Digital methods in researching Slovakia Hungarian regional dialects

Abstract

This study overviews the most recent digital methods used in Slovakia Hungarian dialectology. Slovakia Hungarian dialectology started out by using the most modern digital methods in 2010 at Nitra/Nyitra university, creating regional dialect databases, first for the Žitný ostrov/Csallóköz region and then for the whole Slovakia Hungarian dialect region. Recording and processing data has been carried out with the help of the Bihalbocs software developed by Domokos Vékás and Fruzsina Sára Vargha in Hungary. The present paper first provides an overview of digital methods in dialectology and its results for Hungarian dialects, and then summarizes the results of the Nitra/Nyitra team so far, illustrating the diversity of digitized dialectological data. It discusses the findings of publications reporting on the results of this research, including maps showing the geographical and social distribution of linguistic phenomena and acoustic phonetic analyses of data aligned with sound files. Important output of this research also includes recently published audiobooks of Slovakia Hungarian dialects. The paper outlines further avenues of research based on the most recent findings.