Participate via app

University project: Austria’s dialects put to the test

OeDA is the name of the app, which can be downloaded free of charge onto an iPhone or smartphone.

(Bild: Manuel Schwaiger)

Austrians can use a dialect app to compare themselves with each other and at the same time make an important contribution to research. A linguist from Tyrol is also involved in the university project.

Would you like to take a closer look at your own dialect, compare it with other people in your region and make a valuable contribution to linguistics at the same time? Then download the free Austrian Dialect App - OeDA for short - from either the Apple App Store or Google on your iPhone or smartphone.

The project, in which Tyrolean linguist Philip Vergeiner is involved together with his colleagues Stephan Elspaß and Dominik Wallner, was launched at the Department of German Studies at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg. It is funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF through the "Top Citizen Science" program.

All you need is a smartphone or iPhone and an interest in dialect diversity. The app is free of charge.

Stephan Elspaß

"You are immediately rewarded for participating"
"Everyone can take part. The app is very easy to use. You can type in or record dialect expressions. The highlight of the app is that you are immediately rewarded for taking part. After each round of questions, you can view the results of a round of questions on a map of Austria in the app and also listen to some of them. In this way, similarities and differences between the dialects of different regions and generations become immediately apparent," explains Elspaß.

"The app is very easy to use," says Stephan Elspaß.

(Bild: Manuel Schwaiger)

Round of nine completed in two minutes
And this is how it works: In the "Collect" menu item, users or participants can record their use of language. "A self-recording consists of eight questions and a special king question. Such a round of nine takes less than two minutes." Using the "Compare" button, you can use a filter function to display the collected results of all the question rounds and get to the bottom of similarities and differences yourself.

We want to use the app to find out which dialect form the majority use. This is poorly researched.

Philip Vergeiner

"Most projects research dialects in rural areas"
As Vergeiner explains, "our aim is to find out which form of dialect the majority of people in Austria currently use. This is surprisingly poorly researched because most projects only investigate the particularly conservative dialects of people in rural areas".