Common Voice Scripted Speech 23.0 - Bamun

Shüpamom — Bamun (bax)

This datasheet is for version 23.0 of the the Mozilla Common Voice Scripted Speech dataset for Bamun (bax). The dataset contains 13 hours of recorded speech (11 hours validated) from 13 speakers.

Language

Bamun or Shüpamom/Shupamem is a Bantu-Grassfield language spoken in the Noun Divison, West Region in Cameroon.

Variants

The Bamun language is quite homogeneous within their indigenous territory, the Noun Administrative Division. However, the Administrative Atlas of Cameroon's Languages (Breton and Bikia Fohtung, 1991) indicates a few "islands" outside the Noun Department where the Bamun language exhibits minor variations. These include Bapi in the Mifi Division in the West Region and Bamalang and Bangolan in the Mezam Division in the Northwest Region.

The variant represented in the collection of sentence prompts is that spoken in the Noun Division.

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. Pe me ngbé’ mongep i pi ka’ mbu’she

2. Wu ka mbe pe mfèt nkwenu wu pi yùen nkùo’she mu shu

3. Nsua pua’ ghem nkam têtkut pkantane

4. Shî pua’ gha ma’si’ meshi’ tume yî nda lérewa

5. Me yù payù

Automatic random samples

Nyütu na nkpè mbuo yé.
Yi nké na ngét nshin-mgbom nku’ mbit mfiém-e.
Me nâ nta’ pa pèt nkammbùm.
Yâ mbi’ nkwet njap bu.
Nji téna nté ṅaṅâ.

Community links

• Common Voice translators on Pontoon

Contribute

https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/bax/speak

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

• Germaine Shuewam

• Njutapmvoui Ismaïla

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, Germaine Shuewam gshuewamtoumansie@gmail.com, Njutapmvoui Ismaïla ismaeldiallo1983@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.