Potential Applications

By importing numerous currently available and future linguistic data into a central database, a number of potential applications present themselves, for example,

• for regional-language research by enabling systematic comparative studies of the modern regional languages of German, taking into account sociolinguistic, historic-administrative, and political means of interpretation

• for historical studies by contributing an instrument to the development of a data basis with which historical map material can be superimposed with modern regional atlases, allowing for the analysis of linguistic change on all linguistic levels over the course of a century

• for teachers and students of German, and German as a second and foreign language who have free access to the most important regional-language information on German

• for the public who can access the results of sociolinguistic and variation-linguistic research from home and who can quickly acquaint themselves with German's varieties and speech levels.

Examples

• a vector map from the "Central Rhenish Linguistic Atlas" (MRhSA) (1994–2002)

• cross-fade of a historical map from the “Sprachatlas des Deutschen Reichs” (1888–1923) being superimposed with a map from the “Schlesischer Sprachatlas” (1965–1967), a modern regional atlas