The Texas German Dialect Project (TGDP) is an umbrella organization for carrying out research in representative Texas German speech communities in central Texas. It is housed in the Department of Germanic Studies and the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
The goals of the TGDP are:
- to record and preserve the Texas German dialect, as it reflects the rich cultural and linguistic traditions of the Texan German community;
- to gather information about linguistic diversity, so as to better understand the nature of language variation and change;
- to make our research on language differences and language change available to the general public; and
- to devote our collected research materials to improving educational programs on language, culture, and history.