The gap we’re trying to close

Most of the world’s major languages already have dictionaries, translation apps, and search tools built for them. Spanish, French, Mandarin, all of it is a search away. Many languages spoken every day across Togo and Ghana simply aren’t, even though millions of people speak them as their first language.

That gap isn’t because these languages are small or unimportant. It’s because building a real, careful dictionary takes time, patience, and a deep respect for getting the language right, work that rarely gets funded or prioritized for languages outside the world’s largest ones.

How each dictionary is built

Every dictionary under Language Roots Hub starts the same way: real vocabulary pulled from community word lists, published reference material, and native speakers, checked carefully for accuracy rather than machine-translated in bulk. Each entry is made searchable in the local language itself, alongside French and English, so it’s genuinely useful to speakers looking up their own language, learners approaching it for the first time, and researchers documenting it.

The first dictionary built this way is Nawdm, spoken in the Kara region of northern Togo. Ewe, Kabiyè, Twi, and Ga are being built the same way, one at a time.

Free, and staying that way

Every dictionary here is free to search, browse, and install as an app, with no account required and no paywall on the words themselves. Where the project earns any support, through small donations or advertising, that support goes toward keeping the dictionaries online, growing their word counts, and building the next language in the list.