A Better Way To Preserve Endangered Indigenous Languages | Ettien Koffi & Mark Petzold | TEDxStCloud

We've just begun the United Nations' Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032). A linguist, Ettien Koffi, and a signal processing engineer, Mark Petzold, describe their work to leverage machine learning technologies to preserve endangered indigenous languages. Ettien Koffi is a professor of linguistics at Saint Cloud State University and author of five books. His research encompasses acoustic phonetics of English, sociophonetics of Central Minnesota English, general acoustic phonetics of Anyi (West African language), and acoustic phonetic feature extraction for application in Automatic Speech Recognition, Text-to-Speech, Speech-to-Text, Voice Biometrics, and Intelligent Systems.
He is working with Mark Petzold to develop a Text-to-Speech synthesis to help revitalize Betine, an endangered language spoken in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa.
Mark Petzold is a professor of computer science at Saint Cloud State University, teaching in the computer science and cybersecurity programs. He also is part of the leadership team for Huskies Invent. In addition, Mark is co-principle investigator for the ACCESS STEM scholarship program, a 5 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation intended to increase enrollment in STEM programs. His current research efforts include student retention in STEM courses as well as computer applications for language research and preservation. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx