Linguists estimate that at least half of the world's estimated 7,000 spoken languages will become extinct by the century's end, due to forces ranging from globalization to cultural assimilation.
Part of the challenge of documenting and revitalizing endangered languages is a lack of texts and speech recordings to work with. Seneca, a language of one of the six Iroquois Nations in North America, has only about 100 first-language speakers and several hundred more second-language learners.
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology is widely used to transcribe languages with millions or billions of speakers, like English and Mandarin. But it has only scratched the surface with languages like Seneca, which have vastly fewer speakers and significantly less data to work with.
Now a team of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, along with colleagues from the University at Buffalo, is tapping deep learning to bolster the ability of ASR. And while its focus is on Seneca, the project's vision encompasses the preservation of languages globally as well as an important part of our shared cultural history.
Knowing about different languages teaches us a lot about how our brain works, said Emily Prud'hommeaux, an assistant professor of computer science at Boston College and a research faculty member at RIT. When you document a language, you're preserving information not only about that language but also about how humans use language in general.
It's no coincidence that Prud'hommeaux and her team started with the Seneca language. Three members of the Seneca nation are part of the effort - a direct connection that is rare in research of this type, she said.
Leading the charge is Robbie Jimerson, a Ph.D. student in RIT's Golisano College of Computing and Information Science. He is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and is passionate about ensuring the survival of the Seneca language.
There's a big effort by the leaders of the tribe to preserve and promote our language, said Jimerson. I was looking for an opportunity to contribute.
Using GANs to Create More Language Samples Now in its third year, the project has had challenges when it comes to accumulating language data. Jimerson said the Seneca community can be guarded about what it shares with other people, so there wasn't an abundance of recordings of the language being spoken. He set out to change that.
He started by recording friends and elders who speak the language and asking them to record their friends. He found out whenever someone was speaking Seneca in public. He asked for family recordings of elders telling stories handed down from previous generations. And he grabbed any publicly available videos or recordings he could find online.
The team has fine-tuned an ASR model for Seneca, running it through generative adversarial networks to create more samples out of the limited number of recordings. The model turns wave files of the spoken language into streams of characters, while computing probability and making corrections.
The resulting data is fed into a deep learning model that in turn expands upon the ASR model's accuracy.
The team's networks run in two compute settings: on a nine-server machine learning lab running a variety of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, and on a university cluster of large servers, each running 10 NVIDIA Tesla P4 GPUs. Each cluster runs a range of deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow and Caffe.
The computer engineering cluster is for all students in the computer engineering department, and so they have to compete' for these resources, said Ray Ptucha, assistant professor of computer engineering at RIT, another collaborator on this project.
With access to these clusters at a premium, Jimerson tests code and checks the stability of models on a local machine running an NVIDIA TITAN X rather than inconvenience other students by running a model that might crash.
Achieving Better Accuracy So far, the team's efforts have brought the word error rate of its ASR model from 70 percent down to 56 percent. The goal, said Prud'hommeaux, is to get that rate down to 25 percent, which is where ASR systems were in processing English several years ago.
The more samples of spoken and written Seneca the team can accumulate, the more the error rate will decrease. (Today, English ASR models can achieve word error rates as low as 5 percent.)
The team's work is expected to help with language preservation efforts around the world.
Prud'hommeaux said the team has an agreement with an archiving institution that's a condition of a grant the project received from the National Science Foundation. The resulting language archiving database will be made available as a resource for other efforts seeking to document threatened languages.
Additionally, Prud'hommeaux said the team's work could prove helpful for any deep learning effort that has to make do with limited amounts of data.
Read more about the team's work in their research papers here and here.
Feature image: The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) flag, via Wikimedia Commons.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
18/05/2026
Despite a bumpy start to the year, the provider of event-production support and ...
18/05/2026
Daktronics has partnered with the University of North Carolina to manufacture and install 11 LED displays totaling more than 10,000 square feet and more than 14...
18/05/2026
CBS LA has announced a multi-year partnership with the Los Angeles Rams, covering exclusive local broadcasts of Rams preseason games, weekly year-round programm...
18/05/2026
Skyline Communications has announced an integration between its DataMiner xOps p...
18/05/2026
eCLUTCH, the hybrid esports platform powered by iKOMG, has announced an expansion of its distribution across Europe, MENA, Africa, and Asia, along with new cont...
18/05/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
18/05/2026
With 22 games this season, the production team looks forward to tweaking and enhancing the coverage
After 8,660 days off the air, the WNBA returned to NBC yest...
