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The Institute of Language and Folk Memories (ISOF), has the task of collecting, preserving, and researching dialects, place names, personal names and folk memories. They also work with language preservation and language policy and follow the development of Swedish and minority languages in Sweden.
100 years of collaboration with Lantmäteriet
ISOF's work includes answering questions and giving talks, showing its collections and publishing books and CDs.
As the authority responsible for place names, ISOF gives its opinion on matters concerning the determination of place names and examines proposals for names in the Land Survey's basic geodata. This is a collaboration that has been going on in various forms for about a hundred years.
Nowadays, at the institute in Uppsala, there is a position as name conservation consultant with overall responsibility for place name conservation within their area.
Place name archives
Interpretations of place name significance and information about pronunciation and older evidence, etc., can be obtained from any of the place name archives. They are two in number and are found in Uppsala and Gothenburg. The place name collections in total consist of about ten million archive cards that are available via the Internet.
The dialect archive
Within ISOF there are two departments that work with dialects. There is also a large dialect material in the form of recordings of dialect words and recordings in the archive.
The dialect archive's activities are focused on processing, preserving and expanding collections, and on researching and informing about dialects.
A dialect is a language variant that is spoken within a defined geographical area. Such an area can be very small, like a village, or considerably larger, like a landscape. In today's Sweden, the dialect areas are often relatively large. If we compare with what it looked like 50-100 years ago, the dialects have been 'leveled out', that is, they have become more equal over larger areas. Instead of the older, local dialects, we have thus got new, more regional dialects.
References
Institute for Language and Folk Memories (in swedish, new window)
Ortnamnsregistret (Institute for Language and Folk Memories, in swedish, new window)
The dialect and folk memory archive in Uppsala (DFU) researches and informs about dialects. One of our projects is the work with a Swedish dialect dictionary (Institute for Language and Folk Memories, in swedish, new window).
The dialect, place name and folk memory archive in Umeå (DAUM) (Institute for Language and Folk Memories, in swedish, new window) The majority of DAUM's written collections are available in the Umeå city archive. The recorded material can be found in Uppsala .
If you are more interested, you can listen to dialects (Institute for Language and Folk Memories, in swedish, new window) and get literature tips (Institute for Language and Folk Memories, in swedish, new window).