App lets Indigenous Brazilians connect in own languages
JANUARY 30, 2024
by Mohamed RACHEDI
Cristina Quirino Mariano, a member of the Ticuna people, writes a message using the Linklado app in Manaus, northern Brazil.
For Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon, getting online is a challenge. Now, a smartphone app is making it easier to connect by allowing them to use their own native languages.
Hyper-connected Brazil has more cell phones than people—over 250 million, for a population of 203 million, according to communications consultancy Teleco.
But even when they have smartphones and internet connections, the sprawling country's 1.7 million Indigenous inhabitants have often been excluded from the connectivity revolution, since devices typically have keyboards in Brazilian Portuguese and not Indigenous languages.
"Linklado," an app developed by two young friends from the Amazon region, offers a fix: It is a digital keyboard enabling native communities to write with the mix of Latin letters, bars, swoops, accents and other marks used in many Indigenous alphabets in Brazil.
Launched in 2022, it is helping Indigenous users communicate with each other and the world, whether from far-flung villages deep in the Amazon or the cities and towns that dot the region.
More:
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-01-app-indigenous-brazilians-languages.html