Platform to learn African writing systems.

[pythonbrad]

Introduction

African writing systems are more than just tools for communication—they are living symbols of knowledge, art, and cultural identity. Reconnecting with these scripts is not only about honoring the past but also about building a future where African literacy stands strong on its own terms. By reviving our traditional alphabets, we ensure that African stories, history, and wisdom are told in scripts that truly belong to the continent.

But how can we encourage the use of African writing systems today?

Background

In Africa, we have several official writing systems, and one of them is the GACL.

The GACL (General Alphabet of Cameroonian Language) is the official way to write in Cameroonian Language. It is based on the IPA and allows writing while preserving the sound of what we want to say in their dialect.

The knowledge of the GACL, allows us to write and read any Cameroonian language, and other African languages.
Note that, the Cameroon is a small Africa.

Problem

The writing systems are more used by professional in the linguist field, while African mostly type the sound using English / French to express what they want to say.

Objective

The promotion of the African writing systems, like the GACL, will contribute to the "vivre ensemble", despite our cultural diversity.

Description

Provide a web / mobile platform to motivate the African to learn (reading and writing) in their offical writing system.

Features

• Exam (pronunciation, typing, listening, etc.)
• Possibility to learn, in function of a set of Cameroonian languages (prioritize the datasets of these languages)
• Ranking
• Revision mode
• Competition (fast typing, pronunciation, etc.)

Requirements

Have at least a base knowledge of

• The General Alphabet of Cameroonian Language
• NLP/AI
• Software engineering
• Web / Mobile development
• UI/UX design

Complexity

• Beginner - This project requires no or little prior knowledge of the technolog(y|ies) specified to contribute to the project
• Intermediate - The user should have some prior knowledge of the technolog(y|ies) to the point where they know how to use it, but not necessarily all the nooks and crannies of the technology
• Advanced - The project requires the user to have a good understanding of all components of the project to contribute

Required time

• Little work - A couple of days
• Medium work - A week or two
• Much work - The project will take more than a couple of weeks and serious planning is required

Categories

• Mobile app
• IoT
• Web app
• Frontend/UI
• AI/ML
• APIs/Backend
• Voice Assistant
• Developer Tooling
• Extension/Plugin/Add-On
• Design/UX
• AR/VR
• Bots
• Security
• Blockchain
• Futuristic Tech/Something Unique

References

• https://etela.africa/african-writing-systems-our-own-alphabet/
• https://omenkamag.com/african-alphabets/
• https://github.com/sanidhyy/duolingo-clone (opensource duolingo web interface)

[github-actions]

It's great having you contribute to this project

Welcome to the community 🤓, we will carefully review your project idea and get back to you.

If you would like to follow our community's work you should join us on our Telegram chat group and Channel, we help and encourage each other to contribute to open source.
You can also support us financially here to help us build Cameroon one open source at a time.

[pythonbrad]

How one alphabet can represent all the languages?
By example, there are sounds in fulfuldé who can't be written using the latin by example.

The GACL is similar to the IPA. The phonetic is a principle that can be used to write the sound.
And what you will write is what you will read like if you were a native in the language.

The Cameroonians languages can be written using the phonetic, and it's where the GACL come from.