In historical and comparative linguistics, Low Franconian is a linguistic category used to classify a number of historical and contemporary West Germanic varieties closely related to, and including, the

Dutch language Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the List of languages by total number of speak ...

. Most dialects and languages included within this category are spoken in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, northern

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

(

Flanders Flanders ( or ; ) is the Dutch language, Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, la ...

), in the Nord department of France, in western Germany ( Lower Rhine), as well as in

Suriname Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. It is a developing country with a Human Development Index, high level of human development; i ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

and

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

Terminology

''Low Franconian'' is a purely linguistic category and not used as a term of self-designation among any of the speakers of the Germanic dialects traditionally grouped within it. Within the field of historical

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

, the terminology for the historical phases of Low Franconian is not analogous to the traditional

Old High German Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous ...

Middle High German Middle High German (MHG; or ; , shortened as ''Mhdt.'' or ''Mhd.'') is the term for the form of High German, High German language, German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High ...

and Old Low German / Middle Low German dichotomies, with the terms

Old Dutch In linguistics, Old Dutch ( Modern Dutch: ') or Old Low Franconian (Modern Dutch: ') is the set of dialects that evolved from Frankish spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 6th Page 55: "''Uit de zesde eeu ...

and Middle Dutch commonly being preferred to ''Old Low Franconian'' and ''Middle Low Franconian'' in most contexts. Due to the category's strong interconnection with the

and its historical forms, ''Low Franconian'' is occasionally used interchangeably with ''Dutch'', though the latter term can have a broader as well as narrower meaning depending on the specific context. English publications alternatively use ''Netherlandic'' as a synonym of Low Franconian at its earlier historical stages, thereby signifying the category's close relation to Dutch, without using it as a synonym.Sarah Grey Thomason, Terrence Kaufman: ''Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics'', University of California Press, 1991, p. 321. (Calling it "Low Frankish (or Netherlandish)".)Scott Shay: ''The History of English: A Linguistic Introduction'', Wardja Press, 2008, p. 73. (Having "Old Low Franconian" and mentioning "Old Low Frankish" and "Old Netherlandic".) Low Franconian is sometimes, and especially was historically, grouped together with Low Saxon, referred to as

Low German Low German is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language variety, language spoken mainly in Northern Germany and the northeastern Netherlands. The dialect of Plautdietsch is also spoken in the Russian Mennonite diaspora worldwide. "Low" ...

. However, this grouping is not based on common linguistic innovations, but rather on the absence of the

High German consonant shift In historical linguistics, the High German consonant shift or second Germanic consonant shift is a phonological development (sound change) that took place in the southern parts of the West Germanic languages, West Germanic dialect continuum. The ...

. In fact, in nineteenth century literature this grouping could also include English, another West Germanic language that did not undergo the consonant shift. The term ''Frankish'' or ''Franconian'' as a modern linguistic category was coined by the German linguist Wilhelm Braune (1850–1926). He divided Franconian which contained both Germanic dialects which had and had not experienced the Second Germanic consonant shift into Low,

Middle Middle or The Middle may refer to: * Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits. Places * Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man * Middle Bay (disambiguation) * Middle Brook (disambiguation) * Middle Creek ...

and

High Franconian High Franconian or Upper Franconian () is a part of High German consisting of East Franconian and South Franconian.Noble, Cecil A. M. (1983). ''Modern German Dialects.'' New York / Berne / Frankfort on the Main, Peter Lang, p. 119. It is spoken ...

, with the use of ''Low'' signifying that this category did not participate in the sound shift.Alfred Klepsch: ''Fränkische Dialekte,'' published on 19 October 2009; in
Historisches Lexikon Bayerns
(accessed 21 November 2020)

Origins

Despite the name, the diachronical connection to

Old Frankish Frankish ( reconstructed endonym: *), also known as Old Franconian or Old Frankish, was the West Germanic language spoken by the Franks from the 5th to 10th centuries. Franks under king Chlodio settled in Roman Gaul in the 5th century. O ...

, the unattested language spoken by the

Franks file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...

, is unclear for most of the varieties grouped under the broad "Franconian" category, mainly due to the heavy influence of

Elbe Germanic Elbe Germanic, also called Irminonic or Erminonic, is a proposed subgrouping of West Germanic languages introduced by the German linguist Friedrich Maurer (1898–1984) in his book, ''Nordgermanen und Alemanen'', to describe the West Germanic d ...

High German The High German languages (, i.e. ''High German dialects''), or simply High German ( ) – not to be confused with Standard High German which is commonly also called "High German" – comprise the varieties of German spoken south of the Ben ...

features in the Middle and High Franconian varieties following the

Migration Period The Migration Period ( 300 to 600 AD), also known as the Barbarian Invasions, was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories ...

. The dialects of the Low Franconian grouping form an exception to this, with the dialects generally being accepted to be the most direct descendants of Old Frankish. As such,

and Middle Dutch, together with

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

s in

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

. Within historical linguistics, Old Low Franconian is synonymous with Old Dutch. Depending on the author, the temporal boundary between Old Dutch and Old Frankish is either defined by the onset of the Second Germanic consonant shift in Eastern Frankish, the assimilation of an unattested coastal dialect showing North Sea Germanic features by West Frankish in the late 9th century, or a combination of both. Old Low Franconian is, on its turn, divided into two subgroups: Old West Low Franconian (spoken in Flanders, Brabant and Holland) and Old East Low Franconian (spoken in Limburg and the Rhineland). Old West Low Franconian "is the ancestor ultimately of Dutch".

Modern classification

Low Franconian includes: * West Low Franconian (; in Germany also referred to as North Low Franconian ()): north of the

Uerdingen line The Uerdingen Line (, ; named after Uerdingen by Georg Wenker) is the isogloss within West Germanic languages that separates dialects which preserve the ''-k'' sound in the first person singular pronoun word "ik" (north of the line) from dialec ...

