Low Franconian languages
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Low Franconian | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Netherlands, northern Belgium, and South Africa |
| Genetic classification: |
Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Low Franconian |
| Subdivisions: |
Limburgish (disputed)
|
Low Franconian is any of several West Germanic languages spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium, and South Africa, descended from Old Dutch.
Low-Franconian varieties are also spoken in the German area along the Rhine between Cologne and the border between Germany and the Netherlands. During the 19th and 20th centuries these dialects have partly and gradually been replaced by today's Standard German.
Sometimes, Low Franconian is grouped together with Low German. However, since this grouping is not based on common linguistic innovations, but rather on the absence of the High German consonant shift and Anglo-Frisian features, there are linguistic reference books that do not group them together.[1]
In Germany it is common to consider the Limburgian dialects as Low Franconian; in the Netherlands and Belgium however they are seen as Central or High German. This difference is caused by a difference in definition: the linguists of the Low Countries define a Low Franconian dialect as one that has only taken part in the fourth phase of the High German consonant shift.
The modern Low Franconian languages are:
And their dialects:
[edit] Notes
- ^ Glück, H. (ed.): Metzler Lexikon Sprache, pages 472, 473. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2000 (entries Niederdeutsch and Niederfränkisch)
