--- license: gpl-3.0 language: - de - en task_categories: - text-classification - token-classification - translation size_categories: - 10K Status: **published** at > [`cstr/grundwortschatz-voc-de`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/cstr/grundwortschatz-voc-de) > (GPL-3.0). The shipped SQLite asset lives at `assets/grundwortschatz.db.gz` in > the [WortUniversum / words-universe](https://github.com/CrispStrobe/words-universe) > repository; this dataset is its CC-BY-SA→GPL-3.0 re-distribution form. Rebuild > + re-push with `pipeline/build_hf_datasets.py --upload`. ## Dataset summary A curated, enriched lexical database of **10,450 German lemmas** covering the primary-school *Grundwortschatz* (basic vocabulary) used across German Bundesländer, with extensive per-word annotation including: - definitions, IPA, inflections, hyphenation - example sentences (~24,500) - English translations (~27,500) - ConceptNet semantic relations - OpenThesaurus / OdeNet synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, meronyms - multi-corpus frequency rank (HermitDave / Buchmeier / Leipzig / Leeds) - DWDS Häufigkeitsklasse (7-level frequency band 0–6) - **childLex age-graded norms** (Klasse 1-2 / 3-4 / 5-6 frequency) - dual spelling-pattern taxonomies (6-cat detailed + 5-cat broad) - per-Bundesland source attribution and per-Bundesland orthographic-pattern category labels - Wikipedia-derived common-misspelling pairs The dataset is built bottom-up from CC-BY-SA-4.0 and GPL-3.0 upstream sources; see [License & attribution](#license--attribution) below. ## Languages - **de** (German) — primary, all lemma content - **en** (English) — translations only ## Dataset structure The dataset is shipped as a SQLite database (`grundwortschatz.db.gz`, ~19 MB compressed, ~122 MB uncompressed). It is also exportable to Parquet via the bundled converter (see *Loading*, below). ### Tables #### `words` (10,450 rows) | Column | Type | Description | |---|---|---| | `id` | INTEGER PK | Surrogate key | | `original_id` | TEXT UNIQUE | Stable pre-build identifier | | `word` | TEXT | Surface form (may be inflected) | | `lemma` | TEXT | Canonical lemma | | `article` | TEXT | `der` / `die` / `das` for nouns | | `genus` | TEXT | grammatical gender | | `word_type` | TEXT | spaCy POS-coarsened category | | `grade_level` | INTEGER | 1–6, NRW Grundwortschatz / DWDS Goethe-derived | | `audio_path` | TEXT | (optional) audio asset key | | `frequency_json` | TEXT (JSON) | Per-corpus frequency / rank — see below | | `enrichment_json` | TEXT (JSON) | Definitions, IPA, examples, inflections, syn/ant, hyper/hypo, ConceptNet, OpenThesaurus, spelling-pattern taxonomies, misspelling pairs | | `metadata_json` | TEXT (JSON) | Source attribution, per-Bundesland category labels, spaCy morphology | #### `translations` (27,587 rows) | Column | Type | Description | |---|---|---| | `id` | INTEGER PK | Surrogate key | | `word_id` | INTEGER FK → `words.id` | Parent lemma | | `lang_code` | TEXT | ISO 639-1, e.g. `en` | | `translation` | TEXT | Target translation | #### `examples` (24,471 rows) | Column | Type | Description | |---|---|---| | `id` | INTEGER PK | Surrogate key | | `word_id` | INTEGER FK → `words.id` | Parent lemma | | `sentence` | TEXT | German example sentence | #### `search_index` (FTS5 virtual table) Full-text search index over `words.word`, `words.lemma`, and aggregated translations. Backed by `words` table content (`content=words`). ### Key JSON fields #### `frequency_json` ```jsonc { "buchmeier": {"rank": 223, "frequency": 14405}, // EN Wiktionary user namespace (Matthias Buchmeier) "hermit": {"rank": 197, "frequency": 95349}, // HermitDave / OpenSubtitles 2018 "leipzig": {"rank": 644}, // Wortschatz Leipzig (rank only) "leeds": {"rank": 367, "frequency": 192.03}, // Leeds Corpora "dwds": {"frequenzklasse": 4, "wortklasse": "Substantiv"}, // 7-level band 0-6 "childlex": {"age1_freq_norm": 679.4, "age2_freq_norm": 