The ‘Dutch Dialect Idioms’ database is the renewed version of an online database of idioms in 13 Dutch dialects. This database is developed by linguists from Utrecht University and KU Leuven.

In the NWO-FWO project The Syntax of Idioms, that ran from 2013 to 2017, linguists from Utrecht University and KU Leuven investigated idioms of 13 Dutch dialects. The development of the original database application ended with the finalization of the project. Software however requires continuous maintenance to keep up with technical developments, especially in the case of client-server applications. For the development of the new version of the database, a setup requiring little maintenance was therefore chosen. This is enabled by the use of SQLite, an embedded database engine and file format suitable for long-term archival of data sets. The web interface is built as a customized Datasette application. Datasette is a tool written in Python, aimed at both exploring and publishing data. Both the data set and the source code are available under permissive licenses.

All data obtained are now publicly accessible and easily searchable here. The idioms and sentences in the Dutch Dialect Idioms database can be browsed per dialect and also on the grammatical properties of idioms and the grammatical manipulations used in sentences.

Do you have questions about the database? Please contact Sterre Leufkens at s.c.leufkens@uu.nl.