6 ms·

One of the most noticeable additions in my opinion is Guarani, the first Indigenous language of the Americas to be added. Indigenous languages are extremely poo

by ftyers 5y ago

One of the most noticeable additions in my opinion is Guarani, the first Indigenous language of the Americas to be added. Indigenous languages are extremely poorly supported and forgotten by all of the major platforms and companies, and it's great to see one getting the attention they deserve. (Disclaimer: I was involved)

neartheplain 5y ago
Whoah, 6.5 million native speakers! That's several orders of magnitude more than I was expecting. It's also significantly larger than the native-speaking populations of languages like Catalan, Basque, or Romansh, which might be more familiar to North Americans or Europeans.
- victorlf 5y ago
  Catalan has about 10 million speakers.
  - pimterry 5y ago
    In total, yes, but only about 4 million _native_ speakers.
- djoldman 5y ago
  Or, 20x more than Icelandic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language
  - hkt 5y ago
    Without wishing to get political, is the difference that Iceland is a country but Guarani speakers don't have a nation-state of their own? Or something else?
    - interactivecode 5y ago
      The difference is completely and inherently political.
      - caymanjim 5y ago
        I think this is overly dismissive of other factors. Whether or not a language is supported by something on the Internet has a lot more to do with financial incentives than politics. If there were a huge consumer market clamoring to give their money to a site and the only barrier were language, it'd get exploited pretty quickly.
        runarberg 5y ago
        No it has a lot to do with politics as well. A sovereign nation may find it important to have their languages supported widely on the internet so they might use some of the public funds into funding translation efforts and voice recognition/speech synthesizer contributions. I know the Icelandic government spends some money for this and it shows. This tiny language has way more support then other way more spoken languages. If the Norwegian government wanted I bet the Sámi languages could have just as good of a support as Icelandic. Or if the Greenlandic government had more funds available I bet we would see Kalaallisut in more places online.
        necovek 5y ago
        What you are saying is that a small, relatively rich country can invest in supporting their own language: that, to me, is not political, but as raised previously, financial. It's also a good incentive for other big players (Google, Microsoft, Apple) to invest in a language that has prospective customers willing to spend more. Serbian government would certainly support Serbian language voice recognition and synthesis, but probably not with as much money as Iceland would.
        eropple 5y ago
        > that, to me, is not political, but as raised previously, financial The idea that there is a difference between these two things is one of the more pernicious ones of the last hundred years. Money is power. The exercise of power is politics. They can't be separated.
- andrepd 5y ago
  >It is one of the official languages of Paraguay (along with Spanish), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and where half of the rural population is monolingual. Wow, I had no idea
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  There are a number of Native American languages that have numerous speakers, but until recently have been marginalized, repressed and ignored (and some to this day). Guarani is the most numerous, but also Quechua, Nahuatl, and the various Mayan languages (spoken by around half of Guatemalans, and another 2.5 million Mexicans).
  - klipt 5y ago
    I am shocked, shocked to learn that countries identifying as Latin America suppress non-Latin derived languages!
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      This is a very weird statement. The problem is not the Spanish language. The problem is a colonial peasant economy/society that turned into a post-colonial peasant society, with land-owning quasi-nobility ruling over disempowered (in this case, indigenous) laborers and freely exercising their power to steal, rape, kill, etc., without penalty; it is a situation more or less comparable to peasant societies around the world and throughout history, which are always very exploitative and often racist. Working class Spanish speakers living in towns were in many ways also economically exploited, but considered “better than indigenous people” to be a core part of their identities, and also felt free to beat them, steal from them, etc. where they found the opportunity. It’s a situation broadly comparable to race relations in the US south, where poor whites considered “better than blacks” to be a defining part of their identity. Perhaps counterintuitively, the history of exploitation of indigenous communities, and the way indigenous people were shut out of many social and economic activities, led to the preservation of native languages.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
runarberg 5y ago
As an Icelander I am always really impressed with how well my language—a language spoken by a few hundred thousand people worldwide—is supported on various platforms and technologies. This is probably in no small part thanks to active participation by native speakers and even some government funding. However I at the same time I’m also deeply disappointed by the lack of support for Iceland’s closest neighbour’s language—Greenlandic—which is an indigenous language, the sole official language of an autonomous country.
- matsemann 5y ago
  I saw the same when I was younger for Norwegian. Bokmål is the most commonly written form of Norwegian, but New Norwegian is used by about ~15%. Most software included Bokmål support, but you could bet some hardcore user of New Norwegian had made a language pack available as well.
  - necovek 5y ago
    Ah, I remember "Nynorsk" (sorry for the bad spelling and ASCIIation) localisation of GNOME from early 2000s! Generally, it takes only a few dedicated people to get software localised if good enough infrastructure is provided by the community! I hope that's what we see with Mozilla Common Voice too!
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      "Nynorsk" is correct, no non-ASCII shenanigans in that word :)
  - jpetso 5y ago
    For Mozilla Common Voice, it looks like even Bokmål isn't listed as dataset yet. Language packs have the advantage that a single dedicated user can come up with the entire thing, but for voice collections you need a large variety of different people and ideally tons of them. For any language with a small native speaker population, even a rich one like Norway and especially a fractional subset like Nynorsk, getting enough speakers to participate in open source collection efforts will remain a challenge. Purportedly, even for commercial companies it's hard to find enough Norwegians willing to speak a few sentences for a nominal payment unlike most other countries. Luckily, speech recognition research is making some good progress on dealing with low-resource languages so hopefully we'll see some acceptable models made from the little available open data that's out there.

