The language learning road is a long one. As a learner of an Indigenous language (nêhiyawêwin, Plains Cree Y-dialect) I think it would be impossible for me to account for the number of hours that I've put into studying my grandmother's language. Similarly, the number of hours I've put into scouring the Internet for more resources that might help advance my language more quickly.
Unfortunately, as I've come to learn, there is no fast track in this process -- language learning it turns out is a lifelong journey. I used to get discouraged by this in the beginning, feeling that I would never know enough, never quite understand enough, that there would never quite be enough time to reclaim the language my grandmother never passed on to us. But more recently I've come to realize that taking a lifetime to learn something is not a bad thing -- in retrospect it gives me time to reconnect with all of the pieces that make this journey so meaningful and worthwhile. ta-ma-mâmitonêyihtmân.
Every word is earned
When language learning, especially in the context of an Indigenous language, every word is earned. We work so hard sometimes to properly remember a word and to be able to use it correctly in context. This takes hours of listening, and equally, hours of practice. When we don't have access to the speakers who would pass this gift on to us, we often turn to recordings of stories and other resources to try and pick up the pieces.
However, just listening to a story over and over again doesn't mean that we willl suddenly "understand" what's being said (13th Warrior as an example!). When we have no previous understanding or context on which to attach our newly-received words and phrases, they often don't stick around. And not many things are more frustrating than listening to a language for hours when you don't understand it.
ispîhtêyihtâkosiwin
One of my Elders speaks on the topic of "worthiness" regularly, but not in the western sense. "Worthiness" as he describes it is something akin to: "when you receive this information you will not be scared or confused as to what you are to do with it."
Language learning can feel like this -- every word reclaimed helps to build a sense of worth, purpose and place. Like patching parts of an old comfort blanket that has been passed down for generations. But it also creates a profound sense of reponsibility, one to help aid others who are also on the journey, those who are also patching the holes in their blankets.
So to help aid in this process, one of "mending our blankets", reclaiming our languages, we've started building tooling to help in this journey. Technology isn't going to solve our problems, it's not going to give us back language and culture, but it can reduce some of the hurdles along the way.
Picking up the pieces
People (never) ask me: why transcribing? Well, since you (never) asked: there are certain things that we're looking for as intermediate learners, pieces that help us to level-up our language. These pieces are new vocabulary, use of grammar, phrasing, sentence construction, and how to carry a narrative.
The cool thing is, transcribing gives us all of these pieces.
Introducing: kiyânaw Transcribe
I like to call kiyânaw Transcribe "the distraction". I never meant to build it 😅. But it happened through a natural process of connecting with other leaners and understanding what helps us learn language faster. I immediately understood (or thought I did) what kind of benefits could be had from this activity, but couldn't find anything "out there" that would support this in a way that didn't create more challenges; Google Docs meant a separate audio player, ELAN just didn't work for me, some people I know still use pen-and-paper for this.
In a weekend we had a prototype -- an online version that would let us (more or less) collaborate on a transcription together, at least asynchronously. This project lived for years in my little corner of the internet, attached to a vision that I had for a suite of tools that would allow for deep contextual study, active listening and processing, and sharing with others.
Today I'm proud to announce that the first of those tools is live, you can find it at bundle.kiyanaw.net where you can upload a recording or video, and begin the process of patching your blanket. We've put a ton of work into making this secure, being mindful of Data Sovereignty (more to come on that soon), and mobile-ready as well.
kiyânaw - All of Us
The vision for the platform has always been: build for one language, repurpose for others. We're launching today with (emerging) support for Northern Michif as well as nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree Y-dialect) but all of our tools (Language Database & mobile app coming soon...) are being designed for use with any language. We know spell checkers don't exist for a lot of Indigenous languages, but that's some work we're hoping to tie into soon as well.
Wrapping up
So I hope that you'll join us on this journey, the one that will be here for a lifetime. Come patch up your blanket with us, pick up the pieces that belong to you and help pass them along to the next generation.
kinanâskomitinâwâw - thank you all for being part of this.
Aaron nitisiyihkâson, asinîwâciy-wâskahikan ohci niya. I'm a software engineer and language learner of nêhiyawêwin (Plains Cree, Y-dialect) building tools to support Indigenous language learning.
kiyânaw