Meuse-Rhenish

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (May 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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.