Lorraine Franconian
| Lorraine Franconian | |
|---|---|
| Lottrìnger Plàtt | |
| Native to | France |
| Region | Moselle |
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Native speakers
|
(c. 360,000 cited 1962) |
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Indo-European
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| Official status | |
|
Recognised minority
language in |
|
| Regulated by | No official regulation |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
Dialects of Moselle. Those in purple areas are lumped under the term "Lorraine Franconian" when spoken in France.
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Lorraine Franconian (Lorraine Franconian: Plàtt, lottrìnger Plàtt; French: francique lorrain, platt lorrain; German: Lothringisch) is an ambiguous designation for dialects of West Central German (German: Westmitteldeutsch), a group of High German dialects spoken in the Moselle department of the former north-eastern French region of Lorraine (See Linguistic boundary of Moselle).
The term Lorraine Franconian has multiple denotations. Some scholars use it to refer to the entire group of West Central German dialects spoken in the French Lorraine region. Others use it more narrowly to refer to the Moselle Franconian dialect spoken in the valley of the river Nied (in Pays de Nied whose largest town is Boulay-Moselle), to distinguish it from the other two Franconian dialects spoken in Lorraine, Luxembourgish to the west and Rhine Franconian to the east.
In 1806 there were 218,662 speakers of Lorraine Franconian in Moselle and 41,795 speakers in Meurthe.
In part from the ambiguity of the term, estimates of the number of speakers of Lorraine Franconian in France vary widely, ranging from 30,000 to 400,000 (which would make it the third most-spoken regional language in France, after Occitan and Alsatian).
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Wikipedia