FirstVoices is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

web platform for

language revitalization Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community group ...

projects, which supports

Indigenous communities There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

to share and promote their languages,

oral culture Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas and culture are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985), reporte ...

and

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

history. It is a joint initiative of the

First Peoples' Cultural Council The First Peoples' Cultural Council (FPCC) is a First Nations governed Crown Corporation of the province of British Columbia, Canada. It is based in Brentwood Bay, British Columbia on Tsartlip First Nation. The organization was formerly known as t ...

(a First Nations-led Crown Corporation in

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, Canada) and the First Peoples' Cultural Foundation (an Indigenous-led crown agency).

FirstVoices.com

FirstVoices.com was launched in 2003, and allows language teams from Indigenous communities to create secure, interactive web sites to document and promote their languages by uploading

alphabets An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

, audio recordings, words, phrases, songs and stories. The languages sites include kid-friendly views of the content, and games based on the uploaded words and media. As of 2024, FirstVoices hosts 65 public and 17 private sites for British Columbia languages, and also supports Indigenous communities throughout Canada, the US, New Zealand and Australia. Following the principles of data sovereignty, all content is controlled and managed by community language administrator teams composed of youth, language teachers, language champions, fluent elders, technical staff and others. Most language sites are publicly accessible, but others are password-protected at the direction of their individual language community. In 2023 FirstVoices migrated to a new version with a rebuilt back-end that uses Django, and an updated front-end interface using ReactJS. Before that, a 2018 version was based on Nuxeo.

Additional tools

In addition to the web platform, FirstVoices provides several other tools and projects related to language revitalization

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

: * FirstVoices dictionary apps – 17 free and open-source mobile apps which reflect content in FirstVoices language sites. * FirstVoices keyboards – desktop keyboard software and mobile keyboard apps for over 100 languages, including every First Nations language in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and many Indigenous languages spoken in the United States. * BC Sans font - a typeface optimized for displaying

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

text in BC Indigenous languages and

orthographies An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and emphasis. Most national and international languages have an established writing syst ...

. * Training and grants through FPCC's Language Technology Program. * Help desk and knowledge base.

Past projects

* Chat app - in 2012, before Apple allowed third-party keyboards on iPhones, FirstVoices produced a chat app that supported typing in every Indigenous language in North America and Australia. This has been replaced by keyboard apps. * Language Tutor and Language Lab - released in 2010, FirstVoices Language Tutor was a tool for creating language lessons, and Language Lab was a portable kit for delivering lessons via "a laptop server, Wi-Fi antenna, power bar, and set of iPads". The lessons allowed users to "listen to a word or phrase, record themselves speaking and then compare the result with a recording of a fluent speaker" as well as other types of quizzes and games. Parents and teachers could monitor student progress.

History and context

Officially launched in 2003, the idea for FirstVoices came about in 1999 from Peter Brand and J,SIṈTEN (Dr. John Elliott), leaders in online SENĆOŦEN language revitalization. In the two decades since FirstVoices started, it has grown to host language sites for nearly 100 languages and language varieties. Indigenous language revitalization is a time-sensitive concern in BC and globally. Many Indigenous languages face a loss of fluent speakers, many of whom are over 65 years old. Almost three-quarters of BC's Indigenous population live away from reserves and are less likely to have access to language and cultural programming. There is a growing population of language learners in BC, many of whom are children and younger adults. The target audience for FirstVoices is Indigenous language learners. These make up the majority of the more than 350,000 yearly FirstVoices site visits, though many visitors are non-Indigenous people interested in Indigenous languages. Online tools provide access to

language learning Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and ...

for people from many backgrounds.

References

External links

FirstVoices.com

Source code on Github
{{DEFAULTSORT:Firstvoices Indigenous languages of the Americas Native American language revitalization First Nations culture in Canada Language-learning websites Free language learning software Internet properties established in 2003 2003 establishments in British Columbia Canadian educational websites