09:54Machine-translated from Azerbaijani by AIRead in Azerbaijani
Apple Adds Keyboards for 3 Indigenous Languages to iOS and iPadOS 27
In the iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 updates it released in September, Apple expanded the selection of keyboards for Indigenous languages. iPhone and iPad users can now type in Blackfoot, Comanche and Northern East Cree. The company added Cherokee to the system back in 2010. The iOS keyboard currently supports more than 200 languages and language variants.
Only 1,500 fluent Cherokee speakers remain worldwide. Most of them are over the age of 70. For this reason, the community places particular emphasis on people learning Cherokee later in life and on language programs developed for infants. The Cherokee writing system has 85 characters representing sounds and syllables, down from 86 previously. The main goal is to preserve the language on the phones and tablets that young people use every day. Adding a language to digital systems does not begin directly with Apple. First, the language’s characters are added to the Unicode standard. This standard includes more than 157,000 characters. Reviewing a new writing system and assigning a digital code to each character can take 3 to 5 years. Apple, Microsoft, Google, linguists and volunteers work together in the consortium, which has only 4 full-time employees. Platforms then create a font for those characters. Otherwise, they appear on the screen as empty squares. The keyboard layout is designed according to each language’s writing conventions. Because a physical keyboard already existed for Osage, that layout was transferred to the digital system. In Nez Perce, which has no capital letters, the Shift key brings up accented characters and speeds up typing. On the Cherokee keyboard, after a consonant is selected, the corresponding vowel combinations appear on the keys in the bottom row.
Teachers in Oklahoma also use these keyboards in lessons. Students can record their pronunciation and listen to it later. This is important because changing 1 sound in Cherokee can completely alter a word’s meaning. Films such as “How to Train Your Dragon,” dubbed by the Indigenous community, help children hear the language in everyday life. Young people writing their names in Cherokee characters on Facebook is also seen as a sign of their connection to the language. Who owns language materials is also an important issue for Indigenous peoples. Apple engineers say that the data collected during the collaboration does not belong to the company and is not stored in a separate, closed database. Google has also added languages such as Manx and Māori to its platforms. The company is exploring ways to make adding new languages easier with generative artificial intelligence, meaning AI capable of creating new content. Nevertheless, the direct participation of native speakers of a language remains essential to developing an accurate keyboard.
Only 1,500 fluent Cherokee speakers remain worldwide. Most of them are over the age of 70. For this reason, the community places particular emphasis on people learning Cherokee later in life and on language programs developed for infants. The Cherokee writing system has 85 characters representing sounds and syllables, down from 86 previously. The main goal is to preserve the language on the phones and tablets that young people use every day. Adding a language to digital systems does not begin directly with Apple. First, the language’s characters are added to the Unicode standard. This standard includes more than 157,000 characters. Reviewing a new writing system and assigning a digital code to each character can take 3 to 5 years. Apple, Microsoft, Google, linguists and volunteers work together in the consortium, which has only 4 full-time employees. Platforms then create a font for those characters. Otherwise, they appear on the screen as empty squares. The keyboard layout is designed according to each language’s writing conventions. Because a physical keyboard already existed for Osage, that layout was transferred to the digital system. In Nez Perce, which has no capital letters, the Shift key brings up accented characters and speeds up typing. On the Cherokee keyboard, after a consonant is selected, the corresponding vowel combinations appear on the keys in the bottom row. Teachers in Oklahoma also use these keyboards in lessons. Students can record their pronunciation and listen to it later. This is important because changing 1 sound in Cherokee can completely alter a word’s meaning. Films such as “How to Train Your Dragon,” dubbed by the Indigenous community, help children hear the language in everyday life. Young people writing their names in Cherokee characters on Facebook is also seen as a sign of their connection to the language. Who owns language materials is also an important issue for Indigenous peoples. Apple engineers say that the data collected during the collaboration does not belong to the company and is not stored in a separate, closed database. Google has also added languages such as Manx and Māori to its platforms. The company is exploring ways to make adding new languages easier with generative artificial intelligence, meaning AI capable of creating new content. Nevertheless, the direct participation of native speakers of a language remains essential to developing an accurate keyboard.