen language.


Service portion of Linguo’s homepage.
But on the Linguo system, the voices are all the same regardless of gender preference, and accents are not representative of the languages selected.

On this, I had a chat with Felix Kolawole Oyerinde who doubles as founder and back-end developer.

The product will be fully ready and out of beta phase after a launch sometime in May. By then, everything will be in place.

But how will Linguo work? Will all the voices be recorded? Felix says this won’t be completely necessary.

Especially not for the Yoruba and Igbo languages as they both use a concatenative synthesis method. Linguo has a language syllabicator that will split input into correct syllables. For example, Chukwuma will become Chu Kwu Ma. The only things that may need recording are valid syllables like ‘ba‘ and ‘zu‘.


“Syllables from Niger-Congo languages may need to be recorded too,“ Felix continues.

For appropriate accents and intonations, Linguo plans to collaborate with the language departments in Nigerian and African universities.

This collaboration will potentially help identify suitable male and female voices.

When fully functional, Linguo will have three products. An API for developers, plugin for websites and web and mobile application for users.

Linguo is not still fully functional but the team gets plenty stars for attempting to change computing as we know it in Africa.

The Linguo team is not afraid of failure, they believe it is not an option.

“Text To Speech for the English Language was recorded word for word. There’s no reason we can’t do that for African languages.”
https://techpoint.ng/2018/04/02/linguo-nigerian-african-languages-tts/

add bbnaija to the heading so it can make front page

Where's Minister of sicence and technology?... No sponsors, no reality TV show on dstv, no voting with recharge card, no donations... Is only distracted activities government focus on like bbn.

Future is the world of technology not bbn!

Nice one

Well done guys. But what is the significance to man just asking?

Nice ONE, seems they want to prove being Software developers.

One man from Mbaise is currently smiling hearing to dis news...
From the other side of the divide more statues for the developers...

Nigerians are so much talented but our government is not encouraging at all. Nice innovation guys, thumbs up.

Okay

Good one

Better by far.
Good luck to you guys as you try to make a niche for yourselves. Proud of you

It's called self determination. These peeps have limited access to computers and look what they want to do. I pray there is a breakthrough

Nice 1

a

#better by far sky will be ur starting point

Just what you do don't include calabar in it, else you destroy all of your computer.

This Thread made FP, yet only very few appreciated it?! If it's Politics........ the Pages would have reached 10 by now.

Cos no room for bashing or going tribal, hence the Thread is abandoned like a leprous Patient?!

SMH...... for the Nigerian Youths!

Alright.

Afonjas:
Okay

u think say na everything 1 take 4 joke

Nice one. Very needed.

Next is a fully African indigenous computer keyboard.

Now this is something worthy of mention. Good luck to the team.
Rooting for you from this end.


Don't forget to check my signature

congratulations to the software developers that do this app. more grace for you.

spartan50:
Well done guys. But what is the significance to man just asking?

Can't u read
It's meant to preserve African languages

dhope001:
Where's Minister of sicence and technology?... No sponsors, no reality TV show on dstv, no voting with recharge card, no donations... Is only distracted activities government focus on like bbn.

Future is the world of technology not bbn!

You guys should grow up. Must the government be in it. Let them create the value they've opted for and make their money from the competitive market. Must they collect money from the government. How much was given to Microsoft, Facebook and their likes when they started.
One of the reason we are here is that everyone is just looking up to the government which unfortunately at the moment is a bunch of failure. Let's learn to think and act outside the box.

Impressive. It's not easy trying to solve a problem.

If it were BBNG you would have seen them swarming like bees.

well done

Kudos to them,to even think of doing something like this isn't easy..All the best to them in their quest
PROBITAS DOCTRINA!

We re better by far.

That will good improvement for we to lean other Language

the only language computer understands is binary digit i.e 0 or 1 so op ur headline is misleading am not being incredulous