Self-reported scores out of 26 — how much of each language's operating alphabet a model recites blind (unaided). Mastery is 26/26; the only passing grade is total mastery. Cut by license and origin below.
The gap is universal — no category, open or closed, US or not, masters the never-declared Bantu operating alphabets. Every model still FAILS the blind bar.
| Model | Origin | License | English | Bemba blind | Kinyarwanda blind | Luvale blind | Bantu mean | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| claude-opus-4-8 | Anthropic · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 21.76 | 13.8 | 16.47 | 17.3 | FAIL |
| Gemini 3.6 Flash | Google · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 19.1 | 18.0 | 13.3 | 16.8 | FAIL |
| Claude Fable 5 ‡ | Anthropic · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 8.4 | 19.2 | 16.4 | 14.7 | FAIL |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | Google · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 13.4 | 17.2 | 13.1 | 14.6 | FAIL |
| claude-sonnet-5 | Anthropic · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 12.82 | 15.13 | 14.19 | 14.0 | FAIL |
| Gemini 3 | Google · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 8.9 | 21.0 | 11.8 | 13.9 | FAIL |
| GPT-5.5 | OpenAI · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 6.2 | 19.5 | 9.7 | 11.8 | FAIL |
| Claude Opus 4.8 | Anthropic · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 8.0 | 13.0 | 12.4 | 11.1 | FAIL |
| GLM-5.2 | Z.ai / Zhipu · China | open | 26.0 | 6.1 | 13.1 | 11.1 | 10.1 | FAIL |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro | DeepSeek · China | open | 26.0 | 6.6 | 13.3 | 10.0 | 10.0 | FAIL |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite | Google · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 7.7 | 11.1 | 8.5 | 9.1 | FAIL |
| DeepSeek V4 | DeepSeek · China | open | 26.0 | 7.8 | 10.8 | 8.3 | 9.0 | FAIL |
| Grok 4.5 | SpaceXAI · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 6.0 | 11.2 | 9.0 | 8.7 | FAIL |
| Mistral Large 3 | Mistral AI · France | proprietary | 26.0 | 4.1 | 9.4 | 7.6 | 7.0 | FAIL |
| Kimi K3 | Moonshot AI · China | open | 26.0 | 4.1 | 7.1 | 9.1 | 6.8 | FAIL |
| Qwen 3.7 | Alibaba · China | open | 26.0 | 4.7 | 15.0 | 0.3 | 6.7 | FAIL |
| GPT-5.6 Sol | OpenAI · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 3.1 | 8.5 | 8.6 | 6.7 | FAIL |
| Nemotron 3 Ultra | NVIDIA · US | open | 26.0 | 6.1 | 12.4 | 0.0 | 6.2 | FAIL |
| MiniMax M3 | MiniMax · China | open | 26.0 | 3.9 | 8.5 | 4.8 | 5.7 | FAIL |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | Anthropic · US | proprietary | 26.0 | 4.7 | 8.3 | 2.0 | 5.0 | FAIL |
| Kimi K2.7 | Moonshot AI · China | open | 26.0 | 4.3 | 6.2 | 4.3 | 4.9 | FAIL |
| GPT-OSS 120B | OpenAI · US | open | 26.0 | 3.5 | 6.5 | 1.6 | 3.9 | FAIL |
| Command A+ | Cohere · Canada | proprietary | 26.0 | 2.9 | 4.8 | 2.6 | 3.4 | FAIL |
| Inkling | Thinking Machines Lab · US | open | 26.0 | 2.3 | 6.3 | 0.3 | 3.0 | FAIL |
| acme-eval-sim | unknown | — | 26.0 | 1.62 | – | – | 1.6 | FAIL |
| Phi-4-reasoning | Microsoft · US | open | 26.0 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.2 | FAIL |