Developing the German Pronunciation Database (DAD) - an online dictionary for spoken German

Authors: Alexandra Ebel, Johannes Förster, Mathias Walther

Abstract:

The Department of Speech Science and Phonetics at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg is traditionally linked with orthoepy research. Since 2017 the Department is running a Standard German Pronunciation Database, called Deutsche Aussprachedatenbank (DAD), which contains more than 130,000 entries. This database is currently being further developed in cooperation with the Professorship for business informatics at Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau. The Department of Speech Science and Phonetics published three pronunciation dictionaries since the middle of the 20th century, the last one in 2010 [1]. But databases have many advantages over books, so in the 21st century the development of a database was a logical step. Especially audio files for the individual entries offer great added value. At this point, however, there is also a great need for developing because the audio files have to meet very specific criteria. The reason for this is that the phonetic characteristics of all entries must be reproduced uniformly and unambiguously. In our contribution we will give an insight in the German Pronunciation Database (DAD) and show functions of the current version. At the same time, we are going to mention limitations that are linked to this version. Finally, we give an outlook on technical and content-related expansions that are planned in the future.