Plotting a Course: Language-Learning Apps and Language Revitalization
The war against language loss is fought on many fronts. Speakers set up schools and produce materials to teach their children. Films and television series are produced and directed and released to the public, giving a new voice to languages rarely heard in the global marketplace. Legislation is passed to protect the speaker communities’ rights. But a new tool is gaining use in this fight — language-learning apps.
Of course, these apps — with well known-ones including Duolingo, Mango Languages, uTalk, Memrise — have typically focused on more widely spoken languages (Spanish, French, German) that potential learners have a high demand for. However, in recent years, considerable effort has gone into some of these apps’ courses for underrepresented languages — spearheaded, most times, by the communities of speakers themselves.
In this post, we’ll look at particular apps and courses among those efforts, by community and company in tandem — then we’ll use those to talk about the implications of projects like this for the future of language revitalization.
uTalk: Ladino
Ladino is a Romance language, derived from Old Spanish, spoken by around 110,000 diasporic Sephardic Jews, particularly in Israel, but also places like Turkey and Spain. Though once a main language for Sephardic Jews, for most speakers it is no longer the dominant language. The language is present in education, and does have media presence (such as in the Ladino section of Şalom, a Jewish newspaper in Turkey). Many efforts are being undertaken to revitalize the language, and the community is quite open to helping learners (as one speaker, Jack, describes in the Wikitongues video for this language).
Among the resources in place for revitalizing this at-risk language, the language-learning app uTalk has added Ladino to its list of over 140 language courses. The courses use images and various games to teach and reinforce key phrases in each language — all accompanied by multiple audio files to ensure correct pronunciation.
Working with underrepresented languages is not unfamiliar to uTalk — they have courses in languages from Neapolitan to Kurdish (even making it so that a course can be taken in any other language available on the app).
A blog post from uTalk tells the story of how this course was developed. It began when Carlos Yebra López reached out to uTalk in March 2019. Carlos is the director of Ladino 21, an organization that aims to document, preserve, promote, and celebrate the Ladino language (according to the description on its YouTube channel).
Multiple native speakers are needed to create a course in uTalk, though they’ve made it as efficient as they could. Each course follows a similar lesson plan, but that plan’s content first needs to be translated into the target language. At least two translators, working independently, are used to ensure accuracy. After that, two voice actors add the audio for these scripted phrases, providing another line of correction for any mistakes the translators made as well.
The blog post talks about how important Ladino 21 was to this process. In addition to initiating the project in general, the organization found viable voice actors, and shared connections with uTalk to the Ladino community in general. Such connections are crucial for gathering support — especially for less common languages like Ladino.
Nine months later, after recording with a last-minute change in voice actor, after post-production and actual integration into the app, the course was released on uTalk. A recent video from Ladino 21 gives a link for a 50% discount to the course — a small sign of the crucial hand the organization had in developing the course.
Mango Languages: Potawatomi
Our next example comes from the other side of the world. Potawatomi is an Algic language, of the Algonquian branch, of which Ojibwe is also a member. Many bands of Potawatomi still live near the Great Lakes, where the language once thrived. The numbers are uncertain, but few sources give an estimate of more than 50 native speakers.
However, numerous vibrant efforts exist to revitalize the language. Various Potawatomi tribes have set up language instruction programs, both physical and digital, toward this end. This includes the Hannahville Indian Community, as well as the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.
It is with the latter group that we return to our topic of language apps. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi’s Language Program, as their website describes here, worked with Mango Languages, one such app, to build a course for the Potawatomi language.
The Language Program had released an earlier app, called Bodwéwadmimwen, focusing on vocabulary, but was looking to expand their presence beyond that. They contacted various language learning app developers, including Duolingo, eventually getting a response from Mango.
The Program entered into a contract with Mango to create this course. Courses on Mango Languages focus on particular phrases, but break them down into component parts, and adding in notes on pronunciation, grammar, or culture where necessary. Various exercises are used to solidify knowledge of the phrases taught. The Potawatomi course does just this, following a similar formula to other Mango courses, but incorporating important parts of Potawatomi life, such as mentioning what Potawatomi Band the speaker is from.
The first chapter of this course has been released, with more to come. Mango’s website describes this as a collaboration, as part of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi’s language revitalization efforts.
Language Learning Apps and Language Revitalization
Winoka Rose Begay, in a Master’s thesis for the University of Arizona, focused on the use of mobile apps with indigenous languages. Begay looked especially at apps focused on particular languages, that communities of speakers often make (as the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi did, for example) as part of revitalization efforts — the study’s conclusions, though, connect to the issue in general.
Begay comes to some conclusions, about how apps are used in language revitalization: first, the mobile platform is particularly ideal for youth, who are used to using apps on their phones for just about everything else. Second, apps are used especially as a resource, alongside (and not in place of) other language instruction. Third, multimedia content and ease-of-use are crucial for such apps to be successful.
When used correctly, even multi-language apps like those mentioned can be useful platforms that fill these criteria. They excel in content and ease-of-use, with interfaces that have been developed over all the courses added to their list. The apps’ widespread use would ensure availability on multiple operating systems.
Keeping things in perspective, though, is important. These courses are tools — tools to introduce beginners to the language, or as a reference to more experienced learners. As Rhonda Purcell, language coordinator for the Pokagon Band of the Potawatomi, put it: “Fluency cannot be created through technology… Fluency comes from face to face interactions.”
App courses like those mentioned here certainly have a place in language revitalization, though. Their aid to those starting to learn the language is invaluable — and major companies, like Duolingo, Mango, and the rest, can employ their resources to be an incredible asset in this stage of the process, if they collaborate with the communities in developing these courses.
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