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David Collins wrote:
Does anyone know of some handy resources / tricks for localizing a late medieval German text by its linguistic/dialectic characteristics? I'm working on a 15th-century German prayerbook that includes an elaborate Volkskalender in German in addition to the usual offices for the dead, the BVM, angels, saints, etc. in Latin. I'm fairly sure (for other-than-linguistic reasons) that the book (both parts) was produced in Nuremburg , but being able to identify the language of the kalender as a distinctively Franconian variety of medieval German would be a helpful additional argument. Dave Collins You will most probably easily get an answer to this by writing or mailingl directly to the department of german philology (or even of history) of any German or german speaking university, which, I'm sure, you can find with a good search-machine on the WWW in no time. Why not write to the universities of Erlangen or Bayreuth in Frankonia, or to Munich?
Myself, I only know of one historical dictionary of a german dialect: the "Schweizerisches Idiotikon" (from idioma), which has fairly many examples from the 15th and 16th cent. and onward, which at the time were quite common in southern germay as well. There exist dictionaries of nowadays german dialects as well (Suebian, Plattdütsch), but I don't know whether they're historically based or not.Viel Glück bei der Suche
Daniel