Franconian (linguistics)

Franconian or Frankish is a collective term traditionally used by linguists to refer to many West Germanic languages, some of which are spoken in what formed the historical core area of Francia during the Early Middle Ages.

[2] The practice of alluding to tribal names from the Migration Period when naming dialect groups during the early stages of Germanic Philology was not restricted to Germany: 19th-century Dutch linguists also conventionally divided the Germanic varieties spoken in the Netherlands and Belgium into Frisian, Saxon, and Frankish varieties.

In both cases, linguistic borders of historical ancestor dialects were, at the time, thought to closely mirror the supposed tribal duchies of the Frankish Empire at the start of the Early Middle Ages.

[4] Similarly, the scholar Franciscus Junius was said by Jo(h)annes Georgius Graevius in 1694 to have collected fragments of the old Frankish and other languages for the elucidation of the mother tongue ("[...] ad illustrandam linguam patriam [...] ex lingua vetere Francica, Saxonica, Gothica, Cimbrica, Frisi[c]a, [...]").

[9] Most dialects and languages included within the category are spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium (Flanders), in the Nord department of France, in western Germany (Lower Rhine), as well as in Suriname, South Africa, and Namibia.

[10] The Central Franconian dialects are spoken in the German states of South-Western North Rhine-Westphalia, most of Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, the bordering French Moselle department, and in Luxembourg, as well as by the Transylvanian Saxons in Romania.