Atlas of Czech Language 2027: Nationwide Research on Czech Dialects 50 Years Later

The project, through a new, modernized nationwide research on Czech dialects, aims to identify their current state, account for the changes in their regional distribution, and present the results in the Atlas of Czech Language. That will happen at a time when 50 years have passed since the last nationwide dialect survey, conducted by dialectologists of the Czech Language Institute. The archaic state of Czech dialects was recorded and described in the six-volume Czech Linguistic Atlas. Since then, the dialects have undergone major changes, driven by social, economic and political factors. The project will build on the experience of previous research and will take advantage in the development of IT. The results will be produced that increase the performance and quality of dialectological research and will be applicable to future generations of dialectologists: 1) software usable in modern methods of collecting, storing, managing, processing and visualising different types dialect data; these include exploring socially stratified variations; 2) methodology for collecting dialect data, defining and describing the methods of direct and indirect research. With their help, it will collect dialect data, the presentation of which will be ensured by: 3) an analytical interactive multimedia map showing dialect material from thematic fields “Man, his life and the surrounding environment”; 4) a synthetic interactive multimedia map showing dialect areas in terms of regionalization; 5) specialized public spatial geodatabase of dialect lexical data with geolocation that allow for optional generating clear data sets based on sociolinguistic criteria; 6) an exhibition (with a critical catalogue) presenting the current state of the dialect in confrontation with the research conducted 50 years ago; 7) Atlas of Czech Language, main publication with 550 analytical and synthetic maps and an commentary. There will also be four thematic atlases, scientific papers and a conference.