Mobile application for learning languages for the unlettered

Mobile based technologies have become ubiquitous, and various applications from games to readers are mobile oriented. In this paper, we propose development of speech based language learning app. Conventionally language learning tools start with words, followed by sentences. The fundamental assumption is that the person is literate. In the Indian context, the literacy levels are as low as 65%. In addition, each Indian language has its own scripts. The objective of this work is to develop a mobile app that starts from the script to teach the language to a person who can speak the language but is unlettered. Since the focus is on the unlettered, writing should be easy. A script centric approach is used to learn a language. The application starts with teaching a simple letter of the alphabet, followed by another letter that can be obtained by simple modification to the previously learned letter, followed by words using the letters that are learned, followed by sentences using the learned words. At every step, a text-to-speech system is used which articulates the letters, and words. The learning app is based on a book called Tamil Karpom (P Nannan). The ideas from the book are adapted for learning Hindi.