South Franconian (german: Südfränkisch) or South Rhine Franconian (german: Südrheinfränkisch) is an Upper German dialect which is spoken in the northernmost part of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, around

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...

, Mosbach and Heilbronn. Like closely related East Franconian it is a transitional dialect, which unites elements of

Central German Central German or Middle German (german: mitteldeutsche Dialekte, mitteldeutsche Mundarten, Mitteldeutsch) is a group of High German dialects spoken from the Rhineland in the west to the former eastern territories of Germany. Central German d ...

and Upper German. The language area is located in the transient zone between

Rhine Franconian dialects __NOTOC__ Rhenish Franconian or Rhine Franconian (german: Rheinfränkisch ) is a dialect chain of West Central German. It comprises the varieties of German spoken across the western regions of the states of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, nort ...

( Hessian and Palatinate German) in the north and Alemannic German ( Low Alemannic and Swabian German) in the south. South Franconian is one of the High German dialects with the lowest number of speakers. South Franconian is not considered a separate dialect by some observers. The scope of South Franconian is disputed.

References

Upper German languages Central German languages German dialects Languages of Germany {{Germanic-lang-stub