EN:Franconian dialects
From Historisches Lexikon Bayerns
Franconian dialects refer to a group of German dialects native to the Main-Rhine region. They belong to the Low, Middle, and Upper German language areas. The Franconian administrative districts mostly encompass the East Franconian dialect region, which can be classified as Upper German. Only in western Lower Franconia (the Aschaffenburg area) is Rhine Franconian (Middle German) spoken. In the rest of Lower Franconia, Lower East Franconian predominates, as does Upper East Franconian in Middle and Upper Franconia. Compared to the Bavarian language area, there is a broad mixed zone in the Nuremberg area.
"Franconian" as a landscape and language name
A group of dialects is widespread in the northern part of the Free State of Bavaria, which is referred to collectively as “Franconian” in popular vernacular. In the specialised terminology of dialectologists, these dialects are traditionally called “East Franconian”. The discrepancy in naming has historical roots. The modern, popular term “Franconian” refers to the current political and administrative division of Bavaria. Since 1837, the administrative districts have borne the names of the “tribes”: Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia. “Franconian” therefore refers to the dialects of Upper, Middle and Lower Franconia, which are distinctly different from Old Bavarian and Swabian.
The fact that outside of Bavaria, dialects, which are genetically related to the Franconian dialects of northern Bavaria, are spoken has largely faded from public awareness. However, in northern Baden-Württemberg, the local dialects are still referred to as “Franconian” or “Hohenlohe-Franconian”. The Hohenlohe regions were part of historic Franconia, which took on a distinct form as the Franconian Imperial Circle during the early modern period. Therefore, the name “Franconia” is still in use there for the region in question.
Linguistics defines the area of Franconian dialects much more broadly. It assigns Hessian and Rhineland-Palatinate to “Rhineland Franconian”; the dialects of the Rhineland south of Düsseldorf are referred to as “Middle Franconian” or “Moselle Franconian”. “Lower Franconian” encompasses the dialects of the northern Rhineland, western Netherlands, and northern Belgium.
Classification of the German and Franconian language areas
The area of “Franconian” dialects outlined above extends over large parts of the western German and Dutch language areas. The naming and delimitation of these dialects dates back to the language historian Wilhelm Braune (1850-1926), who used the term for historical German written dialects that could not be classified as Lower Saxon, Alemannic, or Bavarian. He cited the ending of the third-person plural as a linguistic criterion for distinguishing it from Alemannic. In Alemannic, it is -et, e.g., “sie saget,” (e. “they say”) whereas in Franconian it is -e(n), e.g., “sie sage(n)”. However, in this respect, Franconian and Bavarian are similar, so a different criterion is used to differentiate between these two dialects: the personal pronoun of the 2nd person plural in the nominative and accusative cases. The forms are “ihr” and “euch” in Franconian, and “eß” and “enk” in Bavarian.
The traditional classification of German dialects, based on the historical duchies (the concept of “tribal dialects”), has been modified, and in some cases, overlapped by a more linguistically motivated structure since the late 19th century. That structure assumes a division into Low and High German, with High German further divided into Middle and Upper German. This classification is based on the sound-historical phenomenon of the “High German Sound Shift,” which is present to varying degrees in the dialects. This process occurred in the 5th to 6th centuries and affected the pronunciation of the Germanic plosive sounds k, t, and p. Words containing these sounds include English “make,” “tide,” and “pound”. In Standard German, they are “machen,” “Zeit,” and “Pfund,” but in Low German, they are “maken,” “Tid,” and “Pund”.
The dialects of Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and Brandenburg are classified as Low German dialects. They border the “Benrath Line,” named after the Düsseldorf suburb of Benrath, which separates them from the group of Central German dialects. These dialects only partially exhibit the High German sound shift. In Frankfurt, for example, “machen” and “Zeit” are pronounced “mache” and “Zeit” in High German, but “Pfund,” “Apfel,” (e. apple) and “klopfen” (e. to knock) are pronounced “Pund,” “Appel,” and “kloppe”. The Germanic p in Hesse, therefore, was not affected by the High German sound shift and is still pronounced as it is in other Germanic languages.
The dialects East Franconian, Swabian, and Bavarian are part of the Upper German dialect group. Here, the High German sound shift has been complete. For this reason, the standard German language is also referred to as “High German”. The term “High” has nothing to do with social status, but rather with the fact that the standard language is more similar to the Upper German dialects than to the Low German dialects.
