Internet recordings and broadcasts in German dialects and related Continental
West Germanic languages
(last updated December 17, 2008)
Most of these sites will work with one (or more) of the following audio/video players: RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, QuickTime, or iTunes. I have not been able to get some of the older ReadAudio files to play in RealPlayer on a Mac lately but have found that the open-source MPlayer works fine for at least some of these files.
I have not included links to audio materials in standard German or Dutch. For
the former, see my page of German Media Links.
For the latter, try Omroep.nl. Suggestions
for additions or changes to this page are very welcome. Click here
to send me an e-mail.
- General
- The website of the Deutscher
Sprachatlas has the Digitaler Wenker-Atlas
(DiWA) project, the website of which is currently being redesigned. It appears that the new version will include audio recordings of a
full set of the Wenker-Sätze for many locations.
- The Deutsche Welle Dialektatlas includes broadcasts with samples of a wide variety of dialects.
- The Arbeitsstelle Sprache in Hessen has clickable maps of "Hessens Sprachlandschaften" and of the "Deutsche Dialekte" with recordings of Wenker-Satz Nr.1 for each location.
- A.J. Niesz has a page
titled
Deutsche
und mit Deutsch verwandte Dialekte: die Wenkerschen Testsätze zur Mundartforschung
with recordings of fourteen of the Wenkersätze in 28 different
German and Dutch dialects.
- Wolfgang Näser's Mundart-Tonbeispiele
includes recordings of one of the Wenkersätze in dozens of
different dialects and several longer recordings representing various regions.
- Dialektkarte.de allows users to record their own dialects and listen to the
samples that have been recorded by others.
- (There is an increasingly enormous amount of material in German dialects and related languages on video-sharing sites such as
YouTube. It's often very difficult to find what you're looking for on such sites, but it might be
worth a try.)
- Alemannic/Swiss German
- The Deutsches Seminar der Universität Basel has a
Website zu den Deutschschweizer Dialekten
with a large number of recordings in a variety of Swiss-German/Alemannic dialects.
- Beat Siebenhaar's site at the University of Bern has recordings with transcriptions and Standard German translations of several of the varieties of German spoken in the city of Bern (Stadtberndeutsch).
- The Phonogrammarchiv at the University of Zürich has short audio samples from many of the CDs that it offers for sale on its Webshop page.
- Schweizer Fernsehen makes many (all?) of its programs, the majority of which are partly or entirely in Swiss German, available on line.
- Rhenish Franconian/Pfälzisch
- Central (and Low) Franconian
- Moselle Franconian
- The site Märchionkel has recordings of humorous versions of several fairy tales in Moselle Franconian dialect.
- Siebenbürgen (Moselle Franconian dialect island)
- Ripuarian (Cologne)
- Bavarian
- The Sprechender Sprachatlas von Bayern allows you to display on a map the distributions of a wide variety of lexical, grammatical and phonological variables, each with audio for dozens of clickable locations from all parts of the State of Bavaria (large parts of which are not "Bavarian" in the dialectological sense). This is without a doubt one of the very best dialect audio sites.
- Bayerischer Rundfunk has a dossier entitled Dialekte in Bayern with video clips that include samples of dialects from different parts
of Bavaria (not all "Bavarian" in the dialectological sense).
- The Stifter Haus has several interactive maps of Upper Austria that allow you to hear variant pronunciations of phonologically interesting words. (They have one additional map here.)
- Gottschee (South Bavarian dialect island)
- Gottschee.com has
a number of recordings, including a collection of narratives, a poem, the Lord's Prayer, several sample sentences from Tschinkel's
Wörterbuch der Gottscheer Mundart and several Volkslieder.
- Cimbrian (South Bavarian dialect island)
- Thuringian
- The Arbeitsstelle Thüringische Dialektforschung has
mp3 recordings of the same text being read by speakers from each of the nine main dialect areas covered by the Thüringisches Wörterbuch (not all of which are Thuringian in the dialectological sense). You can also access the recordings by clicking on this map.
- Plautdietsch (Russian-Mennonite Low German)
- Luxembourgish
- RTL's Lëtzebuergesch offerings include television and radio "Live Stream", along with extensive audio and video archives of news and
other recorded programs.
- Yiddish
- The Yiddish Radio Project offers dozens of online recordings of old broadcasts from the "golden age of Yiddish radio". (Click on "gems".) An English translation appears in RealPlayer as you listen to the Yiddish.
- The World of Yiddish
(Di Velt fun Yidish) has recordings of a number of classic short stories (Perets, Sholem-Aleykhem, Bashevis Singer, etc.). You can also download the texts in .pdf format.
- The Yiddish newspaper Forverts offers recordings of its weekly hour-long Yiddish radio program,
The Forward Hour.
- Kol Israel International
makes its most recent Yiddish broadcast available.
- The
Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture currently offers the following
RealAudio resources: Recordings
of radio programs from the 1930's and 40's; a Yiddish
Primer with built-in audio; and readings
of bilingual children's books.
- The National Yiddish Book Center has an Audio Library with several recordings of stories and other texts in Yiddish.
- At SBS
Radio in Australia you can access a number of recent Yiddish broadcasts by selecting "Yiddish" in the "Choose a language" drop-down box.
- The Yiddish Voice
radio station in Boston offers recordings of several lectures,
songs, and other material in Yiddish.
- The EYDES site (Evidence of Yiddish Documented in European Societies) has an Interactive map with short recordings of speakers from different dialect regions and an "Interview of the month". At the site's
Online Yiddish Course you can listen to several interviews with speakers of different
dialects and follow text that scrolls by automatically as you listen. The course also has recordings of
individual words illustrating important phonological isoglosses among the
Yiddish dialects.
- jewishmusic.com
maintains a RealAudio library of hundreds of Yiddish songs. (Click on "Audio
Library" then on "Klezmer" or "Yiddish".)
- The site Zemerl
has links to recordings of hundreds of Yiddish songs. Even when a link is
out of date (as quite a few were the last time I checked), the URL may point
you to a site with other recordings. Zemerl also provides transliterated and translated
lyrics for many songs.
- Frisian
- West Frisian
- Omrop
Fryslân has a large selection of radio and television programs
in West Frisian.
- North Frisian
- East Frisian (Saterfriesisch)
- The broadcasts in the Saterfriesisch section of the Deutsche Welle Dialektatlas contain audio samples of the East Frisian language (not to be confused with the variety of Low German spoken in Ostfriesland).
- Pennsylvania German
- The German Dialects section of the American Languages site at the University of Wisconsin has recordings in Pennsylvania German as well as a number of other North American German varieties.
- Dutch dialects
- The Meertens Instituut has a clickable map with audio samples of dozens of dialects (including West Frisian and Low Saxon) from throughout the Netherlands (and a couple from northern Flanders).
- The Huis van Alijn in Gent has a "taalkamer" with audio and video clips in dialects from various parts of Flanders.
- Afrikaans
- A number of South African radio stations broadcast live on the Internet in Afrikaans, including RSG and Radio Pretoria.
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