INEL Kamas Speech Corpus

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License:

CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0

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Steward:

Institute of Finno-Ugric/Uralic Studies, University of Hamburg

Task: ASR

Release Date: 3/24/2026

Format: TSV, MP3

Size: 376.64 MB

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Description

This dataset is a machine-learning-ready subset of the INEL Kamas Corpus (Version 2.0), processed specifically for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) / Speech-to-Text (STT) training. It translates the highly detailed EXMARaLDA XML annotations into the standard tabular layout utilized by Mozilla Common Voice. The dataset comprises 13 hours and 51 minutes of aligned supervised speech data (13,197 individual clips) across 6 speakers, representing the entirety of available recorded spoken Kamas data. It features demographic metadata where available, and prioritizes Cyrillic transcriptions while falling back to Latin or Phonological tiers to ensure complete text coverage for acoustic modeling.

Specifics

Licensing

Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0)

https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0.html

Considerations

Restrictions/Special Constraints

The source corpus (Gusev, Valentin; Klooster, Tiina; Wagner-Nagy, Beáta. 2023. "INEL Kamas Corpus." Version 2.0.) must be cited in all derivative works and research using this dataset.

Forbidden Usage

None

Metadata

INEL Kamas Speech Corpus

Overview

This dataset is a machine-learning-ready subset of the INEL Kamas Corpus (Version 2.0), processed specifically for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) / Speech-to-Text (STT) training under the Mozilla Data Collective initiative. It translates the highly detailed EXMARaLDA XML annotations into the standard tabular layout utilized by Mozilla Common Voice.

This corpus represents the entirety of available recorded spoken Kamas data, bringing together early 20th-century folklore collections and the final audio recordings of the language's last semi-speakers.

About the Kamas People and Language

Kamas (ISO 639-3: `xas`) belongs to the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family and was spoken in Southern Siberia. The language became extinct in the late 20th century with the death of its last known speaker, Klavdiya Plotnikova, in 1989.

The corpus consists of "pre-shift" and "post-shift" data. Pre-shift data originates from folklore texts collected by Kai Donner in 1912-1914 before the community completely shifted to Russian. Post-shift data consists of audio recordings made between 1964 and 1970 of the final speakers, exhibiting a restricted grammar, heavy Russian influence, and frequent code-switching.

Statistics

  • Language: Kamas (`xas`)

  • Total Speakers: 6

  • Total Audio Clips: 13197 sentences

  • Total Audio Duration: 13:51:51 (HH:MM:SS)

  • Audio Format: MP3

Data Format

The dataset provides audio clips aligned at the sentence level alongside a `train.tsv` metadata file.

The `train.tsv` contains the following Common Voice conforming fields:

  • `client_id`: Unique speaker abbreviation.

  • `path`: The filename of the corresponding audio clip.

  • `sentence`: The primary transcribed text of the audio.

  • `age`: The calculated age of the speaker at the time of recording.

  • `gender`: `male` or `female`.

  • `accents`: Specific dialect information.

  • `locale`: Locale code (`xas`).

Understanding the Text Columns

The original corpus contains multiple transcription tiers. To ensure every audio clip has a primary transcription for STT training, the `sentence` column is dynamically populated using a strict fallback hierarchy:

  1. `st`: Source transcription (Cyrillic orthography).

  2. `stl`: Source transcription (Latin script / Donner's phonetic transcription).

  3. `ts`: Phonological transcription (IPA-like characters / Main INEL transcription).

Because the `sentence` field can contain Cyrillic, Latin, or Phonological text depending on the original file's availability, the raw `st`, `stl`, and `ts` columns are also preserved in the TSV. To programmatically determine which alphabet/tier was used for the `sentence` column on any given row, consumers can simply test for equality: `sentence == st`, `sentence == stl`, or `sentence == ts`.

Note: To maintain a streamlined, single-task focus on Speech-to-Text modeling, extensive linguistic annotations such as morphological glossing and secondary translations (English, German, Russian) have been excluded from this specific audio dataset.

Dataset Alphabet

The following represents all unique characters encountered in the `sentence` column of this dataset. They are sorted by uppercase, then lowercase, and finally all other symbols:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V X Z Ö Ü Ă Č Ĭ Š Ž Ə А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Э Ю Я a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p r s t u v w x y z ä õ ö ü ă č ĭ ŋ š ž ə ɨ а б в г д е ж з и й к л м н о п р с т у ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я ё ! " ' ( ) , - . / 0 1 2 5 6 7 8 9 : ; = ? _ | ʔ ʼ ː — ” …

Copyright, License & Required Citation

Created within the long-term INEL project ("Grammatical Descriptions, Corpora and Language Technology for Indigenous Northern Eurasian Languages").

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Required Citation: If you use this dataset in your research, training runs, or derivative works, please cite the source corpus as follows:

Gusev, Valentin; Klooster, Tiina; Wagner-Nagy, Beáta. 2023. "INEL Kamas Corpus." Version 2.0. Publication date 2023-12-31. http://hdl.handle.net/11022/0000-0007-FC25-4. Archived at Universität Hamburg. In: The INEL corpora of indigenous Northern Eurasian languages. https://hdl.handle.net/11022/0000-0007-F45A-1.