The area of the entire Franconian dialect group spans across all three German linguistic regions. Low Franconian is part of Low German, Middle and Rhine Franconian is part of Middle German, and East Franconian is part of Upper German.
Franconian dialects in Bavaria
Central German Rhine Franconian and Upper German East Franconian are found in Bavaria today. Rhine Franconian is only common in western Lower Franconia, specifically in the area between Miltenberg and Alzenau, as well as in the Rhön. The dialects spoken there are more similar to the Hessian spoken in Frankfurt than to the Lower East Franconian spoken in Würzburg. The ridge of the Spessart, where the border between the territories of the Archbishopric of Mainz and the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg once ran, also forms the boundary between the Rhine Franconian and East Franconian dialects. It is defined by the “Appel/Apfel” line, which separates Middle German from Upper German. Numerous other differences between the two dialects are directly bordering each other here. The boundary lines form a “bundle,” leading to a particularly clear difference between western and eastern dialects. For example, the Middle High German diphthong “ei” in the words “Kleid” (e. dress) and “breit” (e. wide) is pronounced as [a:] “Klaad,” “braat” in the West, and as [ε:] “Klääd,” “bräät” in the East. In the West, the infinitive of verbs ends with -e: “aisch will schloofe” (e. I want to sleep), while in the East, there is no ending: “i will schloof”.
Lower East Franconian
The characteristics of Lower East Franconian that distinguish it from Rhine Franconian are generally those that Lower East Franconian shares with southern Thuringian. There was apparently a time when the people of Lower Franconia had more contact with Thuringia than with the Rhine-Main region. Historians and linguists tried to place this phase during the period when there was still an independent Duchy of Thuringia, which extended south to the Maindreieck and was not yet part of the Franconian Empire. But this period—which ended with the defeat of the Thuringians in 531—was too early. Most of the specific Lower East Franconian-Thuringian linguistic features only emerged later. Today, it is therefore more commonly thought that this phase took place during the time of the Thuringian official duchy in the 7th century. In that period, similar linguistic innovations spread across both Lower Franconia and Thuringia. In the 9th to 12th centuries, however, Thuringian and Lower East Franconian began to diverge. While in Lower East Franconian, the Middle High German monophthong “ô” is pronounced as [oa]: “Broat,” “Stroa” (e. bread, straw), in Thuringian it is pronounced as [u:]: “Bruut,” “Struu”. Only in the far north of Lower Franconia, in the area around Mellrichstadt, do the dialects known as “Hennebergisch“ resemble Thuringian in this regard. To the south of this area, there is a strip of land where a 'compromise' between the two pronunciations is widespread. The example words here are “Bruat” and “Strua”.
Upper East Franconian
The dialects of most of Upper Franconia (with the exception of Coburg) and the western part of Middle Franconia are referred to as Upper East Franconian. This dialect group emerged as part of the first regional expansion, because of the immigration of settlers from the northern Upper Rhine region into the areas around Rednitz and Obermain – previously unsettled or settled by Slavs. This is evidenced by West Middle German linguistic features at the phonetic level, which are widespread throughout the Upper East Franconian region, as well as in Hesse and the Palatinate, but not in Lower Franconia. These include the monophthongisation of Middle High German (mhd.) “ei” to dialectal [a:]: “Glaad,” “braad” for “Kleid”, “breit”. Additionally, the word-geography shows connections of Upper East Franconian to the southwest, bypassing Lower Franconia. For example, the words “Flaschner” (e. plumber) or “Mockelein” (e. calf) are common in northern Baden-Württemberg and in Middle and Upper Franconia, but not in Lower Franconia. The northern part of Upper East Franconia is also characterised by some Thuringian features that are missing further south, such as the aforementioned raising of mhd. ô to dialectal [u:].
