Spell-checking for Indigenous Languages

Though generally under-represented, there are some spell-checkers available for Indigenous Languages . This generally comes from the intensive and painstaking work of modelling the grammar or morphology of a language.

When available, the resulting utility (known as an FST or finite-state transducer) can be used to determine if a given word or occurence is “correct”. While FSTs are capable of much more than this, for now we simply use them (when available) for the task of spell-checking, and also index known, good words from a transcription in our database for discovery by future learners.

Disambiguating Analyses

Quite often a written form of a word may have multiple analyses available. When this is the case any words with multiple analyses will show a light-blue line beneath indicating that the analysis is ambiguous.

Multiple Analyses Available

Clicking within the word will reveal available analyses in the region context bar where you can select the desired analysis for that word.

Select Desired Analysis

If you are unsure about the analysis feel free to leave it for later.

Spelling Suggestions

When available (depending on the FST) we also provide spelling suggestions by showing a light-orange line beneath a word that has suggestions available. Clicking within the word will reveal the suggestions in the region context bar.

Spelling Suggestions

Currently-supported Languages

We currently support the following FST integrations for kiyânaw Transcribe:

Getting your FST or Spell-checker into Transcribe

If you are the developer of an FST or spell-checker for a language that we don’t currently support, please reach out to us so we can arrange to incorporate your work for the benefit of future learners.