Titung/seke-nepali-dataset

🏔️ Seke (SKJ) Language Dataset

Endangered Language Alliance × Internet Archive

Seke (skj) is a critically endangered Sino-Tibetan language spoken by approximately 700 people in the five villages of Upper Mustang district, Nepal, and in diaspora communities in New York City. This dataset represents one of the most complete public audio corpora of Seke ever assembled. Dataset created by Anil Tamang (himalaya-ai).

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📊 Dataset Statistics

Metric	Value
Total audio clips	529
Total duration	17.8 minutes
Number of speakers	2
Sample rate	16000 Hz
Format	16-bit PCM WAV (mono)
Language ISO	skj
Date range	2018–2021
Assembled	2026-04-25

Quality Tier Distribution

Tier	Count	Description
A	20	Gold: elicited clips, controlled studio recording, short utterances (<10s), SNR>20dB
B	205	Silver: field recordings, good quality, longer utterances
C	304	Bronze: field recordings with background noise, or long sessions

Linguistic Type Distribution

| Language Description | 515 | | Primary Text | 14 |

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🔤 Language Information

• ISO 639-3: skj
• Family: Sino-Tibetan → Tibeto-Burman → Bodish
• Dialect: Primarily Chhusang (Tshugsang) dialect
• Typology: Verb-final word order, ergative alignment, evidential marking
• Script: No standardized orthography (romanized transcriptions in this dataset)
• Endangerment: Critically endangered (~700 speakers)
• Region: Upper Mustang, Gandaki Province, Nepal; NYC diaspora

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🗂️ Dataset Fields

Field	Type	Description
audio	Audio	16kHz mono WAV, trimmed and normalized
duration_s	float	Duration in seconds
gloss_en	string	English translation/gloss (from ELA elicitation)
transcription_seke	string	Whisper ASR output (romanized approximation)
phonemes_ipa	string	IPA phonemes from Allosaurus (where available)
grammatical_categories	string	Comma-separated grammatical category tags
linguistic_type	string	OLAC type: Lexicon / Language Description / Primary Text
quality_tier	string	A/B/C quality tier
speaker_name	string	Speaker name
recording_date	string	Session date
source_identifier	string	Internet Archive item identifier
source_url	string	Direct link to IA item
is_swadesh	bool	Part of Swadesh list elicitation
swadesh_number	int	Swadesh list number (-1 if not applicable)
is_alternative_form	bool	Alternative pronunciation of same sentence
snr_db	float	Signal-to-noise ratio in dB
loudness_lufs	float	Original LUFS loudness (pre-normalization)

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🚀 Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load full dataset
ds = load_dataset("Titung/seke-nepali-dataset")

# Load only high-quality elicited clips (Tier A)
ds_gold = load_dataset("Titung/seke-nepali-dataset", split="train")
ds_gold = ds_gold.filter(lambda x: x["quality_tier"] == "A")

# Fine-tune Whisper on Seke
from transformers import WhisperForConditionalGeneration, WhisperProcessor
model = WhisperForConditionalGeneration.from_pretrained("openai/whisper-large-v3")
processor = WhisperProcessor.from_pretrained("openai/whisper-large-v3")

# Prepare features
def prepare_dataset(batch):
    audio = batch["audio"]
    batch["input_features"] = processor(
        audio["array"], sampling_rate=audio["sampling_rate"],
        return_tensors="pt"
    ).input_features[0]
    batch["labels"] = processor.tokenizer(
        batch["gloss_en"]
    ).input_ids
    return batch

ds_prepared = ds["train"].map(prepare_dataset)

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📖 Source & Attribution

All audio data sourced from the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA) archive on Internet Archive:

• Collection: https://archive.org/details/elalliance
• ELA website: https://www.elalliance.org
• Primary researcher: Ross Perlin, Co-Director, ELA
• Primary speakers: Rasmina Gurung, Nora Gurung, and others
• Recorded 2018–2021 at Columbia University and in Upper Mustang, Nepal
• Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Original data archived under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0). This dataset derivative is also released under CC-BY-4.0. Please cite ELA and the original depositors in any academic use.

Suggested Citation

Endangered Language Alliance. (2021). Seke (SKJ) Language Recordings.
Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/elalliance

Dataset assembled by [Anil Tamang/himalaya-ai] (2026).
Available at: https://huggingface.co/datasets/Titung/seke-nepali-dataset

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⚠️ Important Notes

1. Transcriptions are approximate: The transcription_seke field contains Whisper ASR output on an unseen language — treat as a phonetic approximation, not verified orthography. Manual validation by a Seke speaker is strongly recommended.
2. No standardized orthography: Seke has no official writing system. Romanizations may vary.
3. Ethical use: This data documents a critically endangered language. Please use it to support language preservation, not for commercial exploitation.
4. Contact ELA: For research partnerships or access to additional materials: https://www.elalliance.org/contact