Common Voice Spontaneous Speech 2.0 - Adyghe

Адыгабзэ — Adyghe (West Circassian) (ady)

This datasheet is for version 2.0 of the the Mozilla Common Voice Spontaneous Speech dataset for Adyghe (West Circassian) (ady). The dataset contains 801 clips representing 6 hours of recorded speech (5 hours validated) from 25 speakers.

Language

Adyghe (/ˈædɪɡeɪ/ or /ˌɑːdɪˈɡeɪ/, also known as West Circassian) is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by the western subgroups of Adygheans (Circassians). Identified by the ISO 639-3 code ady, it belongs to the Northwest Caucasian language family. Adyghe is also one of the official languages of the Republic of Adygea, a federal subject of the Russian Federation.

The Adyghean (West Circassians) population is estimated to be between 1,200,000 to 2,000,000 although the number of active speakers is significantly lower. Adygheans are primarily located in the Republic of Adygea, Russia, with additional diaspora populations in Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Syria, the United States, Canada, and various European countries due to historical migrations. However, only about 10% of the Adyghe population is considered literate in the language.

For more information about the global distribution of Adyghe population, see: The Adyghe (Circassian) Diaspora Today.

Variants

The following table presents the general language variants of the Adyghe language used in the Common Voice project.

Questions in the MCV-SS project are provided in Cyrillic and Turkish transliteration to support non-literate users from the Turkish diaspora. With "literacy" we mean being able to read the Adyghe alphabet.

Data splits for modelling

Transcriptions

• Prompts: 127

• Duration: 5:53:04 [h:m:s]

• Avg. Transcription Len: 218

• Avg. Duration: 26.45[s]

• Valid Duration: 17447.616[s]

• Total hours: 5.88[h]

• Valid hours: 4.85[h]

Writing system

The Adyghe language uses the Cyrillic script with some additional letters to represent specific sounds in the language. The alphabet consists of 66 letters, including 33 standard Cyrillic letters and 33 additional letters unique to Adyghe. The writing system is phonetic, meaning that words are generally spelled as they are pronounced. Adyghe is written from left to right.

During the period when there was no Adyghe keyboard option, the recorded text content was written with the Russian keyboard as the closest alternative. The characters in the Adyghe alphabet defined by the Unicode Consortium as "Cyrillic Letter Palocka ('Ӏ': u04C0, utf-8)" and "Cyrillic Letter Small Palocka ('ӏ': u04CF, utf-8)" are not defined in this keyboard model. For this reason, since the early days of computers, when creating digital data in Adyghe or Kabardian, one of the characters "Latin Capital Letter i ('I': u0049, utf-8)", "Latin Small Letter L ('l': u006C, utf-8)" or "Digit One ('1': u0031, utf-8)", albeit rarely "Vertical Line ('|': u007C, utf-8)" was used randomly due to their visual similarities (Nemlioğlu, 2018). This situation emerges as an important factor that negatively affects data quality (Nemlioğlu,2025).

Therefore we allowed the use of only the keyboard layout specially designed for Adyghe language in the Common Voice project. This keyboard layout includes all the letters of the Adyghe alphabet, including the special characters "Cyrillic Letter Palocka ('Ӏ': u04C0, utf-8)" and "Cyrillic Letter Small Palocka ('ӏ': u04CF, utf-8)". The use of this keyboard layout has significantly improved the quality of the text data in Adyghe. Click here to download Adyghe Keyboard for Windows.

Symbol table

Main Alphabet: (Ordered by ascending) а б в г {гу} {гъ} {гъу} д {дж} {дз} {дзу} е ё ж {жъ} {жъу} {жь} з и й к {ку} {къ} {къу} {кӏ} {кӏу} л {лъ} {лӏ} м н о п {пӏ} {пӏу} р с т {тӏ} {тӏу} у ф х {хъ} {хъу} {хь} ц {цу} {цӏ} ч {чъ} {чӏ} ш {шъ} {шъу} {шӏ} {шӏу} щ ъ ы ь э ю я ӏ {ӏу}

Orthographic–Phonetic Table (IPA):

Auxiliary exemplar: The following letters are also present in the dataset, but are not part of the official Adyghe alphabet. They are used to represent two specific sounds in the Shapsug dialect.

{гь}: Voiced dorso-palatal plosive [ɟ] (e.g. егьэ (jeɟɘ) [Shapsug] = еджэ [Adyghe]: reading) {кь}: Voiceless dorso-palato-velar plosive [kʲ] (e.g. кьэт (kʲɘt) [Shapsug] = чэт [Adyghe]: chicken ) {кӏь}: Glottalized voiceless dorso-palato-velar plosive [kʲʼ] (e.g. кӏьакӏьэ (kʲʼäkʲʼɘ) [Shapsug] = кӏэнкӏэ [Adyghe]: egg)

Other Languages: Some entries in the dataset include words originating from other languages, such as Russian or Turkish. These words have been phonetically transcribed using the Adyghe alphabet, with characters chosen to approximate their original pronunciation as closely as possible.

Extralinguistic tags

Samples

Questions

There follows a randomly selected sample of questions used in the corpus.

