e-WBD: Electronisch woordenboek van de Brabantse dialecten

The e-WBD is an online dictionary of dialects from the Dutch province Noord-Brabant, as well as the Belgian provinces of Antwerpen, Vlaams-Brabant and Brussels. It stands for Electronisch woordenboek van de Brabantse dialecten.

Overview

  • The e-WBD contains the three volumes of the Woordenboek van de Brabantse dialecten, that was published between 1967 and 2005.

  • Users can query the e-WBD for keywords and concepts, as well as locations (using a placename or a Kloekecode).

  • The e-WBD contains 15,794 concepts, 140,091 keywords, and 1,704,116 dialectal entries, collected in over 2950 Brabantian places, with each place corresponding to its own dialect.

  • Together with the e-WALD, e-WGD and the e-WLD, the e-WBD forms a series of electronic dictionaries.

Original in-press publication of the *Woordenboek van de Brabantse dialecten*, that the e-WBD makes available digitally.

About

Overview research area

The research area for the e-WBD comprises the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant (north),the Belgian province of Antwerpen (middle) and Vlaams-Brabant (south). On the map, another closed area has been indicated in Vlaams-Brabant, the Brussels Capital Region. Brusselian is originally a Brabantian dialect.

Research area of the WBD.

Brabantian dialects

Below is a dialect map showing the Brabant dialect areas. These areas have been used to designate areas in the WBD. An explanation of this classification can be found in WBD Inleiding op deel III: R. Belemans, J. Goossens, Inleiding en klankgeografie van de Brabantse dialecten, Assen 2000 (232p.) (in Dutch). That episode included a transparent card that could be placed on top of the printed cards. That transparent map has been converted into the dialect map shown here, in which the larger places are indicated for orientation. The larger dialect areas are demarcated with lines. The further division is indicated in color.

Classification of the Brabantian dialects.

Learn

A manual on how to query the e-WBD can be found on the e-WBD webpage. (This manual is only available in Dutch, however.)

Mentions

Together with three other electronic dictionaries, the e-WALD forms a series: * The e-WALD (Electronisch woordenboek van de Achterhoekse en Liemerse dialecten); * The e-WGD (Electronisch woordenboek van de Gelderse dialecten); * The e-WLD (Electronisch woordenboek van de Limburgse dialecten).

The e-WBD was originally published as an in-press publication. More information on the books and volumes can be found here.

The source code that facilitates the Django web applications of the electronic dialect dictionaries can be found on GitHub here.

Credits and Contact Information

The e-WBD application was developed by Erwin Komen of the Technical Support Group of the Humanities Lab of Radboud University under the supervision of Henk van den Heuvel. Thijs Hermsen made the maps.

For technical information or issues regarding the e-WBD, you can contact dr. Henk van den Heuvel (H.vandenHeuvel@Let.ru.nl), Director CLST & Head of the Humanities Lab. Regarding the contents of the e-WBD, you can contact prof. dr. Nicoline van der Sijs (post@nicolinevdsijs.nl).

Editing and digitization

In 2015, the first two volumes of the Woordenboek van de Brabantse dialecten were digitized thanks to a grant awarded by CLARIN for the project 'CARE: Curation and integration of regional dictionaries' led by Nicoline van der Sijs, Henk van den Heuvel and Roeland van Hout (RU).

Eric Sanders (RU) designed a macro and script for semi-automatic digitization. Research assistant Aukje Borkent, data curator Linda van Meel (partly thanks to the chair for Diversity in Language and Culture in Brabant, Tilburg University), student assistants Jorik van Engeland, Inge Otto, Lisette van der Heijde and Hanna van den Heuvel, and interns Maaike Borst and Eline Dimmendaal had all texts read by the macro and the result was accurately corrected manually. Volunteers Jantien Kettenes-Van den Bosch and Herman Wiltink have carried out a pre-correction for many parts.

Joep Kruijsen, one of the original editors, offered his enormous know-how for the digitization and carried out a lot of correction work; for example, he corrected all phonetic signs from volumes I and II. These corrections will be gradually added to the current application in the near future.