Franconian (linguistics)

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, it has no common typological features for all the various dialects conventionally grouped as Franconian. As such, it forms a residual category within the larger historical West Germanic dialect continuum and not 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.

High German consonant shift, with Low Franconian (including Dutch and Afrikaans) not participating whereas the Central Franconian (which includes Luxembourgish) did, to varying degrees, divides the varieties having received the epithet Franconian.^[1]

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, which is called Fränkisch (Standard High German) or Fränggisch (East Franconian) by its speakers, though this is due to the region of Franconia where the dialect is spoken.