Дунаимкӏэ псы къэбзэ къэкӏуапӏэхэр, уигупшысэкӏэ, сыдым къыхэкӏэу нахь макӏэ хъура? [Dunaimç'e psı khebze khek'uap'exer, vuigupşşıseç'e, sıdım khıxeç'eu nah maç'e xhura?]
Унае ыкӏи ыпкӏэ зыхэлъ еджапӏэхэмкӏэ сыд уигупшысэр? [Vunaê ıç'i ıpç'e zıxelh yêcap'exemç'e sıd vuigupşşıser?]
Дунаим исыд чӏыналъи ущыпсэун плъэкӏынэу щытыгъэемэ, тыдэ ар хъун ылъэкӏыныгъи? [Dunaim yisıd çç'ınalhi vuşıpseun plheç'ıneu şıtığeême, tıde ar xhun ılheç'ınıği?]
Сыд фэдэ шхыныгъуа анахь угу рихьырэр? [Sıd fede şşxınığua anah vugu rihırer?]
Пчэдыжьым укъызыущыжьрэм апэ дэдэ сыд пшӏэрэр? [Pçedıjım vukhızıuşıjrem ape dede sıd pş'erer?]

Responses

There follows a randomly selected sample of transcribed responses from the corpus.

Псы къэкӏуапӏэхэр [disfluency] шхъафитэу, псыр [disfluency] тэгъэкӏоды, тэгъэлажьэ. Пс [disfluency] пшъхьэфитэу псыр мокӏэ-мыкӏэ итэгъахьэ. Ай пае макӏэ мэхъу.
Еджэным ыпкӏэ пылъын фаеу сэ слъытэрэп. Тэ ары тызэреджагъэр. [disfluency]  Ыпкӏэ пылъыгъэп теджэ зэхъум. Ау кӏо хэушъхьафыкӏыгъу зыгорэм зыфигъэсэну, феджэну фаемэ ыпкӏэ лъыптымэ хъущт ау зэкӏэми агъотын фае гъэсэныгъэр ащ ахъщэ лъыптын фаеу сэ слъытэрэп.
Дунаим изычӀыналъэ сыщыпсэун слъэкӀынэу щытыгъэми Адыгэ чӀыгум сисыщтыгъэ [noise].
Анахь [disfluency] сикӏэсэ шхыныгъор мыры сӏоу зы къахэсхышъущтэп. Ар бэ мэхъу, ау зыцӏэ къесӏон слъэкӏыщтыр щэлэмэ хьалыжъор ары, къое хьалыжъо зыфатӏорэр гъэжъагъэу, стырэу,  [disfluency] дагъэм къыхахыжьыгъэ къодыеу сшхынэу сикӏас.
Пчэдыжьым сыкъызыущыжьырэм апэ дэдэу сиунэ исхэм ащхыщт пчэдыжьыщхэр  афэсэгъэхьэзыры.

Recommended post-processing

These transcriptions are provided as-is, and no additional post-processing is required. However, users may choose to perform Unicode normalization (NFC or NFD) depending on their specific use case.

Although the sentences (questions/translation texts) have been written and verified using correct Unicode characters via the ady & kbd keyboard for Windows, it is possible that some text inputs beyond our control may have been submitted due to Common Voice’s open participation model.

After the datasets are published, we re-audit these entries and take the necessary steps to ensure corrections in the next release.

Fields

Each row of a tsv file represents a single audio clip, and contains the following information:

• client_id - hashed UUID of a given user

• audio_id - numeric id for audio file

• audio_file - audio file name

• duration_ms - duration of audio in milliseconds

• prompt_id - numeric id for prompt

• prompt - question for user

• transcription - transcription of the audio response

• votes - number of people that who approved a given transcript

• age - age of the speaker1

• gender - gender of the speaker1

• language - language name

• split - for data modelling, which subset of the data does this clip pertain to

• char_per_sec - how many characters of transcription per second of audio

• quality_tags - some automated assessment of the transcription--audio pair, separated by |

  • transcription-length - character per second under 3 characters per second

  • speech-rate - characters per second over 30 characters per second

  • short-audio - audio length under 2 seconds

  • long-audio - audio length over 30 seconds

Get involved!

Community links

• Common Voice translators on Pontoon If you want to join ady community, start here: https://bit.ly/cv_circassian_start_here

You can find more information about how to participate in the Common Voice Project on the following page: Community Participation Guidelines

Contribute

• Contribute questions

• Validate questions

• Answer questions

• Transcribe recordings

• Validate transcriptions We do not advice to contribute to this dataset directly, because of writting system-keyboard issues. Please, read the section "Writing system" above and the following article: https://www.nemerko.org/the-importance-of-adyghe-keyboard-usage-for-artificial-intelligence-training/

If you want to contribute to the Adyghe language, please visit the following links: https://bit.ly/cv_circassian_start_here

A special thanks to all the volunteers who contributed to this dataset.

Acknowledgements

Datasheet authors

Authors

• M.Ugur Nemlioglu <nemerko@nemerko.com>

• Murat Topçu <murattopcu67@hotmail.com>

Curators

• M.Uğur Nemlioğlu <nemerko@nemerko.com>

• Saida Abregova

• Elizaveta Gogunokova

• Murat Topçu

Advisors

• Bülent Özden (Technical Advisor)

Funding

This dataset was partially funded by the Open Multilingual Speech Fund managed by Mozilla Common Voice.

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.

Footnotes

1. For a full list of age, gender, and accent options, see the demographics spec. These will only be reported if the speaker opted in to provide that information. ↩ ↩2