627.1, "age3_freq_norm": 605.4} // childLex norms by age band } ``` #### `enrichment_json` ```jsonc { "primary_pos": "noun", "primary_lemma": "Mutter", "definitions": ["weiblicher Elternteil …", "weibliches Tier …", …], "inflections": [{"form_text": "Mütter", "tags": "nominative, plural"}, …], "pronunciation": [{"ipa": "[ˈmʊtɐ]", "audio": "De-Mutter.ogg"}, …], "examples": [{"text": "Sie ist die Mutter von zwei Kindern.", "ref": "...", "year": 2017}, …], "hyphenation": ["Mut-ter"], "expressions": [{"expression": "bei Mutter Grün schlafen"}, …], "proverbs": [{"proverb": "Vorsicht ist die Mutter der Porzellankiste"}, …], "synonyms": ["Mama", "Mutti", …], "antonyms": ["Vater", "Kind", …], "hypernyms": [{"hypernym_word": "Elternteil"}, …], "hyponyms": [{"hyponym_word": "Großmutter"}, …], "conceptnet": [{"relation": "RelatedTo", "target": "bemuttern", "weight": 2.0}, …], "openThesaurus": [{"synonyms": [...], "associations": [...], "categories": [...]}, …], "wiktionary_translations": [{"lang": "Englisch", "word": "mother", …}, …], "spellingStrategy": ["doppelkonsonant", "grossschreibung"], "spellingStrategyPrimary": "doppelkonsonant", "spellingExplanation": "Nach einem kurzen Selbstlaut steht der doppelte Mitlaut zwischen den Silben: „Mut-ter". Du hörst ihn nur einmal.", "spellingStrategySource": "principle_based_v3", "nrwLinguisticFeatures": ["Artikel.die", "morphematisches Prinzip.Umlautung.ü", …], "commonLearnerErrors": [{"error": "Mütterr", "source": "wiki_haeufige_falschschreibungen"}] } ``` Spelling-strategy taxonomy (science-grounded — see `pipeline/voc-de/SPELLING_STRATEGY_SPEC.md`): - **`spellingStrategy`** / **`spellingStrategyPrimary`** — one or more of **7** neutral linguistic categories, each mapping to an orthographic principle of German (Eisenberg/Fuhrhop, Maas, Gallmann, Schmidt/Fuhrhop, the amtliches Regelwerk, and the basic-grapheme vs. orthographic-marker idea associated with Günther Thomé — principles/ideas only, not his catalogued grapheme inventory): `klangtreu` (phonographisch / Basisgraphem), `doppelkonsonant` (Schärfung — all short-vowel doublings, `Tasse`=`Mann`), `dehnung` (long-vowel marking: Dehnungs-h, aa/ee/oo, ie, silbentrennendes-h), `verwandt` (Stammkonstanz: Auslautverhärtung + Umlaut), `morphem` (prefix/suffix/separable particle/noun compound), `merkwort` (etymological exception: v→[f], ch→[k]), `grossschreibung` (nouns). - **`spellingExplanation`** — a per-word German explanation of the strategy (e.g. „Verlängere: Mann → Männer"; „zusammengesetzt: Haus + Tür"), with a category template fallback. Derived algorithmically from each word's own enrichment (hyphenation, inflections, IPA) by `spelling_strategy_classifier.py` (`spellingStrategySource: "principle_based_v3"`). The `nrwLinguisticFeatures` field is kept as provenance. (The earlier worksheet-fitted taxonomy and its `spellingPatterns` dual view were removed.) #### `metadata_json` ```jsonc { "sources": ["A1", "BUCHMEIER", "BW1", "HERMIT", "NRW422", "BERLIN", "BRANDENBURG", "HESSEN", "RHEINLAND_PFALZ", "BAYERN", "NIEDERSACHSEN", "SCHLESWIG_HOLSTEIN"], "hessenCategories": ["Lautgetreue Wörter auf -el", "Lautgetreue ableitbare Nomen mit Umlautung a – ä"], "rheinland_pfalzCategories": ["Lautgetreue Wörter auf -el", …], "bayernCategories": ["Verbindung von Strategien zu den verschiedenen Prinzipien"], "schleswig_holsteinCategories": ["Themen-Wortschätze · Im Klassenraum"], "averageRank": 3608.5, "wiktionaryInflections": [...], "derivedTerms": [...], "url": "https://www.dwds.de/wb/leiten", "verbFormSpacy": "Fin", "numberSpacy": "Plur", … } ``` ## Source attribution (`metadata_json.sources`) Each word's `sources` array contains tokens indicating which upstream wordlists declared this lemma. Distribution across the 10,450 words: | Token | Coverage | Source | License | |---|---|---|---| | `HERMIT` | 8,428 | HermitDave / OpenSubtitles 2018 frequency list | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | | `BUCHMEIER` | 7,846 | Matthias Buchmeier German frequency list (EN Wiktionary user namespace) | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | | `LEIPZIG` | 5,970 | Wortschatz Leipzig frequency rank | CC-BY (downloadable frequency lists; commercial OK) | | `LEEDS` | 4,162 | Leeds internet-corpus frequency rank (Sharoff; not the Kelly list) | rank-only (fact); Leeds corpora documented CC-BY | | `B1` | 1,801 | DWDS Goethe-Zertifikat B1 lemma list | factual reference | | `HESSEN` | 1,599 | Grundwortschatz Hessen (Hess. Kultusministerium) | §5 UrhG amtliches Werk | | `NIEDERSACHSEN` | 1,455 | Orientierungswortschatz Niedersachsen (Nds. KuMi, 2015) | §5 UrhG amtliches Werk | | `RHEINLAND_PFALZ` | 1,377 | Grundwortschatz RLP (Min. f. Bildung Mainz, 2021) | §5 UrhG amtliches Werk | | `BRANDENBURG` | 1,341 | Grundwortschatz Brandenburg (LISUM, 2024) | **CC-BY-SA 4.0** | | `BERLIN` | 1,338 | Berliner Grundwortschatz (LISUM, 2024) | **CC-BY-SA 4.0** | | `BAYERN` | 1,087 | Grundwortschatz Bayern (ISB Bayern) | §5 UrhG amtliches Werk | | `A1` | 802 | DWDS Goethe-Zertifikat A1 lemma list | factual reference | | `SCHLESWIG_HOLSTEIN` | 633 | Rechtschreib-Grundwortschatz SH (SH MinBuB / IQSH, 2023) | §5 UrhG amtliches Werk | | `A2` | 602 | DWDS Goethe-Zertifikat A2 lemma list | factual reference | | `NRW422`, `NRW111` | 532 | NRW Grundwortschatz (Min. f. Schule u. Bildung NRW) | public administrative | | `BW1`, `BW3` | 774 | Baden-Württemberg Grundwortschatz | public administrative | | `FEHLER100/200/300/400` | 932 | Common-misspelling lists from Menzel 1985 (empirical study) | facts (uncopyrightable) | ## Per-Bundesland orthographic categories For words tagged with `HESSEN`, `RHEINLAND_PFALZ`, `BAYERN`, or `SCHLESWIG_HOLSTEIN`, an additional `{bundesland}Categories: [...]` array preserves the source publication's own orthographic-pattern classification: - **`hessenCategories`** — 53 categories like `Lautgetreue Einsilber`, `Wörter mit Doppelkonsonanz`, `Funktionswörter mit Auslautverhärtung`, `Fremdwörter`, `Monatsnamen`, `Merkwörter`. - **`rheinland_pfalzCategories`** — 40 categories (mostly mirroring Hessen, per the RLP publication's own attribution). - **`bayernCategories`** — 43 fine-grained orthographem labels: ``, ``, ``, ``, ``, `/`, etc. - **`schleswig_holsteinCategories`** — 59 hierarchical categories: `Offene Silben · Wörter mit einfachen und komplexen Anfangsrändern`, `Themen-Wortschätze · Im Klassenraum`, `Affixe · Präfixe · Trennbare Verben · ab-`, etc. ## Algorithmic grade-band signal The `frequency_json.childlex` field provides age-graded frequency norms derived from childLex's 10M-token corpus of German children's literature (Schroeder, Würzner, Heister, Geyken & Kliegl 2015): | Field | Age | School level | |---|---|---| | `age1_freq_norm` | 6–8 | Klasse 1–2 | | `age2_freq_norm` | 9–10 | Klasse 3–4 | | `age3_freq_norm` | 11–12 | Klasse 5–6 | Values are occurrences per million in age-appropriate reading material. A word that appears only in `age3_freq_norm` is a candidate for Klasse-5-6-specific vocabulary; a word with declining frequency across age bands (e.g. *Apfel*: 162.9 → 58.0 → 33.2) is early-grades-skewed. ## License & attribution This dataset is licensed under **GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later)**, the strongest copyleft license among its upstream sources. ### License-cascade explanation The dataset incorporates content from sources under both CC-BY-SA-4.0 and GPL-3.0. Per Creative Commons' 2015 [v4-compatible decision](https://creativecommons.org/2015/10/08/v4-compatible/), CC-BY-SA-4.0 is **one-way compatible** with GPL-3.0: combined works must be redistributed under GPL-3.0, with attribution preserved for every constituent CC-BY-SA-4.0 source. ### Upstream sources | Source | License | Contribution | |---|---|---| | Deutsches Wiktionary | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | Definitions, IPA, inflections, examples, etymology, syn/ant, hyper/hypo | | ConceptNet 5.x (DE) | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | Semantic relations | | OdeNet | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | DE WordNet sense data | | OpenThesaurus | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | Synonym / hypernym / hyponym closure | | HermitDave/OpenSubtitles 2018 frequency list | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | Frequency signal | | Matthias Buchmeier German frequency list | CC-BY-SA 4.0 (Wiktionary) | Frequency signal | | Wikipedia "Liste häufiger Rechtschreibfehler" | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | Common learner errors | | **DWDS Lemma-Datenbank** | **CC-BY-SA 4.0** | Häufigkeitsklasse 0-6 | | **childLex 0.17.01** | **GPL-3.0** | Age-graded freq norms (Kl 1-2 / 3-4 / 5-6) | | NRW Grundwortschatz (incl. xlsx + Merkwörter + Nachdenkwörter) | public administrative (§5 UrhG) — Min. f. Schule u. Bildung NRW | Grade tags + xlsx-derived spelling-pattern taxonomy | | Baden-Württemberg Grundwortschatz | public administrative (§5 UrhG) — KuMi BW | Grade tags | | Berliner Grundwortschatz (LISUM 2024) | **CC-BY-SA 4.0 explicit** | Bundesland tag | | Brandenburger Grundwortschatz (LISUM 2024) | **CC-BY-SA 4.0 explicit** | Bundesland tag | | Grundwortschatz Hessen 2021 | public administrative (§5 UrhG) — Hess. KuMi | Bundesland tag + orthographic categories | | Grundwortschatz Rheinland-Pfalz 2021 | public administrative (§5 UrhG) — Min. Bildung RLP | Bundesland tag + orthographic categories | | Orientierungswortschatz Niedersachsen 2015 | public administrative (§5 UrhG) — Nds. KuMi | Bundesland tag | | Grundwortschatz Bayern (LehrplanPLUS) | public administrative (§5 UrhG) — ISB Bayern | Bundesland tag + orthographem categories | | Rechtschreib-Grundwortschatz SH 2023 | public administrative (§5 UrhG) — SH MinBuB / IQSH | Bundesland tag + hierarchical categories | | DWDS Goethe-Zertifikat A1/A2/B1 lemma lists | DWDS API redistribution of Goethe-Institut lists; factual reference | CEFR tags | | Common-misspelling lists from Menzel 1985 | empirical facts, uncopyrightable | commonLearnerErrors seed | | UD German treebanks (`UD_German-GSD`, `UD_German-HDT`, etc.) | CC-BY-SA 4.0 | Aggregate stats only | ### Required attributions When redistributing or citing this dataset, include: - Wikipedia / Wiktionary / Wikimedia Foundation (CC-BY-SA 4.0) - ConceptNet (https://conceptnet.io/) — Luminoso Technologies + community - OdeNet — Universität Hamburg, LT Group - OpenThesaurus — community / openthesaurus.de - HermitDave — github.com/hermitdave/FrequencyWords - Matthias Buchmeier — `User:Matthias_Buchmeier/German_frequency_list-*` on EN Wiktionary - Wortschatz Leipzig — Universität Leipzig - DWDS / BBAW Berlin — "Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS), CC-BY-SA 4.0" - **childLex** — *Schroeder, S., Würzner, K.-M., Heister, J., Geyken, A., & Kliegl, R. (2015). childLex: A lexical database of German read by children. Behavior Research Methods, 47(4), 1085–1094.* (https://osf.io/tqgjs/) - NRW: Ministerium für Schule und Bildung des Landes NRW - Baden-Württemberg: Kultusministerium Baden-Württemberg - Berlin / Brandenburg: Landesinstitut für Schule und Medien Berlin-Brandenburg (LISUM) - Hessen: Hessisches Kultusministerium - Rheinland-Pfalz: Ministerium für Bildung Rheinland-Pfalz - Niedersachsen: Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium - Bayern: Staatsinstitut für Schulqualität und Bildungsforschung München (ISB) - Schleswig-Holstein: Ministerium für Allgemeine und Berufliche Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur des Landes SH; mit Mitwirkung von IQSH und der Europa-Universität Flensburg - Menzel (1985): *Rechtschreibunterricht. Praxis und Theorie.