Bavaria's Dialects Online (BDO) is the digital language information system of the three projects "Bavarian Dictionary", "Franconian Dictionary", and "Dialectological Information System of Bavarian Swabia". The database combines the research results of dialect research and presents dictionary articles as well as research data in a freely accessible online tool.
BDO is not only aimed at scholars, but also at the lay public interested in the language. Here, the vocabulary of all Bavarian dialects is collected in one place and made accessible. The system shows the richness of the dialects of Bavaria in combination. With the new database, one will be able to compare the dialect vocabulary of Old Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia. Authentic dialect evidence is used to illustrate the dialect words in their variety of meanings and regional distribution, as well as to show their use in idioms, proverbs, and much more. BDO allows a whole new look at the vocabulary of the dialects of all parts of the state of Bavaria.
The database offers access to over 6 million dialectal linguistic evidences of the project "Dictionary of Bavarian Dialects" (German: Das Bayerische Wörterbuch) as image snippets, partly and forthgoing lemmatized.
The area covered by the Dictionary of Bavarian Dialects (Bayerisches Wörterbuch) comprises Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria, the Upper Palatinate and neighbouring regions of Bavarian Swabia, Middle Franconia and Upper Franconia. Over and above the vernaculars spoken today, Bavaria’s literary tradition since its beginnings in the 8th century is also taken into account.
Starting in 1913, language material was collected from all Bavarian-speaking regions in Bavaria. Questionnaires were sent out to local informants throughout Bavaria, and contemporary and historical literary sources were excerpted. Today the collection comprises around nine million dialect examples. With the exception of the “Wörterlisten” (word lists), which can be digitally searched and edited, this material consists of index cards, to which corresponding standard German or quasi-standard German keywords have been added, filed alphabetically (see link below for more information).
For detailed information, please see https://www.bwb.badw.de/en/the-project.html and https://www.bwb.badw.de/en/digital-platform.html
The database currently contains about 1 million dialectal linguistic evidences of the project "The Franconian Dictionary" (German: Das Fränkische Wörterbuch), each of which lemmatized, annotated, and linked to the original questionnaire. The database is work in progress, so there will be more data available regularly.
The Franconian Dictionary was initiated by the Munich office of the Bavarian Dictionary project, sending questionnaires for a dialect survey in Franconia. In the wake of this survey an office in Erlangen was established in 1933 (see link below for more information).
During the course of 90 years thousands of volunteers helped to compile a considerable collection of vernacular examples of usage, drawn from the Bavarian districts of Upper, Middle and Lower Frankonia. For the most part they represent the East Franconian dialect, to the lesser extent also Rhine-Franconian, Swabian and North-Bavarian vernaculars. Between 2007 and 2008 a small selection of the research results was published in three editions of one printed volume by Eberhard Wagner and Alfred Klepsch: “Handwörterbuch von Bayerisch-Franken” (see link below for more information).
Since 2012 the Franconian Dictionary, a project of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, has been entrusted to the Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen and Nuremberg (FAU). The project is supervised by Prof. Dr. Mechthild Habermann, Chair of the Faculty of German Linguistics at the FAU.
For detailed information, please see http://www.wbf.badw.de/en/the-project.html and http://www.wbf.badw.de/en/wbf-digital.html