-
Can I contribute?You can contribute financially or with your knowledge.
-
This looks like a lot of work. Who does all that work?The website and the dictionary were created by Marcus Buck. And it's indeed a lot of work. If you want to honor it, you can do so with a donation.
-
Is the dictionary prescriptive or descriptive?A descriptive dictionary describes the language like it is. A prescriptive dictionary on the other hand tells us, what is right and what is wrong. (Wikipedia)
The Plattmakers dictionary in its base is a descriptive dictionary and describes Low German like it is. But the dictionary is not purely descriptive. The author aims at being a help to use and write “good” Low German. That means, for example, that Standard German or Standard Dutch loans are not listed in the dictionary when there are equivalent Low German words. Even when many Low German users use this loans. This sort of words is called „barbarisms“. Words from Standard German, Standard Dutch or other languages, that are used when in the haste of the moment the speaker cannot grasp a better Low German idiom. These words are not listed in the dictionary, except for cases where the word gained wide currency (examples are the words „Kirch“ and „Woch“, which have completely taken over the role of the former native Low German words in some regions). -
How does this website work?
The words are not saved like in a normal dictionary. The database record for ‚dick‘ is not ‚dick‘ but ‚'Ti1k]é‘. This is a special notation, that shows how the word was pronounced 1300 years ago. The ‚T‘ stands for a th as in English (‚dick‘ and ‚thick‘ are cognate words). The ‚i1‘ stands for a short i (a long i would be ‚i2‘). The ‚k]‘ stands for a syllable boundary inside a k. And the ‚é‘ stands for a short e. So the Old Saxons would have written the word ‚dick‘ as ‚thicce‘.
The Plattmakers algorithm now runs through all the sound shifts the Low German language experienced in the last 1300 years. Early on the sound th became d: ‚'Ti1k]é‘ => ‚'di1k]é‘. Later in the north of the Low German language area e’s at the end of the word were lost: ‚'di1k]é‘ => ‚'di1k]‘.
In a second step this phonetic spelling is transformed into a modern spelling.
Starting point: ‚'di1k]‘ d stays d: ‚di1k]‘ short i is written as i: ‚dik]‘ syllable border in k is written as ck: ‚dick‘ In the south of the Low German language area the e at the end of the word is not lost (for example in Waldeck). In that area the second step looks like this:
Starting point: ‚'di1k]é‘ d stays d: ‚di1k]é‘ short i is written as i: ‚dik]é‘ syllable border in k is written as ck: ‚dické‘ e stays e: ‚dicke‘