Foreword

In 2009 the Low German Dictionary "Ons Ieeschtet Wieedabuak" was published by Ed Zacharias with technical assistance from Loren Koehler. During the year leading up to the printing, a database of over 17,000 entries was developed. Although the printed dictionary was unilingual (entries and definitions were all in Low German), the underlying database also had English glosses, parts of speech, etc. Subsequently there was interest in an Internet-based Plautdietsch-English lexicon, so a website was developed to meet that need.

Over the years, the coding used in the original website was no longer fully supported by modern browsers and did not provide a search function. The website also lacked support for mobile devices. The major limitation was that, after compiling the website, there was no good mechanism to modify or expand the entries.

Recently it was decided to revisit the original database and, with the assistance of SIL, convert it to a modern version which could then be easily maintained.

Please note that the English glosses given here may not fully express the meaning of the Low German word, and may not even be very accurate since that was not the primary intention when the unilingual dictionary was being developed.

The orthography used both here and in Ons Ieeschtet Wieedabuak is that used in the Low German Bible. Although the spelling differs from that used by some Plautdietsch writers, it should not be that difficult to locate words in this version, especially with the aide of the English index. You will notice that many reference words such as variants and synonymns have hyperlinks to enable you to jump to that entry directly.

This website also incorporates a semantic category approach to Low German words, which functions like a thesaurus. It helps to gather words together on a common theme such as cooking. This should be a benefit to writers who may be searching for another way to express a certain idea. These semantic labels were generated by a mechanical process and may not always be appropriate.

A good linguistic description of Plautdietsch can be found on this Wikipedia page.

If you have suggestions, additions or corrections to make, please feel free to submit them using the Contact Us page.