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suru8-ai/chichewa_english_code_switch_dataset

Chichewa-English Code-Switched Speech Dataset Dataset Description A speech dataset containing 247 audio recordings of Chichewa-English code-switched phrases. Code-switching — the practice of alternating between two or more languages within a single conversation — is extremely common in Malawi and across multilingual African communities. This dataset captures that natural linguistic behavior in spoken form. Purpose This dataset is designed to support… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/suru8-ai/chichewa_english_code_switch_dataset.

sourceHugging Faceapache-2.0updated 6mo agoView on Hugging Face

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Dataset Card

Chichewa-English Code-Switched Speech Dataset

Dataset Description

A speech dataset containing 247 audio recordings of Chichewa-English code-switched phrases. Code-switching — the practice of alternating between two or more languages within a single conversation — is extremely common in Malawi and across multilingual African communities. This dataset captures that natural linguistic behavior in spoken form.

Purpose

This dataset is designed to support research and development in:

—Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for code-switched Chichewa-English speech
—Multilingual and low-resource NLP for African languages
—Code-switching detection and modeling

Dataset Structure

Files

—metadata.csv — contains transcriptions, speaker info, and audio file references
—audios/ — directory containing 247 .wav audio files

Metadata Fields

Field	Description
`phrase`	The transcribed text of the audio (code-switched)
`speaker`	Speaker identifier
`file_name`	Path to the corresponding `.wav` audio file

Example Entries

phrase	speaker	file_name
Moni brother, uli bwanji	Timothy	audios/1.wav
Good morning m'bale wanga, wazuka bwanji	Timothy	audios/3.wav
Ndikufuna ndikagule bread	Timothy	audios/41.wav
Phone yanga ili battery low	Timothy	audios/65.wav

Languages

—Chichewa (Nyanja) — a Bantu language widely spoken in Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique
—English — used as a secondary language in education and formal settings in Malawi

Most utterances contain a mix of both languages within a single phrase, reflecting natural code-switching patterns.

Dataset Statistics

—Total recordings: 247
—Total size: ~74.8 MB
—Audio format: WAV
—Speaker(s): 1 (Timothy)
—Domain: Everyday conversational phrases (greetings, transport, shopping, health, technology, family, etc.)

Topics Covered

The phrases span a wide range of everyday scenarios:

—Greetings and farewells
—Transportation and travel
—Shopping and food
—Phone, internet, and technology
—Work and school
—Health
—Family
—Money and payments
—Time expressions

Usage

python

from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("suru8-ai/chichewa_english_code_switch_dataset")

Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite:

bibtex

@dataset{chichewa_english_code_switch_2025,
  title={Chichewa-English Code-Switched Speech Dataset},
  author={Rexplore Research Labs},
  year={2026},
  url={https://huggingface.co/datasets/suru8-ai/chichewa_english_code_switch_dataset}
}

License

This dataset is released under the Apache 2.0 License.