A new augmented reality app — called DeciphAR — based at Mount Royal University is teaching people the meaning of Blackfoot words and how to pronounce them. Information design student Chase Schrader is the app’s developer and Jessie Loyer is a librarian at Mount Royal.
A new augmented reality app — called DeciphAR — based at Mount Royal University is teaching people the meaning of Blackfoot words and how to pronounce them. Information design student Chase Schrader is the app’s developer and Jessie Loyer is a librarian at Mount Royal.
CALGARY—When the new library at Mount Royal University was being designed, librarian Jessie Loyer said incorporating the Blackfoot language was an important component.
So, on many of the way-finding signs, like “children’s literature,” or “curriculum collection,” the Blackfoot words were added underneath.
But Loyer, who is Cree-Métis and a member of Michel First Nation, didn’t want the words to become “museumified,” or just regarded as an art piece. She wanted people to use it.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
That’s where a new augmented reality app, DeciphAR, which launched Thursday, comes in. Its intent is to help people learn the words and not shy away from pronunciation.
“It’s just that idea that we’re looking at these words, and not seeing them as totally foreign and unachievable, but that it’s something that anyone who’s not Blackfoot can do,” said Loyer.
Anyone can download it and scan the signs with the in-app camera. It then provides a definition of the word and an option to hear the word pronounced.
And, since Blackfoot doesn’t always translate to an exact word in English, it helps give a more in-depth explanation of the word beyond what can be written on a physical sign. For example a sign for “showcase” has “aipi’kohto’pistsi” beneath it, which in the app is described to translate to a place where you put an object to be seen prominently.
There are multiple Blackfoot dialects that exists, so the app includes a disclaimer about that, says information design student Chase Schrader, a junior AR designer and the app’s developer.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Right now, the audio is provided in a southern Alberta dialect by elder Leo Fox, a Blackfoot language expert with Red Crow College in Lethbridge and an instructor at the University of Lethbridge.
Schrader added that there’s potential to develop the app so that it can be used beyond the library.
For now, it’s limited to the library, as the technology only recognizes the images of the signs, rather than the individual letters.
The app features a quiz too. But to access the words in your app, you first have to track down all the signs in the library and scan them.
While the app won’t make you fluent in Blackfoot — you’ll just grasp a few library terms — it will help familiarize people with the language, Loyer said.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
“It is really important to sort of have these markers of welcoming for people from all different backgrounds,” Loyer said.
“We thought that this was one small way that we can do it.”
Amy Tucker Amy Tucker is a former staff reporter with Star Calgary.
