Preserving spoken-first African languages

Every voice keeps a
language alive.

Lingo turns spoken contributions into open voice data. Researchers launch a campaign, speakers record short phrases, the community verifies them — and everyone earns rewards. Together we build the corpora that train tomorrow's translation models.

How it works

A simple loop, designed for low bandwidth and people who speak a language but may never have written it.

1 · Record

See a prompt in a language you read, then hold to speak it in your mother tongue. Re-record until it feels right.

2 · Verify

Listen to others' recordings and rate whether they match the prompt. Consensus decides what enters the corpus.

3 · Earn

Quality contributions earn points from the campaign budget — redeemable for cash, mobile money, or goods.

For researchers

Launch a campaign in minutes

Pick a target language, set a points budget, and import your prompts from a CSV — or generate culturally-adapted ones with AI. Invite speakers and verifiers by role with a single link, then watch verified recordings flow into a clean, exportable dataset.

  • CSV prompt import with live preview
  • Roles: speaker, verifier, reviewer, manager
  • Quality-weighted rewards & budget guardrails
  • Works in the browser and as an installable app
Languages in the corpus59 and growing
AghemAjamiyaAkooseAwingBabankiBafiaBakokoBakweriBidweeBuluBumCuvokDenyaDiiDoyayoEjaghamEsimbiEwondoFufuldeGbayaGhomalaGuidarGuizigaIsuKapsikiKenyangKoonzimeLamnsoLimbumMankonMassanaMbembeMedumbaMetaMmenMofaMofuMoghamoMpumpongMundaniNgiNgienboumNgombaNgombaleNgwoNomaandeNugunuOkuPanaPeerePinyinPunuSambaTunenTupuriVuteWehYambetaYemba
Our roots

We started with text. You can still use it.

Lingo began as lingo.cm — a cost-efficient, French-pivot machine-translation service for Cameroonian languages. We compiled its corpus by hand from every written source we could find — books, pamphlets, scanned booklets, and our open cameroon_bibles dataset — unified under a single alphabet (AGLC). Those models are open and live. The voice project is the next chapter — but the foundation is yours to use and download.