FirstVoices Chat app available

An Indigenous language texting app is now available as a free download for iPad, iTouch and iPhone.
“It is exciting when my daughter asks me to text words to her in our language,” said Samantha Etzel, one of eight SENĆOŦEN language apprentices at the LÁU,WELNEW Tribal School in Brentwood Bay, B.C. “To have the technology at our fingertips adds to ways of learning for our community members who live off-reserve, but still have a desire to learn.”
The FirstVoices Chat app includes custom keyboards for hundreds of Indigenous languages in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. It can be downloaded from:www.firstvoices.com/en/apps or itunes.apple.com/app/firstvoices-chat/id533685251?mt=8.
“We’re excited to launch this new piece of technology, which allows First Nations people to return to the everyday use of their heritage languages using their mobile devices,” said Peter Brand, FirstVoices manager at the First Peoples’ Cultural Council (FPCC) in B.C.
Brand said there was a strong uptake of the language, particularly among youth, in the local community where the app prototype was tested.
Brand said most Indigenous languages use different writing systems than the Roman Orthography alphabet used for English or French.
“Here in B.C. we have 34 distinct languages and each one of those uses a different alphabet,” Brand said. “So what we had to do with the FirstVoices Chat app was develop keyboards that would work on the device to allow First Nations users to write in their own languages.”
Brand said 88 different keyboards were created for use with over 200 languages and dialects in North America and northern Australia.
“We were motivated from the outset to provide this tool for every single First Nations language in Canada,” Brand said.
Brand said there has been plenty of positive feedback about the FirstVoices Chat app, noting that 300 apps have been downloaded as of June 27.
“It’s very exciting for us to see young people seizing onto these tools,” Brand said.
Brand recommends using the FirstVoices Chat User Guide at www.firstvoices.com/en/apps to download the apps.
“You can actually install up to seven keyboards in your own app,” Brand said. “That is the maximum that will display on one page on an iPhone. Most people wouldn’t need that many.”
Once the keyboards have been selected in preferences, Brand said to push on the little globe icon button near the bottom of the regular English keyboard to open up the different keyboards.
Brand said nine dictionary and phrase apps have also been developed and three more are currently being finalized.
“We are a third of the way through the province for dictionary apps and then we’re launching the FirstVoices language tutor, which is language lessons delivered by the iPad,” Brand said.
The FirstVoices Chat app was developed by FPCC while the app’s keyboarding technology was developed with funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Aboriginal Languages Initiative.