T is for Treu, but how do you pronounce that? Using C - LARA to create phonetic texts for Kanak languages (2024)

Abstract: In Drehu, a language of the indigenous Kanak people of New Caledonia, the word treu ‘moon’ is pronounced [{tSe.u}]; but, even if they hear the word, the spelling pulls French speakers to a spurious pronunciation [tK{o}]. We implement a strategy to mitigate the influence of such orthographic conflicts, while retaining the benefits of written input on vocabulary learning. We present text in “phonetized” form, where words are broken down into components associated with mnemonically presented phonetic values, adapting features from the “Comment ça se prononce~?” multilingual phonetizer. We present an exploratory project where we used the ChatGPT-based Learning And Reading Assistant (C-LARA) to implement a version of the phonetizer strategy, outlining how the AI-engineered codebase and help from the AI made it easy to add the necessary extensions. We describe two proof-of-concept texts for learners produced using the platform, a Drehu alphabet book and a Drehu version of “The (North) Wind and the Sun”; both texts include native-speaker recorded audio, pronunciation respellings based on French orthography, and AI-generated illustrations.

## introduction for language learners, however, seeing (reading) the written form of a word and hearing it spoken will often not be enough. this is likely to be the case, for example, for french speakers who wish to learn drehu (or any other kanak language) as an l2 or heritage language. this is because when there is a conflict between what we hear and what we read, the written input often wins out. treu is pronounced [tse.u] (chay-oo), but knowledge of the letter-to-sound correspondences of french, the main language of schooling and of literacy-based activities in new caledonia, will pull many caledonians toward a spurious, french-like pronunciation, a single syllable with t' and 'r' sounds and rhyming with feu [fø] 'fire'. we routinely encounter this phenomenon in our experience teaching kanak languages and linguistics (fw) and living in new caledonia (fw and pw). the influence of the spelling system of the institutional or literacy-dominant language extends beyond the caledonian context. similarly, for the australian aboriginal language barngarla, @xcite report : "the voiced retroflex plosive [ã] ... is written 'rd' as for example in barngarla yarda, 'country'. it is however all too easy for the anglophone reader to interpret this as representing a lengthened preceding vowel followed by [d] as for example in . . . 'card' or 'herd' ". it has also been shown experimentally that l1 french orthographic conventions pull l2 english speakers to spurious french-link vowel pronunciations @xcite . ## two proof-of-concept examples as an initial step, we have developed two c-lara texts for drehu, the language of the island of lifou. drehu, pronounced /dzehu/ or jay-hoo, is the kanak language with the largest community of speakers (approx. 16,000). it is taught as a subject in some schools and at university, and has a proposed written standard. the first text is a drehu alphabet book based on the entries from an introductory booklet produced by the académie des langues kanak (2023). it has almost exactly the same drehu words and french glosses as this original resource, with 80 entries in total. the c-lara version of the alphabet book contains one entry per page. each page can be viewed either in "words" mode, where words are treated as indivisible entities and hovering over a word shows a french gloss, or in "sounds" (phonetic text) mode, where words are divided into graphemes. clicking on the icon next to the word plays the entire word recorded by the drehu native speaker author. hovering over a grapheme shows the associated phoneme; clicking on it plays the audio for the associate phoneme and shows a "phonetic concordance" of words which contain the phoneme, each one displayed together with its associated image (see fig. 1 ). we used chatgpt-4's integrated dall-e-3 functionality to produce the images. this allowed us to test the abilities of the ai to produce images culturally appropriate to the melanesian context. our impression is that it has succeeded well; initial comments from the drehu community are very positive. the second text is a c-lara edition of "leu me jö", the drehu version of aesop's fable both texts are openly available on the c-lara site. foot_7 ## further directions we have three immediate goals. first, we are gathering feedback from users and community members on the proof-of-concept resources, with respect to the accuracy and the usefulness of the phonetic texts, the appropriateness of the ai-generated images, and the usability of the interface. this input will help shape subsequent work. second, we plan to carry over several features from the "comment ça se prononce ?" phonetiser project to the c-lara context. these include: 1. offering two options for phonetic transcriptions: international phonetic alphabet (ipa) and frenchbased orthographic respellings (illustrated in figure 1 ), enhanced with pronunciation tips, such as images or video clips of mouth shapes or tongue movement, and 2. rendering text in an interlinear form which alternates lines of plain and phonetic text. third, we will explore the ways in which community members might participate in creating c-lara resources, such as glossing and lemma tagging. as in the phonetizer project, we adopt an incremental approach, developing proofof-concept resources for one language, here drehu, which we can then show to members of other communities. we have begun discussions with the paicî community. finally, the work presented here could also serve as a first step towards giving new life to a legacy alphabet book for five kanak languages, drehu, fwaî, numèè, paicî, and yuanga @xcite . if the authors and their communities so desire, a new c-lara, multimedia edition of the book could retain the rich, evocative illustrations of the original, while linking the written words to their pronunciations. this important cultural document would then be accessible to new generations.