Pen-like creation aims to help people learn their languages

K'odi dłu' Taay.dala 'Yuuans, Jesse Taylor (Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw) is hoping to have as many people as possible learn their language with the First-ory language stylus he has developed.

The stylus he created is a pen-like tool that hovers over images in books or cards and “reads” the content.

The stylus is designed to help Indigenous people learn their languages, and can be used for any language. Taylor sees his tool not as a competition to but as a resource to complement and be used alongside the work happening in language revitalization.

The stylus works with stickers with tiny QR codes built into stickers, or printed material.

“The tip of the pen reads the code, and then it just plays an audio file,” Taylor said. “And so, the stickers that I have right now, they have like 51, 52, 53. And so it'll read 52 and then it'll play the file name 52 mp3. So whatever audio file you label with that name, it will play.

“You can record audio on the fly, and the only thing that matters is the audio file and relabeling it.” 

The tool can work with any language, and for any Indigenous community, “but I thought it would especially be good for Indigenous people in B.C. because we have so many people from so many different backgrounds in a public-school setting.

“And quite often we'll have Indigenous kids from different communities being taught by a non-Indigenous person. So, it's like, how can you get language into their hands?”

Taylor said while he was growing up he would live both in and out of his Indigenous community.

“We would move away for a couple of years and then we would move back,” he said. “So, I didn't always have access to a fluent speaker.”

His nephews and niece are in a similar position now. “And I wanted them to still be able to hear proper pronunciation,” Taylor said. “And so, I set about trying to make it.”

He originally began designing the pen to work with baby books, and in the process, found he was living with ADHD.

It explained the struggles he’d had in post-secondary, where he was planning to study law.

“I wanted to help out my communities in some way, so I was going to go to post-secondary to be a lawyer,” he said. “I started to struggle in my third year because my ADHD symptoms were getting kind of bad. I couldn't study, I didn't know what was going on, so I thought that there was something wrong with me.”

He dropped out of post-secondary, and “needed a job, got into welding. The welding work that I had, it was seasonal. So, I would work for three months and I'd travel the world for the other three months, and I'd do that six months of the year.”

While traveling, he met people and was interested in picking up some of their languages, which grew into a love of language learning.

“I found myself in South Korea for a couple of winters and I was spending all this time trying to learn Korean,” he said. “And I started to have a feeling I should probably move home and learn Haida," and Kwak'wala.

In 2019, he moved and started to reconnect with some of his communities, working with a range of language resources.

“And then the pandemic happened,” he said. “I took those resources and I was trying to learn on my own, again, struggling with undiagnosed ADHD, I was going to give up on language learning entirely.”

That’s when he thought about his young relatives. “If they didn't get access to language resources, they would probably struggle the same way that I did,” he said. “And so, I wanted to do something positive for them and for all the other young Indigenous people out there.”

Producing the baby books with stylus, he realized it could be a strong tool for learners with ADHD, too. He turned his diagnosis into awareness, which became motivation to help others reclaim their language, with tools that support their learning styles.

“I tried applying for funding for some Indigenous entrepreneur type stuff,” he said. “But one of the things about having ADHD is you really struggle with paperwork.”

After a couple applications were denied, his father passed away.

“And that was one of the reasons why I started to struggle with my mental health and got my diagnosis a couple years ago,” Taylor said.

When he received some money from his father’s inheritance, he put it towards his language tool. “I was just really passionate about it and I wanted to see it happen,” he said.

Taylor said the stylus has received positive feedback from the community, including teachers, students and Elders. He developed the prototype of the card game in February and March, he demoed it April and May, touring British Columbia and Alberta to meet with representatives of school districts, communities and daycares.

First-ory has already received pre-orders for 100 units, which will ship this fall and winter.

“The world that I want to see is one where Indigenous people have just a flood of resources, in all shapes and sizes,” he said.

More information on First-ory is available at https://first-ory.com/pages/about-us