18/05/2026
(L-R) Midori Francis and Natalie Erika James attend the Saccharine premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Ray Theatre on January 22, 2026, in ...
18/05/2026
Last night, the Spotify Podcast Awards in Mexico returned to the country's capital. Now in its second year, the evening honors creators whose voices are hel...
18/05/2026
ZEN-Core synth goes mobile
Roland's powerful ZEN-Core software synthesizer has just been introduced to the iPad, offering a convenient entry point into ...
18/05/2026
Versatile new limiter plug-in announced
Based in Sheffield, UK, fedDSP offer a range of plug-ins that span the music production, live sound and high-end med...
18/05/2026
A new use for convolution?
Viiri Audio's debut plug-in aims to do something a little different with convolution processing, allowing users to adjust all...
18/05/2026
Delta Goodrem shines for SBS as more than 3.27 million Australians tune in for E...
18/05/2026
The Australian Defence Force uses L3Harris T4 and T7 robots for explosive ordnan...
18/05/2026
Continued investment across Europe and Germany is expanding local teams and improving access to stock, regional expertise, and specialist broadcast support.
CV...
18/05/2026
Monday 18 May 2026
Sky News offers ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes for just...
18/05/2026
Comscore March 2026 Consumer AI Chatbot Usage Rankings Show Claude Gaining Share OpenAI's ChatGPT maintains lead while Anthropic's Claude continues to c...
17/05/2026
Delta Goodrem's Eurovision Eclipse marks end of a stellar run
17 May, 2026
Media releases
Bulgaria wins Eurovision 2026
Relive every spellbinding mome...
17/05/2026
Back to All News
Oasis Premieres on Netflix June 19
Entertainment
17 May 2026
GlobalSpain
Link copied to clipboard
Summer, sunshine, the beach, parties. T...
16/05/2026
Helps to deliver a clean, balanced midrange
Developed alongside Newfangled Audio, the latest plug-in in Eventide's software collection has been designed...
16/05/2026
Brings onboard stem rendering to RANE System One
Engine DJ have just released Engine DJ 5.0, a free update for their Engine DJ OS embedded hardware and Engi...
16/05/2026
Boris FX Continuum Pairs AI Precision and Advanced Creative Controls
Jessie Electa Petrov May 16, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic de...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
15/05/2026
Seattle Sounders FC and Seattle Reign FC, in partnership with RAVE Foundation an...
15/05/2026
Dan Brumm has served as sound designer on Bluey, the Australian children's t...
15/05/2026
The Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA) and Shure Incorporated are accepting applications for the 6th annual Mark Brunner Professional Audio Schola...
15/05/2026
Netflix has announced an expanded NFL schedule for 2026 and beyond under a four-year partnership extension with the NFL through the 2029-30 season. Each season,...
15/05/2026
Ateme is supporting TVRI (Televisi Republik Indonesia) with a contribution and d...
15/05/2026
Concacaf has announced the launch of a new website and mobile app built on Deltatre's FORGE platform. Concacaf.com and the mobile app, available on iOS and ...
15/05/2026
Eutelsat has announced the launch of QBC Business Economic Channel by Qatar Media Corporation, broadcasting in 4K/UHD via Eutelsat's 7/8 West video neighbo...
15/05/2026
Major League Soccer has announced four original content series timed to the 2026...
15/05/2026
The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) has announced it will exhibit and present at InfoComm 2026, taking place June 13-19 at the Las Vegas Convention Cente...
15/05/2026
InfoComm 2026 will take place June 13-19 (exhibits June 17-19) at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The show will include sessions and exhibits covering broadcas...
15/05/2026
Tracy McGrady's Ones Basketball League (OBL) and FuboTV Inc. have announced ...
15/05/2026
Disguise has partnered with Creative Technology (CT) to deliver visual playback ...
15/05/2026
Sony Electronics has announced two new products for professional imaging: the Alpha 7R VI full-frame mirrorless camera and the FE 100-400mm F4.5 GM OSS super-te...
15/05/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
15/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
15/05/2026
For sports organizations, the most valuable assets are often the most sensitive:...
15/05/2026
The NFL's broadcast partners released their 2026 regular season schedules ye...
15/05/2026
Besides drawing on experience with boxing, the production integrates specialty c...
15/05/2026
Daniel Roher attends the Tuner Premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at Eccles Theatre on January 22, 2026 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Neilson Bar...
Linguists estimate that at least half of the world's estimated 7,000 spoken languages will become extinct by the century's end, due to forces ranging from globalization to cultural assimilation.
