A Crowdsourcing Smartphone Application for Swiss German: Putting Language Documentation in the Hands of the Users
This contribution describes an on-going projects a smartphone application called Voice {\~A}pp, which is a follow-up of a previous application called Dial{\"a}kt {\~A}pp. The main purpose of both apps is to identify the userÂ’s Swiss German dialect on the basis of the dialectal variations of 15 words. The result is returned as one or more geographical points on a map. In Dial{\"a}kt {\~A}pp, launched in 2013, the user provides his or her own pronunciation through buttons, while the Voice {\~A}pp, currently in development, asks users to pronounce the word and uses speech recognition techniques to identify the variants and localize the user. This second app is more challenging from a technical point of view but nevertheless recovers the nature of dialect variation of spoken language. Besides, the Voice {\~A}pp takes its users on a journey in which they explore the individuality of their own voices, answering questions such as: How high is my voice? How fast do I speak? Do I speak faster than users in the neighbouring city?
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