Language belongs to its community.

Term Base is an extension of Swahiliverse: a place to document newly coined African language terms, their meanings, and the contexts in which people use them.

A collection, not a language authority

Publication records a contribution. It does not certify a word as correct, official, standardized, or widely used. Local alternatives and different meanings can coexist.

Tell us what you know

Contribute a term in its original spelling and script. Include its language, an English equivalent or explanation, and whether it is a proposal, reported in use, or uncertain. Your location provides contributor context; place of use separately describes the term.

Build in the open

New terms can publish immediately. When review is required, contributions are visible while awaiting an independent reviewer. Signed-in community members can propose revisions. The current published version remains available while a revision is reviewed.

Evidence has context

Illustrative examples explain how a term might be used. Observed examples describe actual usage. Structured usage reports require review before inclusion; a discussion comment is not automatically an approved usage report.

Contribution agreement · development draft

The agreed product policy is one permission grant per account, covering future contributions under that version of the agreement. Guests accept when submitting. The intended scope includes public display and approved research, NLP/model training, and commercial applications. Dataset redistribution requires separate project approval.

Locations and supplied credit are public. Leaderboard participation is optional. Developer datasets exclude personal profile information, pending proposals, and discussions.

Language coverage

The language picker includes 2,389 language records from Glottolog 5.3, including alternate names and ISO codes. The catalog includes languages classified in Africa and languages recorded in African countries and territories. Unlisted languages and local varieties remain welcome. The variety picker includes 4,460 dialect records associated with 1,013 of these languages. An empty list means the source has no listed varieties; it does not mean a language has no dialects. You can always enter a variety manually.

Language and variety catalogs: Hammarström, Forkel, Haspelmath & Bank (2026), Glottolog 5.3, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Adapted under CC BY 4.0. This license covers the catalog, not community contributions.

Corrections and withdrawal

The planned workflow lets contributors request withdrawal and remove their public profile credit. Admins handle requests involving shared entries. Reviewers and admins can hide harmful content and restore earlier versions with a recorded reason.

A production contact route and final retention and reuse terms must be published before launch.