Word.ws English Dictionary

Central Franconian

Central Franconian proper noun: one of two main subgroups of the West Central German dialects; spoken in the north-western half of Rhineland-Palatinate, south-western North Rhine-Westphalia, easternmost Belgium, and southeasternmost Limburg (Netherlands); distinguished from Rhine Franconian by the use of dat (“that”) and wat (“what”), and the consistent pronunciation of Germanic -β- as a fricative (i.e. [v], or [f] when now in coda position).

Proper noun

Central Franconian

  1. one of two main subgroups of the West Central German dialects; spoken in the north-western half of Rhineland-Palatinate, south-western North Rhine-Westphalia, easternmost Belgium, and southeasternmost Limburg (Netherlands); distinguished from Rhine Franconian by the use of dat (“that”) and wat (“what”), and the consistent pronunciation of Germanic -β- as a fricative (i.e. [v], or [f] when now in coda position).
    • The tonal dialects [i.e. the tonal dialects of Franconian, Franconian tonal dialects or tonal Franconian dialects] are divided into two main groups (Frings 1916): South-East-Low Franconian (Belgian Limburg, Dutch Limburg, Dülken region), and Central Franconian, which is divided into Ripuarian...Björn Köhnlein, Marc van Oostendorp, Introduction, chapter 3 The place of Franconian tones in the debate; in: 2018, Wolfgang Kehrein, Björn Köhnlein, Paul Boersma, Marc van Oostendorp (eds.)...
    Synonyms:
    Middle Franconian

Synonyms of Central Franconian

  • Middle Franconian

Origin of Central Franconian

Calque from German Mittelfränkisch.

Questions about Central Franconian

What does Central Franconian mean?
Central Franconian means one of two main subgroups of the West Central German dialects; spoken in the north-western half of Rhineland-Palatinate, south-western North Rhine-Westphalia, easternmost Belgium, and southeasternmost Limburg (Netherlands); distinguished from Rhine Franconian by the use of dat (“that”) and wat (“what”), and the consistent pronunciation of Germanic -β- as a fricative (i.e. [v], or [f] when now in coda position).
What part of speech is Central Franconian?
Central Franconian is a proper noun.

Words near Central Franconian in the dictionary

  1. Central Falls
  2. Central Federal District
  3. Central Finland
  4. central fire
  5. central fires
  6. Central Franconian
  7. Central Frontenac
  8. Central German
  9. Central Germany
  10. Central Goldfields
  11. central government

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Central Franconian (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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