WeSay

WeSay is an Open Source project aimed at providing computer tools to help communities perform several language development activities on their own. The project develops tools that are simple, task-oriented, and available on hardware appropriate to the environment. At the same time, these tools enable data sharing with advisors running more traditional, high-powered linguistic and publishing software. The idea is to empower communities to do their own high-quality data gathering, leaving the more technical aspects of publishing to more traditional platforms.

WeSay will be of interest in those situations where native speakers are ready to play a direct, ongoing role in the construction of a dictionary and collection/transcription of stories in their own language, using something other than paper.

WeSay has various ways to help native speakers to think of words in their language and enter some basic data (no backslash codes, just forms to fill in). They can make local, simple printouts for local use, checking, and peer review. The program supports the sharing of gathered words via USB key or email (where available).