Our Mission
Preserving Our Voice
Every language carries a story. Every word holds memory. We're building a digital home for Kenya's languages before they fade into silence.
The Mission
Kamusi Yetu is not just a dictionary. It's a sanctuary for Kenya's linguistic heritage. From the Swahili coasts to the Kikuyu highlands, from the Samburu pasturelands to the Luo lakes—every language is a treasure we're fighting to preserve.
“When a language dies, a way of seeing the world dies with it. We're here to keep our languages alive.”
Right now, our dictionary holds verified words across 37 Kenyan languages. We're deepening our collection with phrases, proverbs, and the living context of how people actually speak. This is heritage work. This is preservation work. This is necessary work.
Preservation
We focus on recording rare dialects, proverbs, and specialized vocabulary before they fade from daily conversation.
Community
Native speakers are the ultimate authorities. Every entry is contributed, reviewed, and refined by the community.
How it Works
The Guardian's Journey
Contribute
Document words, pronunciations, and usage from your home language.
Verify
Community elders and language experts review entries for cultural accuracy.
Learn
Students, writers, and linguists search and preserve the vocabulary.
Where We Are Now
Available Today
Verified word entries, bridge translation, moderation workflows, and active language expansion.
Growing Next
Phrase packs, usage examples, subgroup rollouts, and phrase-aware search and moderation.
Why Context Matters
Enough contextual data to support sentence translation that is better than simple word substitution.
Quality & Trust
Verified Entries
Every entry is reviewed by a moderator for accuracy, completeness, and cultural appropriateness.
Bridge Coverage
All entries have English and/or Swahili translations to ensure discoverability and cross-language search.
Open & Transparent
Contributions, moderation decisions, and data gaps are visible. Community feedback shapes decisions.
How Language Growth Works
Starter
A language has enough verified seed entries to appear in the product, but still needs more words, phrases, and examples.
Growing
Word coverage is improving and phrase packs are underway, making the dictionary increasingly useful for daily lookups.
Phrase-Ready
A language has meaningful phrase coverage and usage context, so translation quality improves beyond isolated words.
Review-Heavy
A language is visible, but entries still need deeper expert or community review before it can be treated as broadly reliable.
From Dictionary to Translation Platform
Phase 1 - Dictionary Foundation
Build verified word entries, bridge translations (EN/SW), moderation workflows, and language expansion.
Phase 2 - Phrase Layer (Current)
Add high-frequency phrase packs with usage context, formality, and domain tags for real conversational meaning.
Phase 3 - Sentence Translation
Use phrase memory, bridge logic, and curated examples to improve sentence-level translation quality.
Phase 4 - Document Translation
Support full document workflows with glossary consistency, quality scoring, and human-in-the-loop review.
Phase 5 - Live Speech Translation
Expand into real-time speech-to-text and text-to-speech translation for multilingual conversations and events.
Phase 6 - Domain Intelligence
Develop academic, healthcare, legal, research, and wearable-device translation use cases with safer terminology controls.
Join the Movement
Our target is to preserve 10,000 unique Kenyan words this year. Will your mother tongue be represented?