Introduction

FirstVoices hosts custom, interactive alphabets with many useful and interesting features. Custom alphabets provide features such as:

• Custom alphabetization in your Dictionary for your words and phrases

• “Listen to each letter” page for learners and those new to your writing system

• More accurate and flexible search functionality

• Alphabet-related games, such as Word Search, Parachute, or Wordle

In order to make all of these features functional, the FirstVoices team needs some information about your writing system and recordings of the sounds that each character represents. It is important to do this at the beginning of your project, before uploading content, so that there are no issues with functionality later on.

Preparing your alphabet

Gather information

1. Identify and finalize the list of characters in your writing system. If there is not a standard writing system for your language, or if there are several possible writing systems that you could use, it is a good idea to engage in community consultation around the writing system for your language site.

2. Identify if you will use lower case letters in your alphabet, or upper case, or both (if applicable)

   1. Some language writing systems use ONLY lower case characters.

   2. Some language writing systems use ONLY upper case characters.

   3. Some language writing systems use both lower and upper case. In this case, you must identify both the lower and upper case versions of your alphabet characters.

3. Identify any possible English alphabet equivalents to the special characters in your writing system (if applicable). For example the character < ł > might be equivalent to < hl > using Latin characters.

4. Decide on the correct order for your alphabet (For example, in English, a=1, b=2, c=3...)

Record sound files for your alphabet

1. Decide what will be included with each sound file. Some communities include only the sound associated with the character (example), and others choose to include more information such as detail about the character itself, or example words using the sound (example). You are encouraged to make whatever decision is most suitable for your project and your community's teaching practices.

2. /wiki/spaces/FIR1/pages/17662754 of a speaker producing the character sound and any other information that you decided to include.

3. Follow these instructions for managing and editing your audio files.

Submit your alphabet

When a new FirstVoices language site is first established, the Language Administrator submits their language alphabet to the FirstVoices team, who are responsible for uploading it to the site. The language team collects their alphabet information into a spreadsheet (.csv) and submits the spreadsheet to the FirstVoices team.

Steps:

1. Download the alphabet submission template | alphabet submission template

2. Enter the information you gathered in the spreadsheet columns. Column definitions:
   

   1. CHAR: The character in your writing system (If your writing system uses lower case, enter lower case. If your writing system does not use lower case, enter upper case here)

   2. CHAR_UPPER_CASE: The upper-case variation of the character in your writing system (If your writing system does not use upper case, leave this column blank)

   3. LATIN: The equivalent character in English, approximate characters that are commonly used by learners, or alternate spellings (this is necessary for successful use of the 'approximate search' feature)

   4. ORDER: The numerical order in which this character appears (for alphabetical sorting)

   5. AUDIO_FILENAME: The exact filename of the corresponding audio file, including the file extension (e.g. alphabet_a.wav)

   6. AUDIO_SOURCE: The name of the speaker on the recording

   7. AUDIO_RECORDER: The name of the person who made the recording
      

3. Save your spreadsheet in CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (.csv) file format following the same rules for file naming as used for media files. (ONLY use lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens, or underscores, NO SPACES. The only special character should be the period before the file type)

4. Send your spreadsheet and folder of media files to FirstVoices as an email attachment to <batch@fpcc.ca>. It is ok to zip your media files for easier attachment.

Alphabet template and examples

View and download our template spreadsheet for alphabet submission:

Managing your alphabet

Language Administrators are responsible for the management of the letters of their alphabet. Each letter must have an attached sound file and sample word. Once an alphabet is uploaded to FirstVoices, it can be managed by the Language Administrator from the Dashboard.

Description of fields in the edit alphabet character window:

• Character: In this case the character is the letter A

• Upper Case: The SENĆOŦEN alphabet is written in upper case characters only, so A goes in the Character field. If they had lower case characters, then a would go in the Character field and A would go in the Upper Case field.

• Sort Order: This is the first letter in the SENĆOŦEN alphabet, so the sort order is 1.

• Featured Words: Select a word or words from the language site that commence with the letter.

• Related Audio: Select the audio file related to the chosen featured word.

• Replace Button: Use this button to replace a previously selected audio file.

Changing your alphabet

Option A: Spreadsheet with spelling patterns (Recommended)

1. Language team members create a spreadsheet mapping the existing spelling patterns to the new alphabet spelling patterns.
   
   
   

2. The FirstVoices development team will run a script to convert entries with the old spelling/alphabet to use the new spelling/alphabet. The development team will move previous spellings to an “alternative spelling” field, so that the Language Team can look at it when editing/checking entries.

3. The FirstVoices development team will upload the new alphabet.

4. Language team members will check entries for errors by going through the word and phrase list view on FirstVoices.

Option B: Change Alphabet First 

1. The FirstVoices development team will unpublish all entries (i.e. change to "Team Only").

2. The FirstVoices development team will upload the new alphabet.

3. Your language team will manually change each word over to the new alphabet and publish as each word is ready.

Option C:  Spreadsheet with Entries 

1. The FirstVoices development team will provide a spreadsheet template.
   

   

2. Language team members will map the existing entries to entries using the new alphabet (words, phrases, and audio titles).

3. The FirstVoices development team will run a script to edit words, phrases, and audio titles.

4. The FirstVoices development team will upload the new alphabet.

5. Language team members will check entries for errors by going through the word and phrase list view on FirstVoices.

6. Language team will manually update story and song entries to use the new alphabet.