** Brabantish () **

West Flemish West Flemish (''West-Vlams'' or ''West-Vloams'' or ''Vlaemsch'' (in French Flanders), , ) is a collection of Low Franconian varieties spoken in western Belgium and the neighbouring areas of France and the Netherlands. West Flemish is spoken by ...

(; also spoken in northern France) **

East Flemish East Flemish (, ) is a collective term for the two easternmost subdivisions ("true" East Flemish, also called Core Flemish,Hoppenbrouwers, Cor; Hoppenbrouwers, Geer (2001): De Indeling van de Nederlandse streektalen. and Waaslandic) of the ...

() **

Zeelandic Zeelandic (; ; ) is a group of language varieties spoken in the southwestern parts of the Netherlands. It is currently considered a Low Franconian dialect of Dutch, but there have been movements to promote the status of Zeelandic from a dial ...

() ** Hollands-Utrechts ***

Hollandic Hollandic or Hollandish ( ) is the most widely spoken dialect of the Dutch language. Hollandic is among the Central Dutch dialects. Other important language varieties of spoken Low Franconian languages are Brabantian, Flemish ( East Flemish, ...

() ** the dialect of North-Noordholland and the North Sea Coast **

Kleverlandish Kleverlandish ( or ; ) is a group of Low Franconian dialects spoken on both sides of the Dutch-German border along the Meuse and Rhine rivers. Extent and terminology Kleverlandish varieties are spoken in the Netherlands in the northernmost part ...

South Low Franconian South Low Franconian is a group of transitional dialects between Low Franconian and Ripuarian, part of the so-called Rhenish fan, a much larger transitional area between Low Franconian and Rhine Franconian. Linguists hold different opinions abou ...

(, ; also: East Low Franconian ()). In Belgium and the Netherlands commonly referred to as (

Limburgish Limburgish ( or ; ; also Limburgian, Limburgic or Limburgan) refers to a group of South Low Franconian Variety (linguistics), varieties spoken in Belgium and the Netherlands, characterized by their distance to, and limited participation ...

), although this term is rarely applied to varieties of this group spoken in Germany. South Low Franconian occupies a special position among the Low Franconian subgroups, since it shares several linguistic features with Ripuarian dialects spoken to the southeast, such as the conditioned split of the

West Germanic The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic languages, Germanic family of languages (the others being the North Germanic languages, North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages, East Germ ...

diphthongs *ai and *au (e.g. in Roermonds *ai splits to /eː/ and /ɛi/, *au to /oː/ and /ɔu/), which apart from Ripuarian is also found in all other

dialects, and the characteristic

pitch accent A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (music), pitch (tone (linguistics), linguistic tone) rather than by vol ...

, which is exclusively shared with Ripuarian and

Moselle Franconian Moselle Franconian (; ) is a West Central German language, part of the Central Franconian languages area, that includes Luxembourgish. Overview Moselle Franconian is spoken in the southern Rhineland and along the course of the Moselle, i ...

Area loss

Until the

Early Modern Period The early modern period is a Periodization, historical period that is defined either as part of or as immediately preceding the modern period, with divisions based primarily on the history of Europe and the broader concept of modernity. There i ...

, all speakers of varieties of Low Franconian used Middle Dutch or Early Modern Dutch as their

literary language Literary language is the Register (sociolinguistics), register of a language used when writing in a formal, academic writing, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. ...

and

Dachsprache In sociolinguistics, an abstand language is a language variety or cluster of varieties with significant linguistic distance from all others, while an ausbau language is a standard variety, possibly with related dependent varieties. Heinz Klo ...

. There was a marked change in the 19th century, when the historically Dutch-speaking region of

French Flanders French Flanders ( ; ; ) is a part of the historical County of Flanders, where Flemish—a Low Franconian dialect cluster of Dutch—was (and to some extent, still is) traditionally spoken. The region lies in the modern-day northern French regi ...

underwent a period of

Francisation Francization (in American English, Canadian English, and Oxford English) or Francisation (in other British English), also known as Frenchification, is the expansion of French language use—either through willful adoption or coercion—by more a ...

under the auspices of the French government. Similarly, in the Lower Rhine region, local literary Low Franonian varieties were employed in official use until the 17th century, but were subsequently replaced by standard German in most parts, except for

Upper Guelders {{unreferenced, date=November 2011 Upper Guelders or Spanish Guelders was one of the four quarters in the Imperial Guelders, Duchy of Guelders. In the Dutch Revolt, it was the only quarter that did not secede from the Habsburg monarchy to become pa ...

and

Cleves Kleve (; traditional ; ; ; ; ; Low Rhenish: ''Kleff'') is a town in the Lower Rhine region of northwestern Germany near the Dutch border and the River Rhine. From the 11th century onwards, Cleves was capital of a county and later a duchy ...

(both since 1701 part of

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

), where standard Dutch prevailed as literary language. Following the incoporation of Upper Guelders and Cleves into the Prussian Rhine Province, there was extensive

Germanisation Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, people, and culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationalism went hand in hand. In l ...

, and Dutch was replaced by German for official use, and its use discouraged in favor of German in the public sphere, leading to a rapid decline in the use of standard Dutch. Vernacular Low Franconian varieties continue to be spoken in the Lower Rhine region to this day, but many speakers have switched to local colloquial forms of German (''Umgangssprache'') since the second half of the 20th century due to increased mobility and wider access to mass media. In addition, the historically Dutch-speaking

Brussels Capital Region Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

is officially bilingual, but now largely francophone.

Terminology

Origins

Modern classification

Area loss

See also

Notes

References

Further reading