Abstract:

English language is widely acknowledged as the second language in Nigeria by scholars. The indigenous languages of Nigerian are Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. Over the years there has been unhealthy rivalry and competition between English language and the indigenous Nigerian languages with the latter struggling for survival. The rivalry is further worsen by the wide adoption of mobile technology which are mostly bundled with resources written in English language. Young Nigerians who have not been exposed to Yoruba language as their native language often find it difficult to speak, read, learn and write Yoruba language. There is the fear of trading Nigerian indigenous languages for English Language as the main means of communications due to modernization. The focus for this work is to present the design and implementation of a mobile interactive application that provide basic tutorial in the learning of Yoruba language on handheld devices. The system has features that assist users to do basic translation of English to Yoruba and fundamental tutorials that will enable people to learn, write, read and speak Yoruba language fluently. The application was designed and modeled with unified modeling language and PHP language for interacting with a database. The application runs seamlessly on handheld devices which has a deep level of penetration and adoption in Nigeria.

Keywords:

Handheld, Indigenous, language, Mobile, Nigeria, Tutorial and Yoruba.