ಕೊಡವ ತಕ್ಕ್ · ನುಡಿಯೇ ಬರಹ
The recording is the text.
Kodava Takk has no script of its own — it lives in the voice. We are building a community-owned archive of that voice, and teaching AI to listen, speak, and pass it on. UNESCO calls our language definitely endangered. We call it ours to keep.
Now open · Level 0
The first hundred hours
Every language AI begins the same way: with recordings. Level 0 is the founding drive of the Kodava Thakk corpus — voices from every village, every okka, both dialects, home and diaspora. The dial above moves with every clip received.
Record a story, a song, a proverb, a blessing, or just answer a prompt about your morning coffee. Thirty seconds from a phone is a real contribution; an hour with an elder is an heirloom.
How it works
- Record in the browser, or upload a file — no app needed.
- Tell us who is speaking: village, okka, dialect, age.
- Choose your consent — archive, research, model training, public listening.
- Your clip lands in the community tracker, described and safe.
- AI pre-sorts and pre-transcribes; people verify. The corpus grows.
The plan
Four layers, one purpose
Layer 0 · Guardianship
The community owns the data
A Kodava data guardianship licence, modelled on the Māori Kaitiakitanga licence: contributors keep moral ownership, a community trust is custodian, and the corpus can never be sold. A council of elders, teachers, and technologists stewards every decision.
Layer 1 · The corpus
1,000 hours of living Thakk
Elder and Palame sessions recorded in depth; crowd voice drives for breadth; radio and family archives digitized; the Pattole Palame and dictionaries brought online. Both dialects, Mendele and Kiggat, by design.
Layer 2 · The models
AI that hears and speaks Thakk
Speech recognition first, fine-tuned from open Dravidian models. Then text-to-speech from consenting voice donors, then translation between Thakk, Kannada, and English. The app learns from your voice.
Layer 3 · The products
Someone patient to talk to
A public listening archive, a talking dictionary, classroom packs — and Ainmane, the speech-to-speech companion that lets a learner speak imperfect Thakk and be answered, gently, in Thakk.
Join in
This is done by us, together
Kodava Thakk runs on the Kodagu.ai community — the same open network behind Aane Alert, Nela, and Manabala. Recordists, transcribers, singers, linguists, developers, and every fluent grandparent: there is a seat for you.