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Concept
Franconian (linguistics)
Summary
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. Linguistically, there are no typological features that are typical for all the various dialects conventionally grouped as Franconian. As such, it forms a residual category within the larger historical West Germanic dialect continuum rather than a homogeneous group of closely related dialects. For most of the varieties grouped under the term "Franconian", the diachronical connection to the Frankish language, which was spoken by the Franks, is unclear.
Franconian is further divided along the lines of the High German consonant shift, with Low Franconian (including Dutch and Afrikaans) not participating whereas the Central Franconian (which includes Luxembourgish) did, to varying degrees.
Both the term Franconian and its further delineations are restricted in their use to linguists and are not used as an endonym by any speakers of the Franconian group; except for East Franconian German, which is called Fränkisch by its speakers, though this is caused by the dialect being spoken in the region of Franconia.
The term Frankish or Franconian (High German: Fränkisch) as a modern linguistic category was coined by the German linguist Wilhelm Braune (1850–1926) who used it as a term to designate historical West Germanic texts which he could not readily classify as belonging to either Saxon, Alemannic or Bavarian. He divided it into Low, Middle and High Franconian (Nieder-, Mittel- and Oberfränkisch).
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.
Official source
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