State of the art, community-led language digitization
Oski Tahkoskewin is dedicated to building modern language and culture tools that preserve and revive the Cross Lake dialect of Cree. Our digitization technology is built right at home in Cross Lake, Manitoba and supports the continuity of our cultural worldview into the future. Our tools are designed for native speakers, new speakers, and everyone in between.
Equipped with modern applications, our community is empowered to use our language in digital spaces. As our tools mature, they will support community programming, education, and built capacity.
Speech Database
All of our technologies rest on our huge database of spoken Cree. Our novel approach to data collection involves per-minute payment for any fluent speakers who submit audio through our bespoke recording app. Any fluent community member can contribute in three ways:
- Recording directly in the app
- Uploading audio or video files
- Making phone calls in Cree directly in the app
Users can even split earnings when multiple speakers are in a recording. Our secure database is built and managed right at home, and also acts as a repository of stories where the contributor agrees to share a recording with the community.
End-to-end, our custom software handles audio processing and storage, app user profiles, payments, transcription file management, and orderly data handoffs to the applications we build.
Translation
We are building a dictionary that comes alive! Every minute of spoken Cree in our database is reviewed by our team of translators who annotate the audio submissions with morpheme-level translations, word-level translations, sentence-level translations, and 'expanded' translations. These Cree-English pairs enable us to provide more nuanced bridges between Cree and English meaning.
Learn Syllabics™ Font & Keyboard
Cree Conjugation Tool
In Cree, a single verb can tell you who is acting, who or what is affected, and when it happens, all built from smaller pieces called morphemes. That makes conjugation one of the biggest hurdles for new speakers.
Our Cree Conjugation Tool draws on the morpheme-level annotations in our database to show how verbs change form in the Cross Lake dialect, written in Syllabics. Look up a verb and see how it shifts depending on who is speaking, who is being spoken about, and when the action takes place.
It is designed for native speakers, new speakers, and everyone in between, and as a resource for educators teaching the language.