Become a superdialectologist! Young linguists help to record Czechia’s dialects
The Czech Academy of Sciences’ Institute of the Czech Language is recruiting young language enthusiasts to document dialects and the endangered speech of older generations.
Czechia may seem fairly unified in its speech today, but the country still contains a lot of linguistic diversity. Non-standard dialects of Czech can be heard in various areas, and the Institute of the Czech Language has relaunched a competition to help map them. For the second time, the institute is running ‘Become a superdialectologist’ (Staň se superdialektologem), which aims to recruit folklore lovers between the ages of ten and nineteen.
All they need is a phone or other recording device, half an hour of time, and a willing participant. Their recordings can make a real contribution to the scientific field of dialectology; in some cases, what they record may be examples of endangered language, preserved through their efforts for future generations.
To increase the chances of spotting traditional vocabulary in the wild, the current competition’s topic of conversation is food and drink. In the South Moravian town of Lanžhot, eighth-grade pupil Filip Konrád interviews ninety-two-year-old Božena Černá, listening attentively to her local distinct dialect:
“I'm now recording Mrs. Božena Černá's Slovak dialect on my phone. What were weddings like? What was being prepared at that time?”
“You see, when it was time to go to the wedding, everyone brought something – flour, nuts. Everyone gave what they had.”
Mr. Konrád recorded twenty-five minutes of speech from Mrs. Černá, which will be his submission to the competition. Marta Šimečková, the competition’s organiser at the Institute for the Czech Language, described what was distinctive about the recording:
“There are lots of interesting dialectal elements, especially the dark L, typical of the Slovak language, with a W instead of an L, as well as sa instead of se. But the most interesting thing is that the word gugla, which means ‘cake’, has appeared here. We’ve not actually had that in our recordings yet.”
Young dialectologists can therefore offer new information to the scientific study of the modern Czech language, providing data that will be stored and made accessible for study in a ‘phonoteca’ – a library of speech. Researchers at the Academy of Sciences are also joining forces with scientists at the Technical University of Prague, and will use the recordings to train artificial intelligence to recognise the different features of Czech dialects.
The ‘Become a superdialectologist’ competition runs until April 30th, after which the winners of the prizes for most interesting recordings will be announced and invited to an awards ceremony in Brno. The details of the competition, as well as the results of last year’s edition, can be found on the jamap.cz website.
