Introduction to the Schweizerisches Idiotikon
The Schweizerisches Idiotikon documents the Alemannic vernacular in Switzerland from the 13th through to the 21st century. Sixteen volumes published so far with more than 135,000 entries amount to the most comprehensive historical dictionary of a German language region.
The linguistic situation of Switzerland is due to the existence of four national languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. The lexical material treated in the Schweizerisches Idiotikon contains the recent and historical vocabulary of the biggest linguistic region of the country: German-speaking Switzerland. The Highest Alemannic dialects of northern Italy are also covered by the Idiotikon, as they are of Valais origin and not covered in any other scholarly dictionary. Various collections of words, sayings and idiomatic expressions in manuscript form contributed by individuals, the Swiss German fictional literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, the linguistic literature on Swiss German dialects, and regional dialect dictionaries serve as the basis for the editing process for the living dialects (i.e. dialects documented after 1800 until today). For the historical language (i.e. language documented before 1800), sources dating from the 13th to the 18th century, with the emphasis lying on the 15th and 16th centuries, are incorporated. Thus, the Schweizerisches Idiotikon is not only a dialect dictionary, but also a historical dictionary of late Middle High German and early New High German in Switzerland.
The headwords are listed according to the stem words, i.e. compounds and derivatives appear with their stems. The individual entry or article of the dictionary starts with the headword in its most basic Swiss German form, derived from Middle High German. If such a form cannot be found, the corresponding New High German or phonetic dialect form is entered. Following the headword, regional phonological forms and grammatical information concerning gender, inflection etc. are given. The definitions, i.e. the semantic information, introduce the main part of the article. From volume 10 onwards, intricate cases are preceded by a disposition of the different meanings of the headword. Definitions of the living vocabulary are followed by labels indicating their geographical distribution, and, if existent, idiomatic phrases. If possible, the articles present citations corroborating the definitions. References from historical sources are dated and appear chronologically; they document the diachronic development of a word. Apart from regional and temporal aspects of its headwords, the Schweizerisches Idiotikon also indicates material culture, folkloristic information, legal history etc. Annotations conclude the article: they contain the etymology of the headword (Middle High German and Old High German forms, origin of loanwords etc.) as well as the corresponding onomastic material (place and field names, personal and family names).
A brief history of the Schweizerisches Idiotikon starts with the initiative of the Antiquarische Gesellschaft in Zürich (Antiquarian Society of Zürich) of 1862, appealing to the German speaking Swiss people to collect dialect words, sayings, idiomatic phrases etc. The appeal had grown out of the patriotic and wide-spread fear of the time that the Swiss German dialects might get lost with the modern way of life. In 1881, the first issue was published. The first three and a half volumes are still quite concise. Around 1900, however, the scope of the Schweizerisches Idiotikon was widened, leading to significant differences in concept and size of volumes 1–3 in contrast to the following volumes: while it focussed on the vocabulary specific to Switzerland in the former, from the middle of volume 4 onwards, the Idiotikon documents the whole bulk of the Swiss German vocabulary. In 1980, the third, revised edition of the Quellen- und Abkürzungsverzeichnis (Bibliography and Index of Abbreviations) was published. It contains the sources cited in the lexical entries (often combined with short biographies of the authors) and explains the labels used for the geographical indications. It is in itself a bibliography to linguistic, historical and fictional literature. The whole printed work will comprise 17 volumes. Sixteen volumes of the Schweizerisches Idiotikon have been published so far; volume 17 is in progress. From 1881 to 2012, the Idiotikon was printed by the publishing house Huber Frauenfeld. In 2013, the Schwabe Verlag Basel took over the editing responsibility. All printed parts of the Schweizerisches Idiotikon are available there. In recent years, various projects for improved accessibility to the invaluable contents of the dictionary have been carried out step by step: the digitisation of the printed parts, the extension of existing and the implementation of new indexes, as well as plans for a concise two-volume edition of the Schweizerisches Idiotikon.
Since 2010, the Schweizerisches Idiotikon has been available online. Different methods of access have been implemented since to simplify its use. Scans of the dictionary pages, linked with the alphabetised register of headwords and an OCR text (optical character recognition) of the whole dictionary, were the first additions within the dictionary‘s digital strategy. A further digitalised access method is the grammar index, which groups different linguistic phenomena of various topics (e.g. phonology, morphology, lexicology, and phraseology) with headwords as examples. In 2013, a project to build a semantic index was started, which will be concluded by 2020. Key information (e.g. definitions, grammatical information on the headword, historical occurence, position of the article on the page) is manually extracted from the article and recorded in a database. Different features already implemented in the online dictionary are based on this database. For example, a disposition of the different meanings can be called up for each headword. In the long run, the semantic index will serve as a foundation for potential follow-up projects to the Schweizerisches Idiotikon, such as a concise dictionary of Swiss German.
Though the Schweizerisches Idiotikon was started by a private initiative, it has been supported by federal subsidies since 1874. Today, the legal body of the Idiotikon is the Verein für das Schweizerdeutsche Wörterbuch. This association publishes the dictionary by means of federal subsidies (through the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Societies, Bern) as well as the dues paid by the cantons of German-speaking Switzerland and other members of the association. The staff issues an annual report, which can be obtained here.
