Meuse-Rhenish

Isogloss definition of Rheinmaasländisch by Arend Mihm
Geographical position of the Meuse-Rhenish dialects

In linguistics, Meuse-Rhenish (German: Rheinmaasländisch (Rhml.)) is a term with several meanings, used both in literary criticism and dialectology.

As a dialectological term, it was introduced by the German linguist Arend Mihm in 1992 to denote a group of Low Franconian dialects spoken in the greater Meuse-Rhine area, which stretches in the northern triangle roughly between the rivers Meuse (in Belgium and the Netherlands) and Rhine (in Germany). It is subdivided into North Meuse-Rhenish and South Meuse-Rhenish dialects (nordrheinmaasländische (kleverländische) und südrheinmaasländische Mundarten).[1] It includes varieties of Kleverlandish (Dutch: Kleverlands) and Limburgish in the Belgian and Dutch provinces of Limburg, and their German counterparts in German Northern Rhineland.

In literary studies, Meuse-Rhenish (German: Rheinmaasländisch, Dutch: Rijn-Maaslands or rarely Maas-Rijnlands, French: francique rhéno-mosan) is as well the modern term for literature written in the Middle Ages in the greater Meuse-Rhine area, in a literary language that is nowadays usually called Middle Dutch.

  1. ^ Michael Elmentaler, Anja Voeste, Areale Variation im Deutschen historisch: Mittelalter und Frühe Neuzeit, with the subchapter Rheinmaasländisch (Niederfränkisch). In: Sprache und Raum: Ein internationales Handbuch der Sprachvariation. Band 4: Deutsch. Herausgegeben von Joachim Herrgen, Jürgen Erich Schmidt. Unter Mitarbeit von Hanna Fischer und Birgitte Ganswindt. Volume 30.4 of Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science / Manuels de linguistique et des sciences de communication) (HSK). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2019, p. 61ff., subchater p. 70f., here p. 70