by ftyers 5y ago

neartheplain 5y ago

Whoah, 6.5 million native speakers! That's several orders of magnitude more than I was expecting. It's also significantly larger than the native-speaking populations of languages like Catalan, Basque, or Romansh, which might be more familiar to North Americans or Europeans.

victorlf 5y ago
Catalan has about 10 million speakers.
- pimterry 5y ago
  In total, yes, but only about 4 million _native_ speakers.
djoldman 5y ago
Or, 20x more than Icelandic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language
- hkt 5y ago
  Without wishing to get political, is the difference that Iceland is a country but Guarani speakers don't have a nation-state of their own? Or something else?
  - interactivecode 5y ago
    The difference is completely and inherently political.
    - caymanjim 5y ago
      I think this is overly dismissive of other factors. Whether or not a language is supported by something on the Internet has a lot more to do with financial incentives than politics. If there were a huge consumer market clamoring to give their money to a site and the only barrier were language, it'd get exploited pretty quickly.
      - runarberg 5y ago
        No it has a lot to do with politics as well. A sovereign nation may find it important to have their languages supported widely on the internet so they might use some of the public funds into funding translation efforts and voice recognition/speech synthesizer contributions. I know the Icelandic government spends some money for this and it shows. This tiny language has way more support then other way more spoken languages. If the Norwegian government wanted I bet the Sámi languages could have just as good of a support as Icelandic. Or if the Greenlandic government had more funds available I bet we would see Kalaallisut in more places online.
        necovek 5y ago
        What you are saying is that a small, relatively rich country can invest in supporting their own language: that, to me, is not political, but as raised previously, financial. It's also a good incentive for other big players (Google, Microsoft, Apple) to invest in a language that has prospective customers willing to spend more. Serbian government would certainly support Serbian language voice recognition and synthesis, but probably not with as much money as Iceland would.
        eropple 5y ago
        > that, to me, is not political, but as raised previously, financial The idea that there is a difference between these two things is one of the more pernicious ones of the last hundred years. Money is power. The exercise of power is politics. They can't be separated.
andrepd 5y ago
>It is one of the official languages of Paraguay (along with Spanish), where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and where half of the rural population is monolingual. Wow, I had no idea
kspacewalk2 5y ago
There are a number of Native American languages that have numerous speakers, but until recently have been marginalized, repressed and ignored (and some to this day). Guarani is the most numerous, but also Quechua, Nahuatl, and the various Mayan languages (spoken by around half of Guatemalans, and another 2.5 million Mexicans).
- klipt 5y ago
  I am shocked, shocked to learn that countries identifying as Latin America suppress non-Latin derived languages!
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    This is a very weird statement. The problem is not the Spanish language. The problem is a colonial peasant economy/society that turned into a post-colonial peasant society, with land-owning quasi-nobility ruling over disempowered (in this case, indigenous) laborers and freely exercising their power to steal, rape, kill, etc., without penalty; it is a situation more or less comparable to peasant societies around the world and throughout history, which are always very exploitative and often racist. Working class Spanish speakers living in towns were in many ways also economically exploited, but considered “better than indigenous people” to be a core part of their identities, and also felt free to beat them, steal from them, etc. where they found the opportunity. It’s a situation broadly comparable to race relations in the US south, where poor whites considered “better than blacks” to be a defining part of their identity. Perhaps counterintuitively, the history of exploitation of indigenous communities, and the way indigenous people were shut out of many social and economic activities, led to the preservation of native languages.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

runarberg 5y ago

As an Icelander I am always really impressed with how well my language—a language spoken by a few hundred thousand people worldwide—is supported on various platforms and technologies. This is probably in no small part thanks to active participation by native speakers and even some government funding. However I at the same time I’m also deeply disappointed by the lack of support for Iceland’s closest neighbour’s language—Greenlandic—which is an indigenous language, the sole official language of an autonomous country.

matsemann 5y ago
I saw the same when I was younger for Norwegian. Bokmål is the most commonly written form of Norwegian, but New Norwegian is used by about ~15%. Most software included Bokmål support, but you could bet some hardcore user of New Norwegian had made a language pack available as well.
- necovek 5y ago
  Ah, I remember "Nynorsk" (sorry for the bad spelling and ASCIIation) localisation of GNOME from early 2000s! Generally, it takes only a few dedicated people to get software localised if good enough infrastructure is provided by the community! I hope that's what we see with Mozilla Common Voice too!
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    "Nynorsk" is correct, no non-ASCII shenanigans in that word :)
- jpetso 5y ago
  For Mozilla Common Voice, it looks like even Bokmål isn't listed as dataset yet. Language packs have the advantage that a single dedicated user can come up with the entire thing, but for voice collections you need a large variety of different people and ideally tons of them. For any language with a small native speaker population, even a rich one like Norway and especially a fractional subset like Nynorsk, getting enough speakers to participate in open source collection efforts will remain a challenge. Purportedly, even for commercial companies it's hard to find enough Norwegians willing to speak a few sentences for a nominal payment unlike most other countries. Luckily, speech recognition research is making some good progress on dealing with low-resource languages so hopefully we'll see some acceptable models made from the little available open data that's out there.