Tuesday, June 19, 2012

iPhone/iPad app: FV Chat

Happy days, our Chat app is up at the iTunes store!


Over the past year, I have been working with the FirstVoices Team to get out an app for speakers and learners of all the Native Languages in Canada (and beyond). The app works through Google and Facebook Chat systems - but we have added in keyboard support for over a hundred languages from coast to coast to coast, including syllabics. I've been using the App for Cree and Dene syllabics and have found it über useful. Oh, AND IT'S FREE!!!

Each Canadian Native language has its own layout, and where different dialects have different orthographies, multiple keyboards are available to choose from: Kwak̕wala and Kʷak̓ʷala are the same language, but written in two different systems, so there are two keyboard layouts. A generic Australian Aboriginal keyboard layout should cover most of the languages from Australia, there's a Māori layout, and I added in Diné Bizaad (Navajo) to help get people south of the boarder interested. Though once you have a look at the app, the interest generates itself!

iOS won't let me make system-wide keyboard layouts, so we have to do this from within an App, but if you want to use the keyboard in e-mail or something, you can copy/paste out of the Chat App, and there's a "Sandbox" area where you can type without actually chatting with someone.

As usual for Languagegeek, if your language isn't there, we'd like to add it. Please contact the FV team and we'll get started. There will be a one-time fee to get the keyboard programmed, but once it's in the app, users won't have to pay a cent.

3 comments:

  1. Here's a write-up about the app from straight.com.
    http://www.straight.com/article-713211/vancouver/firstvoices-chat-app-first-nations-languages-hits-iphone

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