Limburgish Language - History and Classification

History and Classification

Except for Southeast Limburgish, Modern Limburgish descends from some of the dialects that formed the offspring of Old Low Franconian in the Early Middle Ages, its history being at least as long as that of other Low Franconian dialects of which some eventually yielded Standard Dutch. Being a variety of Franconian descent, Limburgish can today be considered as a regional language overarched by two succeeding Dachsprachen, which are Dutch in Belgium and the Netherlands and German in Germany.

Under the influence of the Merovingian and especially the Carolingian dynasty, Old East Low Franconian underwent much influence of the neighbouring High German dialects. This resulted among other things in the partial participation of the Old East Low Franconian dialects in the High German consonant shift in the 10th and especially the 11th century, which makes the Limburgish-speaking area also part of the so-called Rhenish fan. It is especially this trait which distinguishes Limburgish from Old West Low Franconian.

In the past, all Limburgish dialects were therefore sometimes seen as West Central German, part of High German. This difference is caused by a difference in definition: the latter stance defines a High German variety as one that has taken part in any of the first three phases of the High German consonant shift. It is nevertheless most common in linguistics to consider Limburgish as Low Franconian.

From the 13th century on, however, the Duchy of Brabant extended its power. As a consequence, at first the western (i.e. spoken until Genk) and then also the eastern variants of Limburgish underwent great influence of Brabantian. When Standard Dutch was formed out of elements of different Low Franconian dialects in the 16th century, the Limburgish dialects spoken in the Low Countries had little or no influence on this process. As a result, Limburgish – although being essentially a variety of Low Franconian – still has a considerable distance from Standard Dutch with regards to phonology, morphology and lexicon today. Moreover, being of East Low Franconian origin, it also has many distinctive features in comparison with the West Low Franconian varieties such as Hollandic, Brabantian and South Guelderish.