README.md

metadata

dataset_info:
  - config_name: eng_Latn
    features:
      - name: sentenceId
        dtype: string
      - name: audio
        dtype: audio
      - name: transcription
        dtype: string
    splits:
      - name: train
        num_bytes: 1040719606.8972491
        num_examples: 5453
      - name: test
        num_bytes: 258927163.16460305
        num_examples: 1365
    download_size: 1304998398
    dataset_size: 1299646770.0618522
  - config_name: kam_Latn
    features:
      - name: sentenceId
        dtype: string
      - name: audio
        dtype: audio
      - name: transcription
        dtype: string
    splits:
      - name: train
        num_bytes: 949154503.8526143
        num_examples: 5453
      - name: test
        num_bytes: 231674860.6190823
        num_examples: 1365
    download_size: 1050210487
    dataset_size: 1180829364.4716966
  - config_name: kik_Latn
    features:
      - name: sentenceId
        dtype: string
      - name: audio
        dtype: audio
      - name: transcription
        dtype: string
    splits:
      - name: train
        num_bytes: 999271913.2047732
        num_examples: 5453
      - name: test
        num_bytes: 251070401.12163147
        num_examples: 1365
    download_size: 1102853572
    dataset_size: 1250342314.3264046
  - config_name: luo_Latn
    features:
      - name: sentenceId
        dtype: string
      - name: audio
        dtype: audio
      - name: transcription
        dtype: string
    splits:
      - name: train
        num_bytes: 1002213254.8480598
        num_examples: 5453
      - name: test
        num_bytes: 250754022.3561544
        num_examples: 1365
    download_size: 1136906561
    dataset_size: 1252967277.204214
  - config_name: mer_Latn
    features:
      - name: sentenceId
        dtype: string
      - name: audio
        dtype: audio
      - name: transcription
        dtype: string
    splits:
      - name: train
        num_bytes: 965387013.9227546
        num_examples: 5453
      - name: test
        num_bytes: 238541793.85651857
        num_examples: 1365
    download_size: 1092296070
    dataset_size: 1203928807.7792733
  - config_name: som_Latn
    features:
      - name: sentenceId
        dtype: string
      - name: audio
        dtype: audio
      - name: transcription
        dtype: string
    splits:
      - name: train
        num_bytes: 1006695041.671707
        num_examples: 5453
      - name: test
        num_bytes: 251778992.20684633
        num_examples: 1365
    download_size: 1131486202
    dataset_size: 1258474033.8785534
configs:
  - config_name: eng_Latn
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: eng_Latn/train-*
      - split: test
        path: eng_Latn/test-*
  - config_name: kam_Latn
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: kam_Latn/train-*
      - split: test
        path: kam_Latn/test-*
  - config_name: kik_Latn
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: kik_Latn/train-*
      - split: test
        path: kik_Latn/test-*
  - config_name: luo_Latn
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: luo_Latn/train-*
      - split: test
        path: luo_Latn/test-*
  - config_name: mer_Latn
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: mer_Latn/train-*
      - split: test
        path: mer_Latn/test-*
  - config_name: som_Latn
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: som_Latn/train-*
      - split: test
        path: som_Latn/test-*
pretty_name: thiomi_5k_v1
language:
  - eng
  - kik
  - kam
  - luo
  - mer
  - som
tags:
  - speech
  - audio
  - tts
  - asr
  - multilingual
  - low-resource
  - african-languages
task_categories:
  - automatic-speech-recognition
  - text-to-speech
size_categories:
  - 10K<n<100K

Thiomi 5k

Motivation

This dataset release is part of the data and modeling effort described in: The Thiomi Dataset: A Large-Scale Multimodal Corpus for Low-Resource African Languages

The broader Thiomi work focuses on building high-quality multimodal resources for African languages and enabling ASR/MT/TTS research and deployment.

Data Structure

Per language config (eng_Latn, kik_Latn, kam_Latn, luo_Latn, mer_Latn, som_Latn):

Each config contains train and test splits. Every row has three fields: sentenceId (string), audio (HF Audio feature), and transcription (string). Row counts are identical across all language configs within a split — the 44 previously-missing English sentences have been removed from every language.

Dataset Statistics

Config	Language	Train Samples	Test Samples	Train Audio (h)	Test Audio (h)
eng_Latn	English	5,453	1,365	6.59	1.64
kik_Latn	Kikuyu	5,453	1,365	8.62	2.17
kam_Latn	Kamba	5,453	1,365	8.21	2.00
luo_Latn	Luo	5,453	1,365	8.65	2.16
mer_Latn	Kimeru	5,453	1,365	8.34	2.06
som_Latn	Somali	5,453	1,365	8.69	2.17
Total		32,718	8,190	49.10	12.21

Intended Uses

• TTS training and adaptation per language
• ASR training/evaluation with language-specific subsets
• Speech-text alignment and multilingual benchmarking
• Data selection and curriculum design for low-resource speech systems

Limitations

• English audio was generated via TTS, not recorded by human speakers.
• Language balance by hours differs despite approximately equal row counts.

Privacy and Ethics

Please follow applicable consent, privacy, and data governance requirements from the upstream collection and platform process described in the Thiomi paper.

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite the Thiomi dataset paper:

@misc{mutisya2026thiomidatasetlargescalemultimodal,
      title={The Thiomi Dataset: A Large-Scale Multimodal Corpus for Low-Resource African Languages}, 
      author={Hillary Mutisya and John Mugane and Gavin Nyamboga and Brian Chege and Maryruth Gathoni},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2603.29244},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CL},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29244}, 
}

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Thiomi contributors, speakers, annotators, and reviewers who made multilingual speech data collection and curation possible.