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 contains about 5 Million dialectal linguistic evidences collected in differend projects within the Free State of Bavaria to the dialects Bavarian, Frankish, and Swabian.
In 1984, linguists at the University of Augsburg began to collect dialect data for the research and documentation project "Linguistic Map of Swabia" (German: "Sprachatlas von Bayerisch-Schwaben (SBS)"). In 1986, the University of Bayreuth followed with preparations for the "Linguistic Map of North- and East-Bavaria" (German: "Sprachatlas von Nordostbayern (SNOB)"). In the following years, partner projects of the other regions also started to collect data in their particular region. All six language projects then formed the "Research Association of the Bavarian Linguistic Map " (German: Bayerischer Sprachatlas (BSA)"), which was funded by the DFG and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts.
The first digital publication of BayDat by Ralf Zimmermann in 2007 at the University of Würzburg (see linked paper) was re-designed in 2019 by Manuel Raaf at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
For detailed information, please see https://baydat.badw.de/info
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