Brabantian dialect

Brabantian or Brabantish, also Brabantic or Brabantine (Brabants, Standard Dutch pronunciation: ˈbraːbɑnts, ˈbrɑːbans), is a dialect group of the Dutch language. It is named after the historical Duchy of Brabant, which corresponded mainly to the Dutch province of North Brabant, the Belgian provinces of Antwerp and Flemish Brabant as well as the Brussels-Capital Region ( Brusselian; where its native speakers have become a minority) and the province of Walloon Brabant. Brabantian expands into small parts in the west of Limburg, and its strong influence on the Flemish dialects in East Flanders weakens toward the west. In a small area in the northwest of North Brabant ( Willemstad), Hollandic is spoken. Conventionally, the South Guelderish dialects are distinguished from Brabantian, but for no reason other than geography. Over the relatively-large area in which it is spoken, Brabantian can be roughly divided into three subdialects, all of which differ in some aspects: West Brabantian is spoken in the area west of the river Donge, in the west of North Brabant (around the cities Breda, Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom) and in the north and west of the Province of Antwerp in Belgium. East Brabantian is spoken in the area east of the river Donge; in the middle and east of North Brabant (the area around the cities Tilburg, Eindhoven, 's-Hertogenbosch and Helmond), the east of the Province of Antwerp and the northwestern edge of the Dutch Province of Limburg (Netherlands). South Brabantian is spoken in the province of Flemish Brabant and the south of Antwerp. Over 5 million people live in the area where some form of Brabantian functions as the predominant colloquial language; this compares with a total of 22 million Dutch-speakers across the Netherlands and Flanders. Compared to the other dialects and sublanguages of Dutch, Brabantian has historically had a major influence on the development of Dutch. During the Middle Ages, manuscripts from the 10th to 15th centuries show that Limburgish and then West Flemish were the predominant literary languages, but there is no evidence of literary manuscripts farther north.