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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
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