MEYNG/sango-vocabulary

Sango Vocabulary Dataset

Dataset Description

The first structured digital vocabulary dataset for Sango (ISO 639-1: sg, ISO 639-3: sag), the national and most widely spoken language of the Central African Republic. Sango is a creole language with over 5 million speakers, yet it remains severely underrepresented in NLP research and digital resources.

This dataset provides trilingual vocabulary entries (Sango-French-English) with pronunciation guides and semantic categorization, along with Sango-French translation pairs extracted from grammar and dictionary references.

Supported Tasks

• Machine Translation: Sango-French and Sango-English translation
• Language Modeling: Pre-training or fine-tuning language models for Sango
• Cross-lingual Transfer: Leveraging French/English representations for Sango NLP
• Language Documentation: Digital preservation of Sango vocabulary and usage patterns
• Educational Technology: Building language learning applications for Sango

Languages

Language	ISO 639-1	ISO 639-3	Role
Sango	sg	sag	Primary target language
French	fr	fra	Primary bridge language
English	en	eng	Secondary bridge language

Dataset Structure

Vocabulary (vocabulary.jsonl)

431 trilingual vocabulary entries, each containing:

Field	Type	Description	Coverage
sango	string	Sango word or phrase	100%
french	string	French translation	100%
english	string	English translation	100%
category	string	Semantic/grammatical category	100%
difficulty	string	Learning difficulty level	100%
pronunciation	string	Phonetic pronunciation guide	100%
example_sango	string	Example sentence in Sango	<1%
example_french	string	Example sentence in French	<1%
example_english	string	Example sentence in English	<1%

Example entry:

{
  "sango": "Bara âla",
  "french": "Bonjour",
  "english": "Hello",
  "category": "greetings",
  "difficulty": "beginner",
  "pronunciation": "BAH-rah AH-lah",
  "example_sango": "Bara âla, tongana nye?",
  "example_french": "Bonjour, comment allez-vous?",
  "example_english": "Hello, how are you?"
}

Training Pairs (training_pairs.jsonl)

360 Sango-French translation pairs extracted from grammar and dictionary reference materials.

Field	Type	Description
source_lang	string	Source language code (sg or fr)
target_lang	string	Target language code (sg or fr)
source	string	Source text
target	string	Target text

Note on quality: These pairs were extracted from a Sango grammar reference book. While many entries contain genuine Sango-French translations and vocabulary definitions, some are sentence fragments or contextual excerpts from the source material. Users should apply filtering for downstream tasks that require clean parallel sentences.

Example entry:

{
  "source_lang": "sg",
  "target_lang": "fr",
  "source": "Mbï yê Bêafrîka mîngi",
  "target": "j'aime beaucoup la Centrafrique"
}

Category Distribution

The vocabulary spans 25 semantic categories:

Category	Count	Category	Count
nature	30	professions	30
clothing	25	commerce	25
education	25	health	25
home	25	adjectives	20
numbers	20	technology	20
transport	20	verbs	18
animals	15	emotions	15
greetings	15	body	10
colors	10	essential	10
actions	10	food	12
family	12	places	12
time	10	weather	10
questions	7

Difficulty Distribution

Level	Count	Percentage
Beginner	210	48.7%
Intermediate	200	46.4%
Advanced	21	4.9%

Dataset Creation

Source Data

• Vocabulary entries: Curated by MEYNG from Sango language learning resources including japprendslesango.com and verified Sango vocabulary references
• Training pairs: Extracted from a comprehensive Sango grammar and dictionary reference work
• Verification: Entries reviewed against known Sango linguistic sources

Annotation Process

Vocabulary entries were structured and categorized by native speakers and linguists familiar with Sango. Pronunciation guides use an English-approximation phonetic system designed for learners.

Considerations for Using the Data

Known Limitations

1. Dataset size: At 431 vocabulary entries and 360 translation pairs, this dataset is small by modern NLP standards. It is best suited as a seed dataset, evaluation set, or for few-shot learning scenarios.
2. Training pair quality: The translation pairs contain some fragmented text from the source material. Filtering is recommended for tasks requiring clean parallel data.
3. Example sentences: Only 1 vocabulary entry includes example sentences. Future versions aim to add examples for all entries.
4. Dialect coverage: Sango has regional variations. This dataset primarily represents the standardized Sango used in Bangui (the capital).
5. Pronunciation guides: The phonetic guides approximate Sango sounds using English phonetics. They are intended for learners, not for phonological research.

Recommendations

• Use as a seed dataset to bootstrap Sango NLP systems
• Combine with the SangoAI API (643+ words available at https://sangoai.sbs) for a larger vocabulary
• Apply quality filtering on training_pairs.jsonl before fine-tuning
• Consider data augmentation techniques for downstream tasks

Citation

If you use this dataset in your research, please cite:

@dataset{meyng_sango_vocabulary_2026,
  title={Sango Vocabulary Dataset: A Trilingual Lexical Resource for an Underrepresented African Language},
  author={MEYNG},
  year={2026},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/meyng/sango-vocabulary},
  license={CC-BY-SA-4.0},
  language={sg, fr, en}
}

License

This dataset is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-SA-4.0).

You are free to:

• Share -- copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt -- remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial

Under the following terms:

• Attribution -- You must give appropriate credit to MEYNG, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made
• ShareAlike -- If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license

Acknowledgments

This dataset was created by MEYNG as part of the SangoAI project, an AI-powered language platform dedicated to the preservation and digitization of Sango.

We acknowledge:

• The people of the Central African Republic, whose language and culture this dataset aims to preserve and promote
• The Sango-speaking community worldwide for their contributions to language documentation
• The creators of japprendslesango.com and other Sango learning resources that informed this work
• The open-source NLP community working on low-resource African languages

Contact

• Organization: MEYNG
• Website: meyng.com
• Platform: sangoai.sbs
• Email: contact@meyng.com
• GitHub: github.com/meyng-hub/sangoai