Common Voice Scripted Speech 23.0 - Baatonum

Baatɔnum — Baatonum (bba)

This datasheet is for version 23.0 of the the Mozilla Common Voice Scripted Speech dataset for Baatonum (bba). The dataset contains 16 hours of recorded speech (12 hours validated) from 14 speakers.

Language

According to Ethnoloque online Baatonum is a language of wider communication that originated in Benin and Nigeria. It belongs to the Niger-Congo language family. Direct evidence is lacking, but the language is thought to be used as a first language by all in the ethnic community. It is taught as a subject of instruction in education.

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.

Sample

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

1. Baa yori yu ra de bù bwesenu wunana

2. Tundo kpaaru mi nɛn tundon sesu nɛn tiɔwa

3. Yanse wi u ra debun tundo wi sokuwa sika do

4. Kabatɛ̃̀ɛku ga nɛɛ ǹ kun diirɔ, ǹ pɛtɛ ko

5. Bù dom se win wasi sũuru sanam

Automatic random samples

Sɔ̃ɔ teeru, durɔ u win bɔrɔ kana, bù kurɔ naa da.
Baababa ka maabu bera u ra maa swĩ bù ka taasoru da.
Baa tem mù n dora, gbäæra kùn kpä tù ko gømbø: Baa wáaru tà n sankira, dumaa kùn ka gømbø nim nørumø. Baa ± n kua amø, gobigii ka bwäæbwäæ, ba ± næramø.
Baatɔmbun deemaan yĩirena.
N kuawa tirasi mɛ̀.

Community links

• Common Voice translators on Pontoon

Contribute

https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/bba/

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 Baatonum, gathering of the sentence prompts, reading sentence prompts, and validating recordings. They are :

• Dafia Kora

• Imorou Mama

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, Dafia Kora koradafia2004@yahoo.fr, Imorou Maman mamaimorou@gmail.com

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.