Point and find: the intuitive user experience in accessing spatially structured dialect dictionaries

Dialect dictionaries are a special type of dictionary.Academic, highly sophisticated dialect dictionaries are usually long-term projects.A single entry contains more or less encyclopaedic information, not just linguistic details.These dictionaries demonstrate the important role the mother tongue, which is a dialect for many people in Austria, plays in culture and identity.Consequently, many people are highly interested in dialect(s), meanings of words, and derivation.Unfortunately, scientific dialect dictionaries often do not meet these users' needs.Dialect dictionaries are costly and often edited over a very long period of time (c.f.Schweizerisches Idiotikon since 1881, Schwäbisches Wörterbuch 1901-1936, Rheinisches Wörterbuch 1928-1971, Siebenbürgisch-sächsisches Wörterbuch since 1924, Wörterbuch der bairischen Mundarten in Österreich since 1963, Sudetendeutsches Wörterbuch since 1988).Therefore, dialect dictionaries often pass through entire eras.This article discusses how traditional dialect dictionaries could become more user-friendly by on-line publication and by the application of Web GIS. An example: Wörterbuch der bairischen Mundarten in Österreich (WBÖ) / Dictionary of Bavarian dialects in Austria