The materials held by the TGDA come from all over central Texas and for the most part take the form of sociolinguistic/oral history interviews. In addition to using the holdings of the TGDA to learn more about Texas German life in central Texas from 1840 on, these materials offer a wealth of data on linguistic features of Texas German from phonology to grammatical patterns. It is TGDP’s goal to enable new research and understanding of the richness of this unique dialect of German in use.
There are two types of data archived in the TGDA. The first type is sociolinguistic interviews where informants tell stories in Texas German about their lives, their families, and local history, among many other topics. The recordings of these stories are transcribed and translated into English, and accessible through the TGDA. The second type of data is translations of English words, phrases, and sentences into Texas German. The data come from lists used by Fred Eikel (1954) and Glenn Gilbert (1972), see references. Users can access the Texas German translations in order to compare how the same words, phrases and sentences are pronounced differently in various parts of Texas.