Can PrimerPro help me write pre-primers?

Yes! It can produce all the pictureable nouns containing only the vowel being taught, such as ‘mbata’, if the letter a is being taught, or ‘kaana’ if aa is being taught.

Is PrimerPro useful for writing transition primers?

Yes! It can search for minimal pairs for anything you need to contrast. It’s proven especially useful for showing readers that two different tone marks make a big difference in meaning, for example.

What is the hardest thing about using PrimerPro?

Doing the setup, because you need to get a big wordlist with gloss and a set of texts. Both of them need good spelling, of course. Once you import these you need to tell the software every possible grapheme, including all consonant and vowel combinations in the language.

What is the best thing about using PrimerPro?

The ease with which you can find the words you need, either keywords, built words for stories, or all words of a certain category, such as words beginning with a labialized consonant (fw, sw, tw, etc.) or all verbs ending in the letter t! The other wonderful thing is that PrimerPro tells the story-writers when they’ve used an untaught letter, so they can replace that word.

What do I need before I start?

You need the following:

  • Orthography description of the language: some sort of spelling rules.

  • Phonology and optional morphology write-up of the language, so you’re aware of all possible syllable structures and any morphemes which you want readers to recognize.

  • Optional pre-primer shell(draft) for the language which includes vowel teaching and three or more sight words.

  • Edited word list (preferably at least 4000 words) as a UTF-8 Standard Format Marker (SFM) file or a Lexicon Interchange Format (LIFT) file.

  • Edited texts (preferably at least 4000 words) are available as UTF-8 plain text files.

How is Primer Pro licensed?

Primer Pro is licensed under the MIT Open Source License.

Will Primer Pro work on my OS?

Primer Pro only works on Windows and not on any other operating system. We are not planning to produce versions for Mac OS or Linux.