Franconian – a language with all too many varieties

I am originally from a little town in Upper Franconia and it's now approx. one and half a year that I have been working on that language. Up to now it was not clear how to properly create dictionary entries, because we do not only have variations from one place to the other, but also from one author to the other.

Now what is relevant to have a language survive is "some kind of a standard" – well with Franconian that is more difficult than let's say for Neapolitan, because whatever you find has a very personal touch in terms of terminology and ortography from its writer. The only way is to put all variations in there and tag them properly. Then, once you search for a word from German to Francoinan you get all inserted terms with their corresponding properties.

This means that I need two taglists: one by city and one by author and both tags need to be added, if available.

Ah and btw. I received a recording yesterday evening – the first speech recording from a city near home. Well, I hope we will be able to get things on the way … the language according to Unesco is "unsafe", that is we are in danger of loosing this quite unique language stemming for a large part directly from Middlegerman. With it a whole culture would die and really: I don't want to see that happen.

And here is the classification according to UNESCO:

Name of the language:
East Franconian (en); francique oriental (fr); восточно-франкский (ru)
Alternate names:
Ostfränkisch (in German); Franconian (colloquial); dialects: Main Franconian (Mainfränkisch), Upper Franconian (Oberfränkisch)
Vitality:
unsafe
Number of speakers:
unavailable (not available, but in the range of millions)
Location(s): Franconia region in northern Bavaria and southern Thuringia, Germany; formerly also in a small area north of Cheb (Eger), Czech Republic; both the region and the classification in the Ethnologue are incorrect
Country or area:
Germany - Czech Republic
Coordinates:
lat = 50.0571; long = 10.7336
References:
Corresponding ISO 639-3 code(s): vmf
Record number: 01944