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The splash page! On the left is a continuously scrolling list of the languages that Matooke connects.
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An example of the Algic family language graph - the user can navigate through this environment in 3D, and click on a language to search it.
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An example of the Nilotic family (distributed through east and central Africa) language graph
Matooke 🍌 Language Exploration!
Track
We're submitting on the inequality track!
The Motivation 💡
Before Ray Lennon, chief developer of Matooke, moved to Uganda last summer, he was excited to learn about the regional langauges that he would soon hear. To his surprise, despite the tens of millions of people who speak Luganda - lingua franca of central Uganda - the internet had virtually nothing to offer.
It's clear that there's a division in accessibility when it comes to language learning materials for underserved regions of the globe - in particular the global south. It seems that a perception exists of "those languages aren't worth learning". n an era where the internet has the potential to make us more connected and informed, Matooke aims to focus the power of big data to enable anyone - no matter where they're from or what they speak - to communicate with the world.
How we built it 🏗️
Matooke is built on a Node.JS framework, and hosted using Heroku. The front-end is entirely vanilla HTML5, while the 3D graphics were implemented with the popular THREE.JS library. Check out our Git repo here!
Challenges we ran into 😠
Across the 7000+ languages in the world, it's an enormous challenge to aggregate data sources for all of them. Matooke's original goal was to teach introductory phrases, scraped from the internet, in every language and dialect. Due to the monumental hurdles associated with this task, we're first focusing on providing exposure to these languages using an interactive tree explorer, which is flexible for future additions.
Accomplishments that we're proud of 😁
Our team is proud to have developed so much in such a short time span - especially considering that we began work at ~9:30PM on Saturday!
What's next for Matooke 🔭
Matooke has the potential to help connect a lot of people. We aim to approach language learning from new angles and continue our data-driven approach to democratizing human knowledge and serving the underserved.
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