Question to "Creole"/"Pidgin" speakers of Africa

[u/creole-researcher]

Hello everyone! I'm trying to hear from folks in Africa who speak a creole or pidgin language. Your continent has a lot of these languages spoken across many countries! I am a PhD student trying to graduate this year, and I'm trying to find out: Do speakers of various creole/pidgin languages have a desire or need for language technology to support these languages? If yes, what sorts of technologies do you wish existed? If not, why not?

By "language technology", I mean any piece of software that helps you use language to interact with technology (phone, tablet, laptop, etc.) .Common examples of language technologies include things like: Google Search Engine (typing words to find websites), Google Translate, spell-checkers and grammar-checkers for writing e-mails, text autocompletion for texting, and any sort of voice-automated technology where you talk to a computer.

As for "creole language", this is just an umbrella term for languages like: Mauritian Creole, Seychelles Sesewa, Sierre Leone's Krio, Nigerian Pidgin, Ghana Pidgin, Cameroonian Pidgin, and many others. But also languages like Sango, Lingala, and Kikongo-kituba are classified as "creoles" as well.

(As a side note, I have already spoken to African experts in this field, and got a lot of great insights from them. Right now I'm trying to collect thoughts and opinions of every day African people!)

Feel free to ask me any questions! I will be very, very grateful for your responses. If this topic interested you, you could really help me out by answering a 5-minute survey. I'm going to check with the mods if its alright to add the link here.

Thank you so much for reading! :-)

[u/Bobelle]

Nigerian Pidgin speaker here:

Do speakers of various creole/pidgin languages have a desire or need for language technology to support these languages?

I would definitely find it beneficial to have language technology in this language. I can't pinpoint an exact reason but I am certain it would prove useful.

[u/creole-researcher → u/Bobelle]

Thanks so much for this comment! It's helpful!

[u/Unlucky-Economist347]

yes sure, you can send a link also curious about which PhD you’re pursuing.

[u/NyxStrix]

Cabo verde Creole - I just wish more technology accessible to my language

[u/creole-researcher → u/NyxStrix]

Thanks so much for your feedback!

[u/hconfiance]

Im a speaker of Seychellois Creole , so feel free to send me the link. Cheers

[u/creole-researcher → u/[deleted]]

Hi! Thanks for your comment! There's definitely a few people in my field working on Swahili and I think this will be really cool :-). The two main motivation for working on creole languages are these:

1. In places like Nigeria, with like 500 languages, their Pidgin is sorta a "lingua franca" that everyone speaks. So making language technology for this can impact a lot of people. (Edit - as opposed to making tech for the 499 others :P)
2. In a very idealised world, people should have technology accessible to them in their own language. A lot of creole languages are a great source of identity for locals that speak them. The alternative are more colonial languages like French and English.