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Rhenish Franconian or Rhine Franconian ( ) 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, northwest Baden-Württemberg, and Hesse in Germany. It is also spoken in northeast France, in the eastern part of the of Moselle in the Lorraine region, and in the north-west part of Bas-Rhin in Alsace. To the north, it is bounded by the Sankt Goar line (or line) which separates it from Moselle Franconian; to the south, it is bounded by the Main line which is also referred to as the Speyer line which separates it from the Upper German dialects.
Subgroups Hartmut Beckers: Westmitteldeutsch. In: Lexikon der Germanistischen Linguistik. Herausgegeben von Hans Peter Althaus, Helmut Henne, Herbert Ernst Wiegand. 2nd ed., Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen, Tübingen, 1980 (1st ed. 1973), p. 468ff., here p. 468Cornelia Stroh: Sprachkontakt und Sprachbewußtsein: Eine soziolinguistische Studie am Beispiel Ost-Lothringens. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen, Tübingen, 1993, p. 34 or Hessian
or Palatine German or Lorraine Franconian
See also Saarland (section Local dialect) Moselle Franconian (adjacent language area)
Bibliography Hughes, Stephanie. 2005. Bilingualism in North-East France with specific reference to Rhenish Franconian spoken by Moselle Cross-border (or frontier) workers. In Preisler, Bent, et al., eds. The Consequences of Mobility: Linguistic and Sociocultural Contact Zones. Roskilde, Denmark: Roskilde Universitetscenter: Institut for Sprog og Kultur. .
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