Where the words come from

Words and glosses are derived from the kaikki.org machine-readable Oromo dictionary, an extraction of the English Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The current word list is an unreviewed draft: it was proposed by inverting English glosses, and a fluent speaker has not yet confirmed each answer. Treat a surprising answer as a bug in the data, not as Afaan Oromo.

Every question is a choice between written answers, English to Afaan Oromo or the other way round, and so is the “tap the matching pairs” board. There is nothing to type, and no listening questions — pronunciation audio is a later phase. The only sounds are short chimes for right and wrong answers, which you can switch off in Profile.

How the game parts work

Points, hearts, gems, streaks, quests and badges are there to make practice fun. A lesson has five hearts: a wrong answer costs one, and a question you miss comes round again at the end. A word you have never seen is a free guess, so it costs no heart. Everything you answer is saved, even if you run out of hearts.

Nothing you do here is uploaded. Progress is stored only in this browser and there is no account and no analytics. Profiles are names on this device, kept apart so children sharing it do not share a streak.

Barsiisaa is in beta, which is why the word list is open to correction. After an answer, ⚑ This looks wrong flags a word; where the site is set up to receive flags it sends the word, the problem you picked and your note so a reviewer can fix the lesson, and everywhere else the flag is saved on this device for whoever reviews words there. Nothing about who you are or how you are doing goes with it. When the beta ends, flagging and the review page go away.