---
license: cc-by-4.0
task_categories:
  - automatic-speech-recognition
  - text-to-speech
  - translation
language:
  - bbj
  - fr
  - en
tags:
  - cameroon
  - ghomala
  - low-resource
  - speech
  - bible
  - aligned
pretty_name: Ghomálá' Spoken New Testament (aligned audio + trilingual text)
size_categories:
  - n<1K
---

# Ghomálá' Spoken New Testament — aligned audio + trilingual text

Part of the [Lingo / NativeAI](https://lingo.cm) language-preservation project. This is
**~20 hours of spoken Ghomálá'** (Ghomala, ISO `bbj`; a Grassfields Bantu language of
West Cameroon) — recorded readings of the New Testament — **aligned chapter-by-chapter
with parallel text in Ghomálá', French, and English.**

Spoken-language data is exactly what oral-first Cameroonian languages lack, which makes
this a rare resource for building **ASR, TTS, and speech-translation** for Ghomálá'.

## Contents
| | |
|---|---|
| Audio | **260 chapter recordings**, `audio/<BOOK>.<chapter>.mp3` |
| Total duration | **~19h 49m** |
| Books | 27 New Testament books (Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Revelation) |
| Parallel text | `text/ghomala/`, `text/french/`, `text/english/` — 260 chapters each, verse-numbered |
| Manifest | `manifest.csv` — audio ↔ book ↔ chapter ↔ duration ↔ text paths |

Audio and text align by `BOOK.chapter` (e.g. `audio/1CO.13.mp3` ↔ `text/ghomala/1CO.13.txt`).

## Usage
```python
import csv
rows = list(csv.DictReader(open("manifest.csv")))
print(rows[0])  # {'audio': '1CO.1.mp3', 'book': '1CO', 'chapter': '1', 'duration_sec': '...', ...}
```

## Provenance & licensing
The **audio recordings** were produced by the project. The **underlying scripture text**
comes from existing Bible translations whose rights belong to their respective
publishers; the parallel text is included for research alignment. Released for
**research and language-preservation** use under CC-BY-4.0 for the project-original
material; if you represent a rights-holder of any included translation and have a
concern, contact us via [lingo.cm](https://lingo.cm) and we will address it promptly.

— Open data for Cameroonian languages · [lingo.cm](https://lingo.cm)