* Seelze: Friedrich-Verlag. ### Changes made from upstream Per CC-BY-SA-4.0's "indicate changes" requirement and GPL-3.0's notification of modification: - **Selection / filtering**: We retain only ~10,450 of Wiktionary's ~100k German lemmas, filtered through a multi-corpus intersection of common-vocabulary signals. Selection criteria documented in the build pipeline. - **Schema flattening**: Wiktionary's nested JSONL structure is flattened into the `words.enrichment_json` blob with per-word fields documented above. - **Merging**: NRW grade tags (Klasse 1-6) are merged into `words.grade_level` from the NRW Grundwortschatz xlsx; Bundesländer-specific category labels are merged from the respective state publications. - **Algorithmic derivation**: Spelling-pattern taxonomies (`spellingStrategy`, `spellingPatterns`) are derived algorithmically from the NRW xlsx feature paths, with a surface-heuristic fallback for words outside NRW. - **Re-encoding**: childLex .dat files were re-encoded from Latin-1 to UTF-8 for storage. - **Source-attribution tokens**: Bundesländer membership is recorded as discrete tokens in `metadata_json.sources` to enable per-state filtering. ## Loading ### SQLite (native) ```python import sqlite3, gzip with gzip.open("grundwortschatz.db.gz", "rb") as fi: with open("grundwortschatz.db", "wb") as fo: fo.write(fi.read()) con = sqlite3.connect("grundwortschatz.db") con.row_factory = sqlite3.Row for r in con.execute("SELECT word, lemma, frequency_json FROM words WHERE word_type = 'verb' LIMIT 5"): print(r["word"], r["lemma"]) ``` ### datasets / Parquet A Parquet export is produced by the bundled converter `pipeline/voc-de/14_convert_db_to_sqflite.py` and made available as companion files alongside the SQLite asset. ```python from datasets import load_dataset ds = load_dataset("cstr/grundwortschatz-voc-de") print(ds["words"][0]) ``` ## Pedagogical / didactic context This database powers WortUniversum, an orthography and grammar learning app targeting German-speaking primary-school children (Klasse 1–6) and language learners. The spelling-strategy taxonomy (`spellingStrategy` list + `spellingStrategyPrimary` + a per-word `spellingExplanation`) is grounded in the orthographic principles of German (phonographisch / silbisch / morphologisch / morphematisch / syntaktisch), per Eisenberg & Fuhrhop, Maas, Gallmann, Schmidt/Fuhrhop, the amtliches Regelwerk, and the basic-grapheme vs. orthographic-marker idea associated with Günther Thomé (principles/ideas only, not his catalogued grapheme inventory). Seven neutral linguistic categories: `klangtreu`, `doppelkonsonant`, `dehnung`, `verwandt`, `morphem`, `merkwort`, `grossschreibung`. Derived algorithmically from each word's own enrichment (hyphenation, inflections, IPA). Full spec + citations: `pipeline/voc-de/SPELLING_STRATEGY_SPEC.md`. The childLex age-graded norms and Bundesländer category labels together provide an algorithmic basis for grade-band classification: a word appearing only in childLex Age 3 (ages 11-12) and not in any Klasse 1-2 wordlist is a strong Klasse 5-6 candidate. ## Citation If you use this dataset in academic work, please cite: ```bibtex @dataset{wortuniversum_grundwortschatz_de_2026, title = {WortUniversum --- German primary-school Grundwortschatz with multi-corpus enrichment}, year = {2026}, url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/cstr/grundwortschatz-voc-de}, note = {SQLite/Parquet dataset combining Wiktionary, ConceptNet, OdeNet, OpenThesaurus, DWDS, childLex, and German Bundesländer Grundwortschätze under GPL-3.0. See dataset card for full attribution.} } ``` Please **also cite the relevant upstream sources** for any specific field you use (e.g. childLex citation for the `frequency_json.childlex` norms; DWDS citation for `frequency_json.dwds`). ## Project links - Build pipeline + scripts: https://github.com/CrispStrobe/words-universe/tree/main/pipeline/voc-de - App that consumes this dataset: WortUniversum (Flutter, proprietary) - Issue tracker / source corrections: GitHub Issues on the words-universe repo