Towards a Multilingual learner software for African languages

Abstract

Kenyan universities, in particular the University of Nairobi, have been for the last five or so years been a beehive of research around speech technologies with respect to Kenyan languages. In 2004, Dr. Muchemi Gakuru (principal investigator), Dr. Frederick Iraki (computational linguist) and Mr. Kamanda Ngugi (Computer scientist) broke new research ground by producing the first Kiswahili Text-To-Speech computer system in the world (Mucemi et al. 2004). The software can read any text typed in Kiswahili and therefore presents myriad advantages to the visually-handicapped, language learning and teaching, persons with voice impairment, just to mention a few (Ngugi 2004). It is important to note that Text-to-Speech systems for other major world languages (English, French, Chinese, etc.) were already in place. Journal of Language, Technology and Entrepreneurship in Africa Vol. 1 (1) 2007 pp. 144-150