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 ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
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...
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it's given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what ...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Simple Steps to Better Acoustics - Taming The Small Room
Most of us mix in spare rooms and small spaces, where the acoustics fight us at every turn. At Gear...
12/06/2026
Latest addition expands vintage-inspired effects palette
Meris' Ottobit pedal range draws its inspiration from vintage gaming consoles, and the latest a...
12/06/2026
Soundbox-based chamber strings series expanded
Sonora Cinematic have just announced the launch of the second instalment in their Soundbox-based chamber stri...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
How Aussie indie games and screen are levelling up with IP 11 June 2026
Ari Harrison, Pro Jank Footy
Head of Games Joey Egger and Ari Harrison of Umbrella sha...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils First-Look Images from Villaflor, Santiago Mitre's New Film
Entertainment
12 June 2026
GlobalArgentina
Link copied to ...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Cross the Boundaries of the Real World into the Spirit Realm i...
12/06/2026
With John Daro, DI Colourist at Warner Bros. Water Tower Color Tuesday 23 June, 10am-1pm or 3-6pm
Restar Corporation
Tokyo
Register here
John Daro is the ...
12/06/2026
Meet The Grumpy Onion Ireland's newest online sensation, all he wants is to ...
12/06/2026
RT stays Up All Night with brand new daily 2026 FIFA World Cup Vodcast
Adding to the fun around 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament, RT has launched a brand new d...
12/06/2026
A fentanyl countermeasure that adapts to combat future black-market drugs Scripps Research scientists developed a vaccine that teaches the immune system to rapi...
11/06/2026
The immense size of the tourney and its Atlantic-spanning operation also disting...
11/06/2026
Nielsen has released a new soccer fandom consumer research report, The Fans Behind The Game: FIFA World Cup 2026 Edition, examining the soccer audience in the...
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.
