Cloud-based Platform for Indigenous Language Sound Education (2024)

Abstract: Blackfoot is challenging for English speaking instructors and learners to acquire because it exhibits unique pitch patterns. This study presents MeTILDA (Melodic Transcription in Language Documentation and Application) as a solution to teaching pitch patterns distinct from English. Specifically, we explore ways to improve data visualization through a visualized pronunciation teaching guide called Pitch Art. The working materials can be downloaded or stored in the cloud for further use and collaboration. These features are aimed to facilitate teachers in developing curriculum for learning pronunciation, and provide students with an interactive and integrative learning environment to better understand Blackfoot language and pronunciation.

## introduction blackfoot is referred to as a pitch accent language where some words can differ in meaning based only on changes in pitch @xcite . consider the example below where the pronunciation of the blackfoot word apssiw has two distinct meanings based only on where the high pitch -marked with an acute symbol -is placed. in our previous work, a cloud-based system called metilda (melodic transcription in language documentation and application) was developed to assist in analyzing the pitch movement of individual blackfoot words @xcite , and to create a visual aid called pitch art for learning pitch @xcite . we are expanding on this work to support language education by improving metilda's data processing, sharing, and visualization capabilities. ## methods as illustrated in figure 1 (below), metilda follows a multi-tier architecture pattern to support language education and research. it provides four major components as web services, namely creation, learning, and user and content management. all web services are deployed to the heroku cloud platform and are made publicly available for other developers to adopt and extend the functionality in their own applications. in addition, creating this platform as opposed to using an existing market software was drawn from the language specific community-based-research practice, which is explained in the next section where describes its creation feature. ## usability studies while the tool is in-progress, usability surveys of metilda were conducted in a linguistics class with a special topic at the university of montana (12 students) in fall 2022. additionally, several language researchers via the linguist co-author's network participated in the survey. tested components focused on those who would create pitch art and use edit collection features. 11 questions were chosen based on the survey research done in @xcite and focused on user experience, including usefulness, ease of use, ease of learning, and satisfaction. among them, 10 questions use the likert format with ratings from 1 to 5 (1 being "strongly disagree" and 5 "strongly agree") and 1 open ended question allowing the participants to provide general feedback. a total of 25 users participated of which three were linguists, 21 were students, and 1 was a teacher. by average, the rating for each question is above 4.0 out of 5 and over half of the questions received more than 4.5 ratings, which indicates the overall effectiveness of metilda in supporting the blackfoot language education. usability of the learn feature has not yet been tested. more sample words for this feature need to be added before the component can be tested. however, the students in the class were shown how it works, and they informally expressed that the component is helpful for realizing their own pitch performances. ## conclusions in this paper, we presented metilda, an integrated system for indigenous language education. it supports speech data processing, analysis, visualization, and sharing via three main components: creation, learning, and user and content management. the creation component is especially helpful for the training of community linguists in acoustic phonetics and the production of teaching materials including pronunciation guides. the learning component helps users to learn pitch patterns, practice word pronunciations, and visualize the similarity/difference between learners' and native speakers' pronunciations using pitch art. user and content management can be used to facilitate curriculum development and administer class setup/ process. in our future work, we plan to enhance pronunciation education with other indigenous languages.