Phonological and Phonetic Databases at the Meertens Institute

The Meertens Institute in Amsterdam was founded in 1930 under the name ‘Dialect Bureau’ (Dialectenbureau), and became an official institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 1952. In 1979, it was named after its first director, P.J. Meertens (1899-1985), a student of 17th century Dutch literature. Currently it comprises two departments, one of Dutch Ethnology and one of Variational Linguistics. Originally, the institute had as its primary goal the documentation of the traditional dialects (as well as folk culture) of the Netherlands. In the course of time, this focus has broadened in several ways; for instance the institute now also does its own research, and the linguistic department has widened its scope to other topics than the traditional dialects. At the same time, the documentation of dialects itself has progressed. Over the past 15 years, considerable effort has gone into digitizing material and putting it online. This brief contribution seeks to describe the two most important databases on Dutch dialects which are available at the Meertens Institute: the Goeman-Taeldeman-Van Reenen Database and Soundbites; I will conclude with pointing out some future plans and desiderata.