Common Voice Scripted Speech 23.0 - Bafut

[Bafut] — Bafut (bfd)

This datasheet is for version 23.0 of the the Mozilla Common Voice Scripted Speech dataset for Bafut (bfd). The dataset contains 12 hours of recorded speech (11 hours validated) from 36 speakers.

Language

Bafut is a Grassfield-Bantu language that belongs to the Ring group, alongside Pinyin, Mankon, Nkwen, Awing, Bambili, Menchum, Babanki, Veŋo, Bamunka, and Wushi. It is spoken in the Mezam and Menchum divisions of the Northwest Region of Cameroon.

Demographic information

The dataset includes the following distribution of age and gender.

Gender

Self-declared gender information, percentage refers to the number of clips annotated with this gender.

Age

Self-declared age information, percentage refers to the number of clips annotated with this age band.

Writing system

The collection of sentence prompts provided by the language representatives aligns with the General Alphabet of Cameroonian Languages

Sample

There follows a randomly selected sample of five sentences from the corpus.

1. Ŋ̀gwàʼà ɨ fu ghu maʼà

2. Ǹtsena tswe aa amûm m̀borǝ̀

3. Mɨ̀nnù ŋû wî mɨ bɨʼɨ mə

4. A ghɛ̀ɛ nɨ mə̀, kaa mbə mə waʼà gha biì

5. M̀fɔ̀ Bɨ̀fɨɨ̀ à tswe a tɨtɨ̀ɨ bɨ̀fɔ̀ bîwè fàa mbùʼù àlaʼà

Automatic random samples

Àbà a tswe wa nɨ̂ m̀bî yà yâ.
Ŋ̀gwà à kɨ nɔ̀ʼɔ nɔŋə wa a tweʼe mfɛ̀ʼɛ̀.
Tentə ŋkwee jyâ.
Boma'à neba.
M̀bàŋ jya ɨ lùmə̀.

Community links

• Common Voice translators on Pontoon

Contribute

https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/bfd

Acknowledgements

The compilation of this dataset occured during data camp organized in Yaoundé (Cameroon) in September-October 2024. Two main contributors were involved in the localization of the MCV interface for Bafut, gathering of the sentence prompts, reading sentence prompts, and validating recordings. They are :

• Ambe Melvis Lemanka

• Ellis Taku Angwa

• John Che Ambe

The organization of the data camp was conducted by a dynamic whose dedication is herewith acknowledged :

• Eliette Emilie-Caroline Ngo Tjomb Assembe (Project Lead)

• Dr. Florus Landry Dibenge

• Blaise Mathieu Banoum Manguele

• Blaise Abo Djoulde

• Mathilde Nyambe A.

• Brice Martial Atangana Eloundou

• Jeff Sterling Ngami Kamagoua

• José Mpuda Avom

• Zacharie Nyobe

• Emmanuel Giovanni Eloundou Eyenga

• André Pascal Likwai

Datasheet authors

Emmanuel Ngue Um ngueum@gmail.com, Ambe Melvis Lemanka melvisleman6@gmail.com, Ellis Taku Angwa takuellis@gmail.com, John Che Ambe <>

Citation guidelines

Ngué Um E, Ngo Tjomb EEC, Dibengue FL, Banum Manguele BM, Abo Djoulde B, Nyambe MA, Atangana Eloundou BM, Ngami Kamagoua JS, Mpouda Avom J, Nyobe Z, Eloundou Eyenga EG, Likwai AP (2025) Speech Technologies Datasets for African Under-Served Languages. Proceedings of the Eight Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages, edited by Lachler J, Agyapong G, Arppe A, Moeller S, Chaudhary A, Rijhwani S, Rosenblum D. URL Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).

Funding

The organization of the data camp that led to the compilation of this dataset was made possible by a grant by the Mozilla Foundation under the Opem Multingual Speech Fund (OMSF)

Licence

This dataset is released under the Creative Commons Zero (CC-0) licence. By downloading this data you agree to not determine the identity of speakers in the dataset.