One of the primary goals of Regionalsprache.de is the integration of the immense amounts of existing variation-linguistic research materials in an information system so that they may be made directly comparable and analyzed. In addition to the digitization of audio recordings and maps, the integration of linguistic databases make it possible to interrelate the results of various research projects. By complementing the linguistic information with geographic information, the research results can be spatially presented as an attribute of a map element. The contents of the following databases are available via the SprachGIS.
REDE - Regionalsprache.de
To be able to systematically index the variation-linguistic research and analyze the modern regional languages, we created two databases. First, the Georeferenzierte Online-Bibliographie Areallinguistik (GOBA) contains the entirety of literature on regional languages of German and allows users to search for all relevant publications regarding a given or user-defined area or region. To analyze the modern regional languages, the recordings and transcriptions from the REDE-Neuerhebung have also been made available.
Georeferenzierte Online-Bibliographie Areallinguistik (GOBA)
The Georeferenzierte Online-Bibliographie Areallinguistik (GOBA) is an interactive online database of literature regarding regional languages. As a part of the project Regionalsprache.de, GOBA’s goal is to make the entirety of the research literature on the regional languages of German searchable. Additional information about GOBA can be found here.
The database contains audio recordings and transcriptions of the recordings that were made between 2008 and 2014. In total, 150 locations in the Federal Republic of Germany were surveyed. These locations were selected in such a way as to ensure that all of the dialect formations and prominent transition zones from Wiesinger (1983) were represented by at least one location. In each location, we surveyed at least one representative informant from three different generations (younger generation: 17–25, police officer: 45–55, older generation: >65) in various situations that correspond to the informants’ variative spectrum.
The situations include translation tasks aimed at capturing the dialect competence, standard language competence, and the informants’ pronunciation when reading a text aloud. In addition, informants held two dialogues, the purpose of which was to gather performance data for various conversational situations. First, the trained field worker interviewed the informant extensively on his linguistic background; this was meant to represent a formal situation. The second situation was of informal nature; here, the field worker documented the informants’ manner of speech when speaking to a person from the same region that he personally knew. The performance data provided by the police officers can be supplemented by the data from the emergency call project in Kehrein (2006).
The recordings containing the translation of the Wenker sentences into intended dialect and intended standard as well as the recording of the informants’ reading the fable “The Northwind and the Sun” can be accessed online.
The recordings are currently being prepared in such a way that they are aligned with the audio signal and that orthographic, orthoepic, and phonetic transcriptions are also made available. 2546 of the 4425 recordings have been edited and they can be searched according to orthographic and phonetic criteria. Using the phonetic transcriptions, point-text maps can be created according to arbitrary criteria.
REDE’s survey net as well as the audio recordings are available to all users. To create point-text maps, you must be a registered user.
BayDat - Die bayerische Dialektdatenbank
The bayerische Dialektdatenbank (BayDat) (= Bavarian Database of Dialects) is a compilation of the databases of the “Bayerischer Sprachatlas” (BSA) (= Atlas of the Bavarian Language). It contains the data from the following regional linguistic atlases:
They cover the area of the Free State of Bayern with the exception of Upper Franconia and the Upper Palatinate. Between 1981 and 1988, the dialect forms of approximately 2,500 individual words were collected by means of the direct survey method at all of these locations (ca. 1000 locations). They were then transcribed using Teuthonista and categorized according to semantic criteria. By georeferencing these transcriptions, it is possible to create point-text maps for each of the words. The BayDat maps are available via the map search function.
Kehrein, Roland (2006): Regional accent in the German language area – How dialectally do German police answer emergency calls? In: Hinskens, Frans (ed.): Language variation. European perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 83–9.
Wiesinger, Peter (1983): Die Einteilung der deutschen Dialekte. In: Besch, Werner et al. (Hrsg.): Dialektologie. Ein Handbuch zur deutschen und allgemeinen Dialektforschung. Bd. 2. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft. 1.2.), 807–900.