The ABCs of Dialects is a Top Citizen Science extension project led by the University of Vienna. In this project, the ACDH acts as a national research partner.

The project aims at transcribing and evaluating the handwriting and lexis contained on the over 100-year-old paper slips of the Dictionary of Historical Bavarian Dialects in Austria and South Tyrol (WBÖ). The goal is to engage citizens with their linguistic and regional heritage, making the historical information digitally accessible, and connecting to current research on lexis and language variation and change in the DiÖ project.

Citizens are guided and trained in the transcription, with citizen experts and academic researchers ensuring the validation process. The scans of the paper slips and the obtained knowledge is made available via Zooniverse, a well-known platform for citizen science activities.

Our approach is novel in that it brings together linguistic and cultural knowledge from the area of lexical research and variation in Austria that covers material from one of the largest and richest collections of Austrian language, the WBÖ collection, which was originally collected by citizens. We thus aim to processes it together with and make it available again for citizens. Additionally, the project aims to establish an evaluation and reflection of this historic material, the meaning and use of Austrian German lexis, in the present day.

The ABCs of Dialects is led by Alexandra N. Lenz at the University of Vienna and associated with the project part 3 Speech Repertoires and Varietal Spectra of the SFB German in Austria. Variation – Contact – Perception (FWF F060). Philipp Stöckle acts as a national cooperation partner at the ACDH. In addition, Amelie Dorn is employed as project coordinator, Rebecca Stocker as project assistant and Nikola Czindrity as data specialist. As the project is based on the material collection of the WBÖ, the ACDH is responsible for providing the scans of the paper slips as well as storing, archiving and integrating the resulting data into the existing research infrastructure.