South-East Franconian
This dialect group, also known as “Hohenlohe,“ shares more similarities with Upper East Franconian than with Lower East Franconian. Therefore, it is not always classified as a third subdialect of East Franconian, but rather as a variety of Upper East Franconian. As in the rest of Upper East Franconian, the Middle High German (mhd.) “ei” is represented here as dialectal [a:] (“Glaad, braat”). In contrast to Lower East Franconian, the infinitive has an ending (“i will schloofe”). The main distinguishing feature from northeastern Upper East Franconian is the pronunciation of the final -en. In South-East Franconian, the vowel is preserved and the -n disappears (“i will schloofe”); in northeastern Upper East Franconian, the vowel disappears while the nasal remains (“i will schloofm”). The boundary defined in this way runs precisely along the ridge of the Frankenhöhe, east of Feuchtwangen and Rothenburg.
Transitions between Upper East Franconian and Northern Bavarian
South of the Fichtelgebirge ("Sechsämterland") and especially in the area east and south of Nuremberg, Upper East Franconian gradually transitions into Northern Bavarian, the dialect of the Upper Palatinate. The transition is very pronounced in the Fichtelgebirge, whereas in Middle Franconia, around the areas of Weißenburg and Gunzenhausen, it occurs gradually and spans larger areas. Here, East Franconian, Bavarian, and Alemannic features overlap in such a way that any linguistic “demarcation” is very difficult and must seem arbitrary. On the map, the northern and eastern boundaries of the “Weißenburg area” are defined based on the pronunciation of Middle High German æ in the words “mähen” (e. to mow), “sähen” (e. to sow), “drehen” (e. to turn), and “nähen” (to sew). In Upper East Franconian, they are “meea,” “seea,” “dreea,” and “neea”; in North Bavarian, they are “maan,” “saan,” “draan,” and “naan”.
The Nuremberg area is particularly well-researched (cf. Steger 1968, pp. 543-572). Here, as in Upper East Franconian, we find “Glaad” and “braad”, but also, as in Northern Bavarian, “Schou” (e. shoe), “grouß” (e. big), and “Drout” (e. wire). The Middle High German vowels uo, ô, and â are represented here as rising diphthongs. The dialect mixture originated in the High Middle Ages, when the sparsely populated area, which originally belonged to the Bavarian Nordgau, was colonised by the Hohenstaufen dynasty as part of their imperial land policy. Settlers from western Middle Franconia came into contact with a native Bavarian-speaking population. The interaction of both groups led to the development of the mixed dialect of the Nuremberg region. In the territory of the imperial city of Nuremberg (approximately corresponding to today's Nürnberger Land district), the boundaries of individual Bavarian language features gradually shifted further eastward during the early modern period. This process is still ongoing.
Summary
The historical term “Franconian” has been, and continues to be, applied to a group of German dialects spoken in the western part of the German-speaking region. These dialects serve as a bridge between the extremes of Low German, Alemannic, and Bavarian, and merge more or less seamlessly into them at the borders. There are no linguistic features that are universally present in the “Franconian” area and unique to it, making them “typical” of Franconian. Instead, Franconian shares characteristics with some of its neighbouring dialects, meaning the same linguistic criteria cannot always be used to distinguish it.
The German dialects form a continuum. While the peripheral areas differ significantly from each other, the centre contains elements of all of them. Therefore, the question “What is Franconian?” can only be answered by the negative definition: “That which is not Bavarian, Alemannic, Upper Saxon, or Lower Saxon.”
References
- Horst Haider Munske/Alfred Klepsch (Hg.), Sprachatlas von Mittelfranken. 7 Bände, Heidelberg 2003-2007.
- Robert Hinderling (Hg.), Sprachatlas von Nordostbayern, Heidelberg 2004.
- Werner König/Manfred Renn (Hg.), Kleiner Bayerischer Sprachatlas, München 2. Auflage 2006.
- Hugo Steger, Sprachraumbildung und Landesgeschichte im östlichen Franken (Schriften des Instituts für Fränkische Landesforschung an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg I/13), Neustadt an der Aisch 1968.
- Eberhard Wagner, Das fränkische Dialektbuch, München 1987.
- Eberhard Wagner/Alfred Klepsch, Handwörterbuch von Bayerisch-Franken, Bamberg 3. Auflage 2008.
- Norbert Richard Wolf (Hg.), Sprachatlas von Unterfranken. 6 Bände, Heidelberg 2005-2007.
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Cite
Alfred Klepsch, Franconian dialects, published 19 October 2009, English version published 28 February 2025; in: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, URL: <https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/EN:Franconian_dialects> (17.03.2025)